The Howard launch was a very blokey affair - lots of male bragging and lots of money being thrown around with reckless abandon but with not one woman having a starring role.
The Liberal women at the Liberal launch could have belonged to the Womat Hollow Branch of the CWA. All that was missing (for that 1950s image to be complete) was Robur Tea, lamingtons, pumpkin scones and a picture of the Queen on the wall!
The women at Menzies launches in the 1950s (and the 2007 Howard launch) were there to dance attendance on the Alpha males and demonstrate their breeding capacity by holding babies aloft.
Far from making Howard look 'modern', his use of YouTube only emphasised what a political fossil Australia's fossil-fuel champion is.
By way of contrast, the Labor launch was a low-key, low-budget affair and featured two prominent Labor women - the Labor Premier of Queensland and Labor's deputy federal leader, Julia Gilliard.
Prominent among the far more modest and restrained spending proposals (than Howard's 11th hour spree) was a subsidy to enable kids to be able to develop computer skills (at school) by having a access (at school) to a computer each.
"Wow," I thought! Labor still has what it takes!
Thank God Labor is able to put itself into the impoverished shoes of a kid who's single mum or dad on a AWA pittance can't afford a home computer and the kid gets savaged at school for being a dummy and drops out.
Thank God Labor's 'Light on the Hill' still shines brightly for the least, the last and the most lost in an increasingly self-centered, kid-caging land of 'No Opportunity' for people who are... 'Not Like Us'.
Howard (of course) slammed Rudd's computer initiative.
Rudd fired back and was spot on target by saying that 'Howard just doesn't get it' - about how important computers are for trades men and women today.
Some tiny examples from my recent experience:
The Actew-AGL meter-reader stopped by yesterday carrying a small hand-held computer. He read our three electricity meters (standard, off-peak and soalr input) and punched in the numbers.
He then read our water meter and punched in the usage.
He was all done and next door in a minute flat!
If we had had gas connected, he would have punched our gas usage into his mini-computer too for downloading into Actew-AGL's mainframe for it to calculate our bills (minus any rebates and solar credits) for automatic printing and dispatch.
Recently, I had to call in a Telstra technician after our high-speed broadband connection slowed to a crawl.
He came equipped with a very robust laptop and was soon telling me (from inside our ceiling) that the line, as it entered our roof was operating at the correct speed.
He then came down from the ceiling and disconnected the computer I'm typing on now (from our router) and plugged in his very-robust laptop.
Ah-Hah! There was fault in the wiring in the ceiling!
Too ashamed to admit I had rewired the ceiling phone and now-defunct fax lines several times during 25 years, in a flash I said:
"Why not cut to the chase and save a lot of hassle by running a new line from where you found a reliable connection in the ceiling straight to the router?"
Which he did. "And by the way," I added.
"Did Telstra have that very robust laptop especially constructed for field use?"
"No," he replied. "It's a standard-issue Army field laptop. Telsra just ordered some to the same specifications. You can drop it off the roof on to concrete and it will still work!"
So there you go: Kevin Rudd is right!
If you want ALL (not just your) kids to advance in the Army, Telstra, Actew-ACT or in any trade, craft or profession, please don't vote for a patriarchal kid-caging fossil.
