Hasbeen,
"In either case the cure would actually finish the job Ruddy & the red head started. I doubt we would survive such a catastrophe."
What catastrophe? Seriously, what did they do that Abbott's mob haven't done worse?

Hasbeen is worried what may become of his cherished leader, it must be a deep concern to put Abbott in front of everything or anything else, as dysfunctional as it is.

Conservative Abbott is way out of tune with the AU way of life he would be better suited in dear old England where his heart is. This latest debacle is disgusting, a total embarrassment for this nation.

Our leadership is at breaking point, The nation is running in auto, maybe that is better than Abbott calling the shots

Julie Bishop for Prime Minster
would be a popular choice!

Aidan,

The catastrophe?...that would be the AAA rating from three agencies and one of the lowest debt to GDP ratios of economies in the OECD.

That's where we finished with the last Labor govt - and that's the "catastrophe" that the righties bang on about ad nauseam.

Aidan,
Poirot is wrong, I think the catastrophe Hasbeen refers to is the enormous government debt that labor ran up.

Only recently I saw an article, perhaps this morning, that the debt was $238 billion and we are paying $30 million a day in interest. Now, if correct, that is a catastrophe. I now cannot find the article and am going on memory.

Considering that the previous Howard government paid off an $80 billion debt from the Keating government and left Rudd with a $20 billion surplus, it is disasterous. I might add that I do not recall any significant infrastructure built by Labor. It was all wasted.

It seems to me that a hostile senate is preventing the present government from acting to reduce the debt.

The $96 billion “Labor debt” inherited by the Howard Government in 1996 comprised $39.9 billion of Fraser Government debt that carried through the Hawke/Keating period meaning that the true level of Labor debt in 1996 was $56 billion.
To pay that $56 billion off, the Howard Government sold almost $72 billion of Government assets meaning the move to negative net debt was not really due to any miraculous and bold fiscal settings, but owed everything to a series of asset sales.