Well, it's petrol, petrol and more petrol.
For a while there yesterday it appeared as though the issue was Brendan Nelson attacking the government and Mr Rudd, who argued last week there was nothing more he could do. And Brendan Nelson was saying cut the fuel excise and give Australians relief.
Kevin Rudd, always poor on detail and reading most of what he said, argued that global oil prices were at their highest level in history - a questionable comment in itself. But for the moment that can pass through to the keeper. Except to say that Saudi Arabia is most probably getting as much for a barrel of oil today as it did two years ago.
It's what the oil companies do after that that's the big issue. That's why the big oil majors this year will make profits of more than US$165 billion.
But Kevin Rudd had only finished repeating ad nauseam that FuelWatch and a Petrol Commissioner were the answers to the problem. Palpable nonsense in the extreme.
But then emerges a warning from none other than the Resources Minister, Martin Ferguson.
Now Martin Ferguson on energy issues talks a lot of sense. Well in a letter to the Consumer Affairs Minister, Chris Bowen, the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and the Finance Minister - written a day before Cabinet endorsed FuelWatch - Energy Minister Martin Ferguson completely bucketed the proposal.
The biggest losers, he said, would be working families in places like Western Sydney.
Mr Rudd was saying yesterday that FuelWatch would put motorists back in charge. Brendan Nelson was saying reduce the excise by five cents a litre now.
Mr Rudd said last week he'd done everything physically possible to help families struggling with the cost of living, when in reality he's done nothing. But Martin Ferguson's letter said the FuelWatch scheme would force small independent service stations out of business.
He wrote to the Prime Minister: "Your assertion that FuelWatch will be pro-competitive is unsubstantiated and ignores the very substantial evidence that it is anti-competitive". And Mr Ferguson noted in his letter to the Prime Minister that the FuelWatch proposal had emerged with "no prior consultation" with his office. And Mr Ferguson rightly questioned Consumer Affairs Minister Chris Bowen's reliance on advice favouring FuelWatch given by none other than the ACCC, who presided over this pricing fiasco in petrol and groceries for years.
Martin Ferguson argued that if the advice the Government was getting was correct, "the biggest beneficiaries would be the least price-sensitive motorists and the smallest beneficiaries would be the most price-sensitive, working families in places like Western Sydney".
In other words, if you're battling to make ends meet you'll hunt around for the lowest price.
As I said when this nonsense FuelWatch thing was proposed, there will be no lowest price. If you're going to have to state your prices the day before you'll mark them up to the higher end of the market, not the lower. The battler will lose.
Martin Ferguson made that point, that FuelWatch will "end the phenomenon of fuel being cheapest on one day of the week...
"The biggest losers will be battlers on the edges of the big cities… I believe the cost of introducing a national FuelWatch scheme, some 22.8 million dollars on top of the significant compliance costs to be borne by industry, many of whom are in small business, cannot be justified."
This is the Rudd Government's Energy Minister in a letter to Cabinet and the Prime Minister written before FuelWatch was introduced.
It is ignored and the government's petrol strategy, if that's what you could call it, in absolute disarray. A strategy born of ignorance and a persistent willingness to deceive the electorate.
Tell them anything, no matter the truth.
And now the Government's been found out by one of their own. Martin Ferguson is right.
Slowly it is emerging, the kind of Government Kevin Rudd is running. Big on symbols, short on detail. And say anything and hope that it will withstand scrutiny.
Well on petrol, Mr Rudd has been torpedoed by one of his own.
Well may we ask, where to from here?