think of it as a property investor.....
I cannot. Running a country is nothing similar to running a property portfolio, there is far far far too many soft issues to deal with when running a country that preclude you from taking the business model of property investing and applying it 100%. Aspects for sure, but not 1 for 1.
What I do know that does relate to property is that in 1996, there was over 7 Billion bux flying offshore every year to pay for the debt. That's 7 Billion automatically out of the annual budget that cannot be spent on Australians and Australia.
By 2005, the mountain of debt had been eliminated and the flood of funds out of the country had ceased completely. By 2007 when apparently it just got too boring, we had a beautiful pile of crisp folding notes in clean white bags to the tune of 42 Billion, with revenues coming in of about 3 Billion. That's 3 Billion extra to spend on Aussies.....THE ABILITY to spend I should say. If you ain't got it, you can't spend it.
So in less than 4 short years, Labor, once handed the keys to the vault, have managed to spend the lot saved, and racked up another mountain of debt larger than the one Hawke / Keating took 13 years to make. Once again, we have now about 8 Billion of taxpayers dollars flying out of the country every year to pay the interest bill. That's an 11 Billion difference every budget year that Labor cannot spend on Aussies.
To me, that is significant.
Howard didnt invest into infrastructure (roads, rail, education, health etc etc). So, we end up with no debt, but no assets either.
I don't know whether that is the truth, your perception or a half-truth.
I distinctly remember literally hundreds of signs around 2000 reminding everyone this new road works was a Federally funded road project.
I also distinctly remember Howard trying to do something about speeding up the wharves and break the union stranglehold. If you've ever been down to the docks and listened to the Union guys in full flight, you'd shake your head and be amazed that anything moves at all.
In 2007, I believe quite a few hospitals and schools were chugging on OK. Admittedly, the schools didn't have an extra shed that they all do now, but really, did it need to be paved in gold ??
I remember reading one commentator who said Australia was like a billionaire living in a run down shack.
I'm sure if you dig deep enough, there would be at least one journalist / Labor sympathiser who could conjure up an article to put the magnificent work both Howard and Costello did in a bad light.
Not sure about a run-down shack, but Buffett lives in an ordinary house, and he could pay off half of our country's nett debt by himself. Perhaps Billionaires don't enjoy living in opulent mansions. Perhaps only the flashy wannabe try-hards aspire to that......
