What shall we do with the drunken sailor?
The Prime Minister's spending promises for the coming election are starting to look like the kind of promises that could only come from somebody who has no expectation that he will ever have to keep them. The reckless abandon of his spending spree (in the form of both tax cuts and government expenditure) makes it quite clear that he can no longer be regarded as a safe pair of hands to manage the nation's finances and the economy, nor can he fit into the mould of a fiscal conservative.
Knowing that he will not be re-elected, John Howard is making promises in order to force the ALP to match them, hoping to saddle them with policies that will cause the kind of economic damage that he claims will occur if the ALP is elected. The difficulty for the ALP is in trying to neutralise that policy by giving away enough that the difference is not important to affected voters, without committing to bank-breaking overspending.
This is classic Howard behaviour - as he did with the Liberal Party in the 80s and early 90s, he is taking the position that if he cannot be leader he will cause as much damage as he possibly can to the country (in the past his party) on the way out. The only thing that John Howard stands for is John Howard.