I don't really have much faith in the worm either, there's a "silent majority" who have voted the libs in the last few elections, and despite labour being strong, it wouldn't surprise me to see the libs win. We'll see on the day I guess!
John Howard inherited a basket case economy with 96 Billion worth of debt, overspent by the previous Labor Govt. He wiped their appalling mess up, and saved over 8 Billion every year in foreign interest payments to unknown offshore Banks.
That 8 Billion a year can now be spent on Australians.
Howard was in parliament about 25 years before Kevvy baby arrived, and was doing a sterling job as PM for a full 3 years before the other even showed up.
Let's see what
Wikipedia has to say about what Keating/Hawke inherited from Treasurer John Howard
... Keating succeeded John Howard in the position, and with it an economy that needed much attention. During Howard's tenure as treasurer, inflation had peaked at 12.5% in September 1982, [3] and interest rates peaked at 22% on 8 April 1982.[4]
The Hawke/Keating governments were able to lower the inherited high interest rates and inflation, and also to keep inflation mostly under control, except for some periods of high inflation. However, the inflation rate under Hawke and Keating did not exceed 10 per cent.
Keating is often criticised for letting interest rates get too high, and indeed, as Treasurer and Prime Minister, Keating presided over several periods of very high interest rates. Keating also attacked Howard for allegedly lying to Parliament about the size of the budget deficit that had been left by the outgoing government. (see: RBA: Bulletin Statistical Tables for interest rate data and RBA: Measures of Consumer Price Inflation for inflation data)
After a difficult start, Keating mastered economic policy and was soon acknowledged as the driving political force behind many of the microeconomic reforms of the Hawke government. Under his and the Keating governments from 1983 to 1996, Labor pursued many economic policies associated with economic rationalism and the "Third Way", such as floating the Australian Dollar in 1983, reductions in trade tariffs, taxation reforms, changing from centralised wage-fixing to enterprise bargaining, the privatisation of Qantas and Commonwealth Bank, and deregulating the banking system. ...
(emphasis mine)
Howard had a lot of the groundwork laid for him by a Labour govt. There was also a lot of excess capacity in the economy that has enabled things to boom, and Howard has done very little to increase this, hence we're hitting the limits.
Never forget the resources boom is a large part of Australia's economic success. It's a bit like Venezuela or Russia, sure they're doing well while oil prices are at record highs, but when they drop who knows what will happen.
Similarly, when the resource boom ends, what's going to happen to Australia's economy? A rising tide lifts all ships, and Howard has had a very comfortable cushion to ride up on. Sure, he has done well in letting the economy grow and take advantage of the boom, but it's not like Howard/Costello have some economic mastery that created it.
If you've seen the state of public schools, public hospitals, public infrastructure, its
terrible. Instead of investing in these, the Howard government uses the surplus to buy votes (through tax cuts and other election winning strategies) to keep their grip on power. Things are already bad, and if nothing is done imagine the state of them in 20 years when we don't have the resource boom to prop us up. Oh well, who cares as long as we're getting rich, right?
