Conservatives all over this blighted land are getting their rocks off on recent revelations of the disasters that befell the Whitlam Government in its terminal phase. Here is Marilyn Shepherd's letter to The Sunday Age, in which she reminds us of the infinitely worse disasters perpetrated by the present government, the one these same conservatives so love.

We need to compare what John Howard has done with what Gough Whitlam did. Then we would wonder how on earth Howard has managed to survive scandal after scandal for nearly 10 years: children un-thrown; TAMPA; SIEV-X; children in detention for years on end; illegal invasion of Iraq - and no WMDs; housing that is impossible to afford; one hour's work a week now considered a "job"; the looming sale of Telstra even though its share price is peanuts; destruction of the unions; workers' rights eliminated by a mad ideology; hundreds of residents deported or illegally detained; a baby refugee dying of negligence within 18 hours of arrival; and the horror of AWB paying $300 million in kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime.

And now we have "terror" laws that can have any of us locked in isolation for making a phone call, or buying nail-polish remover or paint thinners; jailed for sedition; and jailed for being stateless.

When will Howard's record of deceit, lack of accountability and deranged hubris get an airing? And when do his cruel and incompetent ministers start getting sacked, as they should under a Westminster system? Or is Terry Lane right in saying we are truly the 51st US state in the mad hope it will "protect" us?