House_Keeper said:
I have been in Australia for only 10 years. I don't know the history as well as many of you.
I remember reading though that it was a labor government who initialed many of the economic reforms in the 80's. Is this correct? If so, why are people so worried about a labour government?
Latham may say a lot of things before an election, but unless it is in some kind of labour policy document, do we need to be so concerned about it?
Hi House Keeper
The reply to why we seem to all fear Labour is wide and varied but here’s my personal call.
Yes, Labour did introduce many reforms in the 1980, which the Libs have enjoyed the fruits of in the 1990s however Labour gave it away with in fighting. After initial courage, they were unable to follow through due to Union pressure. Keating actually proposed at GST and got howled down. So they stopped building for tomorrow and started fighting.
Then like all Gov after many years in office they got lazy. Super got more and more confusing, and they let the economy overheat in the 1990's with Quintex and Bonds and such. Many people lost money and some (myself included) lost jobs.
They spent more time on point scoring and fighting for the leadership than governing. Most the 1990s labour years were all Keating versus Hawke. So while "Nero fiddled Rome burned" and we all enjoyed up to 18% interest rates for homes. Virtually incomprehensible now?
Keating told us it was our fault "the recession we had to have". Despite this, and against a GST, they bought the 1993 election with LAW tax cuts.
Is this starting to sound familiar to present day?
So the Libs got in 1996 with a small target strategy and to their credit, reformed Gov a lot and built of the strengths of the Labour changes. Australia has survived, the Asian crisis, tech boom, terrorism, and (so far) the oil shock and enjoyed a growing economy. IMHO this success is mostly due to the fact the Libs paid off a lot of Gov debt and introduced tax reform thereby insulated us against the world to some extent.
These actions built the incentive for us to have a go which Labour could never endorse publicly and we now have a decent exports based economy with incentives for personal success.
However when the economy is good, lots prosper and some linger and go backwards. The SOME complain where is my share? and NG and such get the bad press. ACOSS are, on this point, nutters. Which is a shame as they have a role to play in society. If NG is wrong put forward what is right I say?
We are now at the same point in the cycle to 1993 and with the Libs staying with Howard , Labour are a real chance. So what I fear is a Labour win followed by rampant social engineering that spends lots of $$ on nothing programs. Raiding the cookie jar (GST).
The government is due for a change, the people sense it, but Labour are yet to show anything economically that makes sense to me and that is what is so scary. Latham should be all vision and macro economics, not children overboard, iraq, and book reading. Poor people can't buy books when paying 18% rates for home. Growing up working class, I still believe jobs and a low cost of living is worth more than any Gov sponsored program of social engineering.
So whilst I await policies, at this stage I don’t see much except bash the suposed rich ( the people who have a go) which is very frightening as it rewards complacently which Australia excelled at during the 1970 and 80’s.
Regards, Peter 147
