Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is back in the office today. Not that he has been slack or anything. He has already satisfied the first requirement of contemporary centre-left leaders by becoming enamoured with celebrities, dining with Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.

“The Prime Minister will hit the ground running in 2008,” his spokesperson says. “He will continue working on the inflation challenge that the Howard government left behind.”

It could actually be argued that doing nothing helps inflation, as long as it also involves spending no money. Belgium’s recent period without a government has done that nation no harm.

As a former top level bureaucrat, Rudd must appreciate the value of what Sir Humphrey called “masterful inactivity”. That, however, is impossible to pull off in the first few months of a government. You have to at least look as if you are trying.

Much of last year’s federal campaign was fought on state issues; hospitals, schools, roads. Rudd cleverly turned the threat of wall to wall Labor governments into a positive. Only Labor, he said, could end the blame game and deliver better services to voters.

So Treasurer Wayne Swan is meeting his state counterparts and health ministers in Brisbane today to discuss financial relations.

The Treasurer has indicated he wants to change the system of specific purpose payments to the states to reduce compliance costs that see funds spent on bureaucracy, not services. Swan is also putting $150 million on the table to cut queues for elective surgery.

NSW Health Minister Reba Meagher says $45 million of this should go to her state, despite a big drop in its waiting lists in recent years.

Tasmania’s Health Minister, Lara Giddings, has told local ABC Radio that her state deserves a disproportionate share of national funding for elective surgery.

ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope claims at least a third of patients on his waiting lists are actually from NSW.

Only South Australia’s Kevin Foley seems to have entered into the spirit of things. “I am hopeful that this meeting represents a positive sign that co-operative federalism is here and that the old state-federal gripe, about who funds what for how much, is over,” he says.

No doubt Rudd and Swan agree, but if it all goes wrong they can say that they tried.

And then they can blame the states.