It takes a special kind of gall, of a type only a politician has the capacity to muster.

But there was John Winston Howard on Sunday, his head bowed in reverential remembrance of those of whom he and others like him had required the “ultimate sacrifice”.

Wars are never started by soldiers, something our esteemed prime minister failed to mention in his tribute to our most recent dead.

Instead he concocted a set of words that not only failed to acknowledge his contribution to the demise of young Australians in Iraq and Afghanistan, but managed to suggest that democracy somehow required their lives.

Speaking at an Australian War Memorial Remembrance Day ceremony in Canberra, Mr Howard said the deaths in Afghanistan of Trooper David Pearce and Sergeant Matthew Locke were “a sad reminder of the ageless nature of sacrifice”.

“That both of these deaths should have occurred at the time of an election campaign that celebrates, in a sense, the great democracy not only here but around the world, that they and others who’ve fallen in battle have died for,” he said. “(Their deaths have) reminded us in a real way of the nature of sacrifice in war.”

Was it a measure of respect for those lives or a measure of our national gullibility that Mr Howard was not driven out of that gathering?

Because there stood a man who has been so wilfully dismissive of the lessons of past wars that he marched us into another without any real thought for where the bombs would fall or whom the bullets would seek out.

Interest rate rises, something over which despite his sly promises he has no control, increasingly loom as the sword on which his government will perish.

But it is his role in the anarchy in Iraq and the increasingly bloody conflict in Afghanistan by which history, at least, will hold Howard to account.

As Britain begins to wake up to the fact that as many as one in three of the “sacrifices” its soldiers have made in Iraq was a consequence of equipment failure or blunders caused by poor preparedness, the gap between reality and rhetoric is beginning, there at least, to be exposed.

But here in Australia, now just two weeks out from an election, Mr Howard has been able to get away with sullying with his words an event that should be out of bounds to men of his ilk.

Old soldiers never speak with such vanity. They know the real nature of “sacrifice”, and the futile, senseless ways politicians require men to die.

They know it is politicians who commit nations to war and lure young men into battle.

A drive through the valley of despair

I drove up through the Mary Valley on the weekend, past the signs and their desperate pleas, and was reminded again of the “sacrifice” politicians expect others to make in the name of the greater good.

A dam is needed on the Mary River at Traveston for no other reason than to feed the profit motive of a small group of property developers.

This state government has no plan for Queensland beyond those of the special interests it serves.

One sign spoke of dignity lost. There is precious little afforded – at great cost – by the Orwellian community consultation concocted by this state government, presumably to salve its own conscious.

It can consult all it likes. Anna Bligh would earn some respect, even from those she grinds into the footprint of her greater good, if she just admitted the obvious. Water is being re-valued as a commodity. It is no longer a gift of God nor is it any longer a part of the natural world.

First it will become a liability suffered by the state before being traded to some private equity fund where it will become another ever-increasing component of the cost of living. Add it to the index.

I’m not buying the housing sweetener

John Howard’s desperate last bid for re-election includes a supposed housing affordability sweetener.

Just how boosting property as an attractive investment option can help reduce its cost to home buyers is beyond my limited fiscal awareness.

The proposals relating to tax exemption for parental contribution to offspring bliss seem to do little more than shift cashed-up baby boomers from negative gearing to early deliverance of inheritance while maintaining demand pressure on a sector which could do without it if affordability was truly the objective.

The future grandkids would probably have preferred any tax incentives to be directed at developing sustainable technologies but I guess it is this election – not the one in 2025 – that is shaping policy.