On the 6PM news broadcasts this evening we were entertained by vision and audio of the leader who can’t find any followers claiming that someone had to tell the truth even though it was hard. I write of course, about the jet-setting, $1,700 per night hotel room junkie, Kevin Rudd.

My facts to support the claim of jet-setting, luxury hotel junkie are:

• An email from the Prime Minister’s chief of staff to his counterpart in the Foreign Affairs Minister’s office noted the cost of a hotel suite in Sweden was more than $1700 for one night. Mr Rudd’s man was told to keep accommodation costs to a “minimum” after the estimated cost of one trip came to $77,000.
• News Ltd reported in September 2011 that Mr Rudd set a new international benchmark for travel in his first nine months in the job, clocking up more than $1 million on flights and hotel suite – more than US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Back to the truth-telling…. Mr Rudd wishes to castigate the Queensland government for cutting back on costs in an attempt to reduce the debt left by the ALP mismanagement. Let’s see now …. Mr Rudd, do you remember November 2007? Let me remind you: The Sydney Morning Herald ran a story entitled, ‘Meat axe’ to public service.

KEVIN RUDD will take “a meat axe” to the bloated public service and end what he calls the Government’s culture of secrecy and ministerial unaccountability. “I will be here for the long haul. I will be accountable to the Australian people for the commitments I have made to them at this election.”

He promised to improve external scrutiny of ministers and staff.

“I know that’s very easy to say from Opposition because you’re not in government and when the heat’s on you, it all seems different,” he said. “But if you’re running a decent government, you shouldn’t fear these things.”

Mr Rudd said he was “dead serious” about bringing back the razor gang to trim the public service while not affecting services.

“It just strikes me as passing strange that this government that supposedly belongs to the conservative side of politics has not systematically applied the meat axe to its own administrative bloating for the better part of a decade,” he said.

This angered the Community and Public Sector Union, which has been happy with Mr Rudd’s promise to restore independence to the public service.”He undid all that good work by using intemperate language,” the union’s national secretary, Stephen Jones, said.

“If you look at Labor’s policies, I can’t see how they can do that with any significant downsizing of the public service.”

Hmmm….

So, back to today’s claims by our little truth-telling-boy: “Happy to have a chat about it over a cup of tea at the caravan park with the 150 people you are evicting,” Rudd tweeted at Mr Newman.

Well, Mr Rudd, do you have the courage and conviction to have a cup of tea with me and 150 small business owners who don’t have a boss who pays for first & business class airfares, limousines, chauffeurs, and $1,700 per night hotel suites? Do you have the courage to explain why union workers should have their jobs protected by government grants to keep an industry afloat that is unable to carry itself? Small business owners employ people but they cannot get a cent from the government to keep them in business. Nor do they get all the perks you do as a jet-setting government elite.

Over to you, Mr Rudd. Do you have the courage to face me and 150 small business owners and let us check you on your facts and truth-telling?