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"Okay, but to me it sounded too much like an apology from white Australians to Indigenous Australians, and I think was made vague to try and appease those who wanted an apology for all. I think Rudd shouldn't apologize for any mistakes Howard made, so why should he apologize for mistakes made by his predecessor decades ago?"

Because the predecessors took children from their families and those children and families are still suffering from it.

Further your point is indicative of why we needed the apology. The division between Aboriginal and White Australia was clear. Only by acknowledging one of the causes of this division can we truly begin to address them.
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"It would have been a nice symbolic gesture for Howard to make, and I'm sure he would have done it at some point, but earlier there was real doubt in climate science and Australia is a coal-run nation. The fact is Howard was paving the way for nuclear power, it's a tough pill for the public to swallow but it's the only realistic way we can start combatting climate change with more than shallow gestures. The ALP, for all its initiatives and statements and conferences, is taking us down a path which will have a much bigger impact on the climate. Kyoto is meaningless if you don't have the initiative to make a real push for real alternatives"

If Howard was ever going to ratify Kyoto he would have done so before the last election. That would have given him a vote at the meaningless conference that occurred straight afterwards. Further both Costello and Turnbull raised the ratification with him at various times (At least Turnbull did and I know Costello supported ratification). So I wouldn't claim that he would eventually have done it. But regardless there is no point speculating.

I think that claiming the ALP is taking us down a much more dangerous path is baseless. Doing very little is still doing more than nothing. I don't doubt Howard would have pursued Nuclear, but at the same time I don't think he ever would have distanced himself from Coal. By the same token I don't think the ALP will distance themselves willingly either.
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"That may be true historically (and it's why Howard had such a massive mess to deal with when he first came to power), but recently they've been about the same; specifically the tax plan which they came out with was released just after the Liberals, and was practically the same thing."
The ALP were trying to win an election and I am not surprised they copied some aspects of Liberal policy. Nevertheless the focus of ALP economic policy has always been the working and lower-middle class, whereas the Liberals were always focused on the upper class (For example through the attacks on Medicare and the huge funding for Private schools).
"As for how they handled the crisis the Liberals have agreed a large stimulus was needed. Public spending as a response to a recession is economics 101, you're mad if you think Costello wouldn't have done the same (but perhaps more responsibly, making it more of an investment than a cash handout, like they have in the US and England)."
Costello always gave out money at budget time, as with Seniors. I imagine he would have used tax cuts in excess of what the ALP has done and would not have deficit-spent as much the ALP. Of course this is all speculation and again, rather pointless.
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"Of course.. It was a huge blunder sending them in and all leaders involved want them out the moment Iraq can handle by itself. Don't think for a second Rudd had anything to do with the fact that Iraq is finally stabilizing and everyone can finally withdraw their troops."

Of course Rudd didn't have anything to do with it, that was the job of the Iraqis. Howard would have stayed in there as long as the US did and there was no exit plan that I am can think of at this time. If he did have one then I am certain it was released long after ALP policy. Which of course (According to your economic arguments) would be worth criticising.
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"Opt-in filtering is very different from opt-out (which is what the ALP outlined), and opt-out if very different from mandatory (which they changed it to after getting in).
The Liberals had a policy of educating children about the dangers of the internet, after some kid demonstrated to the media how easy the optional filters were to work around, rather than try to somehow block out everything bad in the entire world."
I know full well the problems with Mandatory filtering and would rather we have completely unfiltered internet. Not even an opt-in on the grounds that it restricts the access of children if their parents force it on them. But I don't think we disagree here.
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"This is a shaky argument. I could say if it was done differently it would be much better, and we could argue as long as we wanted about it. I do think that the fact we took a different approach to getting a stimulus out than anyone else is worrying though, but you could argue it's more appropriate or we have better economists here, so I won't follow this argument"

Again, I don't think we disagree. I think the cash handouts worked, but would rather they did more things like the home insulation, where there are long-term benefits and short-term jobs. But anyway, not worth fighting about.
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"Oh and CountArch /please/ don't respond with unproven desalinization methods powered by sheep crap or something. I can just feel a big bunch of Green-Party-leaflet Hulk-inspired anti-nuclear pseudo-science is about to get dumped in the thread"

Actually I'm becoming more and more comfortable with Nuclear Power so you wouldn't have to deal with that. I would just prefer we had another source of power and I do believe we should be pursuing other sources, such as Geothermal and Tidal.