This is a non-story

Yet because it (falsely, I might add) claims John Howard lied, it's popular all over the leftist media that just couldn't pass this up.

WAYNE SWAN: Well this is unprecedented. The Reserve Bank, the independent board appointed by the Government, believed that the Government, Peter Costello and John Howard, were misleading the Australian people about interest rates during the election campaign.

Well it was correct to raise it with the Electoral Commission because the claims were untrue. The claims that the Government made, the claims the Prime Minister and the Treasurer made, were simply lies.

It was simply untrue to claim that the Government was going to keep interest rates at record lows, which was the essential claim they made in their television advertising.

Yes, the claim was, the claim in their television advertising, on which they spent millions of dollars, was the claim that the Howard Government would keep interest rates at record lows. That was the claim that they put to air in their advertising.

There was some fine print elsewhere, but the central claim was to keep interest rates at record lows. It was a lie, and the Reserve Bank contested that with the Electoral Commission. [Emphasis mine]

Labor appears to have no problem repeating these statements, as Jenny Macklin also likes to repeat it. But here's the problem:

Howard never said it, and you can prove it by simply doing as Swan says.

You see, you can download all the advertisements off the Liberal Pary site. And what do they say about interest rates?

...interest rates have been reduced to their lowest in over 30 years...

...keeping interest rates low...

...with that in mind, what do you think interest rates will rise to under a Latham government?

...and if they rose to the average they were last time Labor were in power, you'd pay $950 a month extra...

Yes, it is true that on the screen it said "The Howard Government['s] plan: Keep interest rates at record lows", and they did. It didn't work, but at no time did Howard say he would keep interest rates lower in any of those 11 ads. He said he had a plan to keep interest rates lower, not a promise. These are terms that obviously are interchangable in the national sport of Howard-bashing.

So it's not Howard that lied, but Swan, because he made the following claim:

It's there in black, white and blue on the Liberal Party web site. I downloaded their first economic ad of the campaign yesterday, and the super that went with the commentary said very simply, "Keeping interest rates at record lows." You see, the message was very clear during the campaign: vote Liberal and they wouldn't put up interest rates.

That's the bit he's talking about, which is accompanied by the line "keeping interest rates low". A little context wouldn't have gone astray now, would it? This was their plan, not their promise. In the future, Wayne Swan should do the honourable thing and admit that he's clutching at straws - he lied, Howard was wrong.

(Cross-posted to The House Of Wheels.)