So far, so good...

I am officially loving Kevin Rudd as PM. Only in office for 4 days and he has already acted to reverse John Howard's taxpayer-rorting printing allowance for politicians, cutting it from $150 000 per MP per year (!) to $100 000 per year. You hear that, Michael Johnson? No more fancy digger-hugging "I practically won at Gallipoli" propaganda next ANZAC Day- you're poor, bitch!

Comparitively poor, anyway.

Oh, and it gets better:

The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, will also unveil his ministerial code of conduct today after cabinet meets in Brisbane.

He said his ministers would be held to higher standards than those in the Howard government and would be held responsible for the actions of their departments.

He said incidents like the AWB scandal, in which neither the trade minister nor foreign affairs minister was held accountable for the $300 million in bribes paid to Saddam Hussein's regime, would not be tolerated under his rule.

AND it looks like he'll be putting the brakes on the time-honoured tradition of pollies employing their friends and relatives for no justifiable reason:

In August this year, Mr Tanner noted that the public sector had grown much faster than the general rate of employment. Since 2000, the number of senior public servants had grown by 44 per cent, while total employment growth over the same period had been 15.1 per cent.

The then Nationals leader in the Senate, Ron Boswell, had nine ministerial staff and four electorate staff. He was not even a minister.

But wait! There's more!

Special Minister of State John Faulkner has signalled he will review the threshold to boost transparency. The Howard government last year lifted the threshold from $1500 to $10,000.

Despite claims this move was designed to shield corporate donors from publicly declaring their donations, then special minister of state Eric Abetz [the slimebag alarm just went off!] argued that the previous laws added "nothing to Australia's democracy other than unnecessary red tape".

[...]

The changes Labor is now proposing could deliver another challenge to the Liberal Party as it attempts to regroup and secure corporate donations in the wake of the Coalition's devastating election loss.

"I am on the public record as saying I strongly opposed those increases to the disclosure thresholds," Senator Faulkner said yesterday. "It's all about transparency in the political process. If you have a massive increase to the threshold, the public has no knowledge of those donations at all. They remain secret. Our party has consistently argued that we oppose those increases to the disclosure threshold."

*swoon*

It's nice to see Howard's real legacy, not the media-blowjob legacy, going the way of WorkChoices.



UPDATE 06/12/2007: Another reason to love Kevin Rudd already is his new ministerial code of conduct:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said cabinet had today signed off on a new ministerial code of conduct.

The code sets four key rules: public registration of lobbyists; electoral fund-raising banned at the official residences Kirribilli House and The Lodge [remember this?]; 18-month ban on ex-ministers working in areas in which they had official dealings; all ministers to divest themselves of their shareholdings.