Howard’s legacy questioned by IMF

Posted by Unconventional Economist in Australian Economy, Featured Articleon January 11, 2013 |


By Leith van Onselen

Fairfax’s Peter Martin has today published an interesting summary of Internationally Monetary Fund (IMF) research, which questions the commonly held view that the Howard Government were sound fiscal managers. From the SMH:

AUSTRALIA’S most needlessly wasteful spending took place under the John Howard-led Coalition government rather than under the Whitlam, Rudd or Gillard Labor governments, an international study has found.

The International Monetary Fund examined 200 years of government financial records across 55 leading economies.

It identifies only two periods of Australian “fiscal profligacy” in recent years, both during John Howard’s term in office – in 2003 at the start of the mining boom and during his final years in office between 2005 and 2007…

The IMF study mirrors findings of a 2008 Australian Treasury study that found real government spending grew faster in the final four years of the Howard government than in any four-year period since the 1990s recession.

The number of spending decisions worth more than $1 billion climbed from one in the first Howard budget to nine in the last. The proportion of savings measures fell from one-third of budget measures at the start of the Howard era to 1.5 per cent at the end.



For what it is worth, I mostly agree with the IMF’s conclusion. The Howard Government presided over the biggest private debt boom in Australia’s history and, in its later years, one of the biggest terms-of-trade booms. These two events meant that the Australian economy grew strongly and fostered strong growth in both employment and incomes. Importantly, it also flooded the Government with tens of billions of dollars worth of extra taxation revenue – via increased personal, company and capital gains taxes (as well as lower welfare spending) – which it spent on a range of questionable initiatives and middle class welfare.

Put simply, it was easy for the Howard Government to look like sound financial managers when, through good luck, its revenue base expanded inexorably thanks to the unsustainable expansion in private debt and the once-in-a-century commodity boom.

To be fair, similar criticisms can be targeted at some of Australia’s state governments (e.g. the Bracks/Brumby Governments in Victoria), which benefitted similarly from the huge (and unsustainable) surge in stamp duty receipts and GST revenues. They, too, looked like sound managers by virtue of the fact that their revenue base expanded inexorably and their budgets remained in surplus, despite a raft of questionable (and costly) spending decisions.


http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/01/howards-legacy-questioned-by-imf/

Dumbed down higher education. A crime that we will pay for over and over again

By selling off the nations assets to enable him to implement vote buying middle class welfare that ultimately did nothing to improve our nations infrastructure, jobs, wealth creation or training?

nah...actually loved the guy.....reckon we should bring him back...show all these softcocks how to get shit done....

You must really hate John Howard and his middle-class welfare vote buying splurges.

no but saturation of welfare negates objective democracy....why work when you can sit at home.....poor fucks must be brain dead

So what you're saying is that if you're employed you vote Liberal. Ok.

oh well what can i say....we must be at the stage where welfare recipients outnumber full time employed people

That's great...and yet The Australian indicates a victory for the ALP is on the cards.

just when you thought the Gillard lead ALP government couldn't get any worse they hand the baton to KRUDD and guess what it gets worse....

who would have thought??!!!!???!!....LOL.....

LOL.............:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

Nigga please, a guy who wants to "turn the boats around" is not a "realist" and has no comprehension of the issue what so ever. You CAN'T turn the boats around. Either a) you turn the boat around and leave them on the edge of Indonesian water with enough fuel to get back to land - in which even they'll turn back around for Australia and we'll have to rescue them, b) you leave them on the edge of Indonesian water with no fuel and set them adrift - not only against maritime law but also means we'll have to rescue them, or c) they'll just scuttle the ship and then we'll have to (yep, you guessed it) rescue them.

Turning the boats around is not an option and anyone who believes that it is has no idea about human behaviour, international politics or maritime law.

Neptune, Poseidon. Whatever you want to call him really.

There are many bad things in this world, dying at sea just happens to be one of them...who is at fault anyway?

Please stop trying to strawman me. It's pretty ridiculous.

So your answer to the moral question about whether people dying at sea is a bad thing is an anti liberal diatribe. So compassionate...

You didn't provide any reasoning you just posted a gif because that's easier than confronting reality. Don't you think people dying at sea is a bad thing?

What's hard?

I said what I was feeling, provided my reasoning, and you continued with the exact same faux-emotional diatribe as before,

You're a disgusting human being, is all.

Ah yep, when she all gets too hard just post a gif and run away.

Funny how Nauru was burnt down essentially. Last year the company I work for did a heap of geotechnical work to build what's just been destroyed. Bloody idiots.

So the government runs an ad on radio outlining to refugees why they shouldn't come here on boats. I guess it's a bit late if they can listen to an ad on local radio. Great use of tax dollars. Would interested to know how many extra refugees we could support with the money spent on this campaign.

"I've given you the response you deserve"

I see you've run out of intelligent responses

What's more disgusting and repugnant than that are the hundreds, possibly thousands of asylum seekers who drown every year trying to get here. It's like the piss weak lefties are more concerned about fighting the rights policies than they are about saving lives, which is the most grotesque indifference to human life and compassion there is. And then to claim the moral high ground in all of this, by supporting people smuggling and encouraging people to get aboard boats which will probably sink and kill them and their families proves what morally unhinged dildos the left really are.

The ALP's veer to the right is wrong, yes.

Like I said, it's more disgusting than the repugnant feigned concern over people seeking asylum through boats.

one eyed much.......

Rudd told us when talking about a carbon price that the issue was the biggest moral issue.....but overturns his tax because he will lose and election....

has sat down and done fuck all about the boat people issue for 4-6 years and now deems it a major issue to be resolved....

talk about lack of conscience and moral fiber....all over the place with knee jerk policy shifts in a desperate attempt to fool the electorate with smoke and mirrors......

and the truth of the matter is it's all been timed and planned in the most cynical way so it can't and won't be tested in Parliment......gutter politics by a desperate bunch of grubs......and if they are re-elected it will all shift and move around to suit whoevers needs are more important to the scum ALP power brokers......

So when a you argue someones policy is flawed, then they change that policy, they're still wrong? :-k

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