<< The lesson for Australia is clear – governments must learn to live within their means and public finances must remain on a sustainable footing at all times. >>

I am very pleased to see you write this, Julie.

So, I wonder how it sits with an Abbott government? Are you mob going to take us towards a sustainable future?

Gillard said that she wants a sustainable Australia, not a big Australia. Then in the three years following that and other similar statements, she has led a government that has gone very strongly towards a big and unsustainable Australia!

And neither you nor your boss have picked her up on it, have you?

Julie, there is simply no indication that the Libs / coalition would take Australia closer to living within our means than Labor has done!

You want public finances to be on a sustainable footing at all times. Well, it is not likely to happen unless we achieve an overall sustainable society and live within our means in terms of all major resources and a stable if not steadily improvement quality of the environment.

If I could see even an inkling of this sustainability ethic within your mob, I’d vote for you. But as it is, you are simply no better at all than Labor. In fact, both of you are terribly bad antisustainability dinosaurs. So I won’t be voting for either of yuz!

Governments like individuals should live within their means. We have a federal government that thinks nothing of putting our nation in debt to bail out international financial basket cases. We could be the lowest taxed nation in the world if we didn't have such a wasteful attitude by the nations governments. With regards to Cyprus. They, like a lot of the EU are paying the price for joining the union and using the Euro. In the passed nations like Cyprus would have devalued the currency to entice investment and tourism to increase GDP.

The lessons are very different than those you've very briefly and very simplistically outlined Julie.
Most of the problems can be sheeted home to seriously dumb irresolute politicians
The problem for Greece, was rampant tax avoidance at all levels!
Italy and others used derivatives, to kick the debt can down the road, to balance/cook the books, and keep the EU on side?
The asinine austerity measures are clearly not working and only adding further contraction outcomes.
95%+ of corporate Australia, has relocated head office offshore, to basically avoid tax.
Other large corporations have created subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, and then paid themselves premium dollars for so called service? Managing in the process, to hide billions from internal revenue.
We do have a problem Julie, and that problem is the structural deficit created by your side of politics, as you gave away the rivers of gold, created by the first mining boom, and followed that absurdity, by selling off very profitable public assets.
The money these entities once earned for the treasury, now has to come from somewhere else!
A far better choice would have been to create a sovereign fund, that would have allowed us to develop our own offshore oil and gas provinces.
The lessons from Cyprus and elsewhere are, you need to collect as least as much tax or income, as you spend!
What we and others need, is quite massive and genuine tax reform and simplification, that would raise significantly more tax; and eliminate costly compliance costs, in a win/win outcome.
Rhrosty.

Verily simply put, we need to raise taxes. This means that every one needs to make a contribution, not just the miners. Then we need to get rid of profligate government spending designed to win votes.

David

Your rather infantile attempt to bracket the Gillard government with the bank crisis in Cyprus shows that you and your party have no idea what it is all about or how to deal with it.
The problem is all caused by the withdrawal of regulation of banks worldwide and allowed them to in affect to gamble with non existent money.
If any blame can be laid, it would have to be at the door of Reagan and Thatcher, who started to remove regulation in their drive to use the "market" to run the economy and by doing so handed over the government to banks.
various governments continued in the same vein from both sides and we now are seeing the results of what has become a giant ponzi scheme.
There is no other way to gain control of the economy than to re- regulate the banks and also to bring in legislation that will provide a safety net for ordinary depositors.
There is bound to be a run on Cypriot banks if they ever do open again and it will be the tipping point then, whether the run continues in other countries.

Australia has a relatively low percentage of government debt to GDP ratio, the country's real debt problem is private debt.

"The burden of paying down Labor debt will once more fall on the shoulders of a future Coalition government." Yes, I'll bet that will be a smoke screen for lower taxes on the rich and massive cuts in education, welfare and health spending.

RobertLePage

"There is no other way to gain control of the economy than to re- regulate the banks and also to bring in legislation that will provide a safety net for ordinary depositors." Yes, indeed.

Europeans and Americans are paying for the neo-liberal fantasies of long defunct economists and politicians.