Honest John? Hardly!

I really have no problem with people who make mistakes. "To err is human" as someone once said and I for one would like to be considered divine by being able to forgive such a slip.

I do however have a major problem with people who make a mistake and then lie about it! I have an even bigger problem when it is the Prime Minister who utters such self serving lies.

John Howard has denied that he ever uttered the words that have haunted him for the last few weeks - that he promised to keep interest rates at record lows. At first he denied it completely, then he suggested it was just part of an advert that only ran for two days and finally today he had no choice but to come clean when the words were firmly shown to have been uttered by him.

Any politician who lies once is likely to lie again.

With Mr Howard I may have been able to excuse his blatant lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as simply something he was misinformed about by his intelligence services, I was prepared to excuse him when he misrepresented the "children overboard affair" as another instance of being misinformed.

However on this occasion he has gone too far. I am afraid that I now am no longer able to make excuses for his behaviour or his lack of morals.

If he was a mere public servant employed in a government department he would have been given an option of resigning before being dismissed. He IS a servant of the public and since he has not resigned in embarrassment we, as the people who have given him our trust should now ensure that he is dismissed from office.

The fact that he continues to harp on about the Labor Party having lots of candidates who have been in the union movement is another case in point. I would rather ask Mr Howard whether his ethics and his skills in lying bald faced to the Australian public mirrors the code of conduct he has set for his Ministers as most of them are lawyers who practice truth bending for a living!