The pre-election gravy train keeps chugging along with six recent promises by the Prime Minister adding $1,292,026,700 to the list of projects announced by the Prime Minister on is campaign jaunts around the country.

You will find the details at Grass Roots Gravy Train on the Crikey election website where we will keep updating the way John Howard gives away tax payers money during his re-election bid.

Even Mr Howard, it seems, is now getting slightly embarrassed about the extent of his largesse because yesterday, with spin that would do Herr Warne proud, he attempted to put his outrageous attempts at vote buying into a supposedly intellectually coherent framework.

Instead of priming the parish pump, the Coalition Government is now engaged in a revamped federalism that incorporates “aspirational nationalism”.

What Mr Howard really means is that he wants to promise handouts to people in marginal electorates for things like libraries, town halls and sports stadiums that are conditional on his re-election.

To do that will involve delaying the date for handing over the money by pretending that the goodies will be financed not from tax revenue but from interest to be received in the future on the surplus of taxation that his Government is presently collecting.

This “promise now, pay later” scheme, touched on yesterday in Mr Howard’s Address to the Millennium Forum, will be launched with appropriate pork barrelling when Treasurer Peter Costello gives his next update on the projected increase in the budget surplus.

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