Howard Govt cares 2.963962 times more about being re-elected than it does about the Nation's Toothache.

How, you ask, did DH arrive at this remarkably accurate assessment?

DH has been hanging out with bureaucrats a lot lately, and has been seduced by the glamour of it all. Where once she favoured good looking fellers, she now gets off on acronyms, indices, bar charts and assessment tools. And it's giving her ideas.

See, DH has always had this problem about understanding Governmental largesse. For instance, in the last Federal Budget, Peter Costello announced that his goverment will spend $378 million over four years for patients whose dental health is impacting on a chronic medical condition

WOW!!! That sounds like a lot of money.

GEE, maybe she really misjudged those Liberals down there in Canberra when she called them cold-hearted meanies???

But what does it mean? Like how many toothbrushes will it buy you, or how many Toothbrush Distribution Strategic Services Policy Officers, Class 7-8, EFTS's will it fund? And what about if you already have a toothbrush?

And is "toothbrush half-lives" a useful unit of measure in other policy areas, like funding for the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement for instance, or is it too specific?

No, clearly what is needed is an independant largesse evaluation tool, not tied to the vicissitudes of toothbrush futures.

Any assessment tool has to use as comparison something that has ABSOLUTE value to all politicians, a measure of just how important something really is to them.

And that's when DH realised just what the Howard Governments most important and most valued expenditure items is: .

Their annual taxpayer-funded propaganda advertising cost
(or ATFUPAC for short)

Now over the past 3 years the Howard Governments has spent $850 million dollars of taxpayers money on self promotion.

Thats an annual ATFUPAC of $280 million per annum (rounded)

Now with the dental expenditure, $378 million over 4 years equates to $94.5 million per annum (rounded).

Now divide the tooth expenditure by the ATFUPAC and you arrive at the following: The Howard government cares only 33.75% as much for the nation's teeth as for getting re-elected, or conversely, 2.962963 times more for getting re-elected than for reducing the nations toothache.

No really, it's TRUE. Check the figures. This is real mathematics. If you don't believe DH, ask Ross Gittins, only Australia's top economics writer, if you didn't know. DH took a stab at figuring out his email address, emailed the whole calculation to him there, asked him to check it out, and get back to her if there was an problem. And so far he hasn't complained.

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You just dont geddit, do ya?

All DH can say, is that you must have learned basic numeracy at a school or university funded by the Howard Government.

Anyhow, watch this space because DH will be applying the GLET (Governmental Largesse Evaluation Tool) to the entire budget anytime soon.