The “clever but tricky” label Labor has been applying to John Howard all this year seems to have stuck (if the Liberal Party pollster is to be believed).

And if it’s true that many people no longer believe what the Prime Minister says, then he’s only going to get into more and more electoral trouble by repeating his mantra that interest rates will always be lower under a Coalition Government than under Labor.

Mr Howard was back on that theme as soon as the Reserve Bank released its statement yesterday. Trouble is, the people believe that they heard that same Mr Howard proclaiming during the last election campaign that his Government would keep interest rates low.

That was the clear impression Mr Howard and his Government set out to leave and the whole but-we’re-still-lower-than-Labor qualification strikes many people as typical weasel words from a politician.

The impression that Mr Howard is a man who, with his history of core and non-core promises, is incapable of telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, is simply reinforced when the Labor Party keeps bobbing up with copies of advertisements that the Liberal Party ran back in 2004.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd did this in the House of Representatives yesterday and a very damning picture it made for the nightly television news bulletins too.

There were no ifs, buts or maybes about the words in the ad; The HOWARD GOVERNMENT plan – KEEP INTEREST RATES AT RECORD LOWS.

Mr Howard chooses to ignore what his party’s advertisements might proclaim. Those promises, apparently, have been consigned to the non-core pile as he maintains that he personally never said anything about keeping interest rates at record lows.

Those who happen to have taken the Liberal Party ads at face value last time will surely have reservations about doing so again.

And to remind them what the word of the PM’s team is worth, Labor could do worse than start repeating the Pinocchio nose message which appeared on the Party website and the side of buses after a previous interest rate rise: