It’s not difficult to arrive at an accurate assessment of the present Oz leadership, the government of John Howard. Love Howard or not, he has the local population eating his lies like it was manna from heaven. Howard’s treasurer recently announced that the Oz government was out of debt, in view of a national foreign debt of $493 billion, the highest ever recorded by an astronomical ‘mile’, the announcement of no government debt becomes meaningless double-talk. But which figure does the public prefer to embrace? The lie of course, it’s far more comforting – the media’s emphasis on the treasurer’s remarks at the expense of the horrendous crippling debt is not unintentional.