AA,

The only way you can put Juliar's government in any good light is to try and compare with countries that did not have Labor's rivers of mining gold. Given Australia's mining a 5.8% unemployment was an easy mark, and could have been achieved with only a fraction of the wasteful spending. Labor's only claim to economic management is that they haven't yet borrowed to the point of insolvency. There is not one Labor project or policy that has not cost far more than planned and delivered less than promised.

Those of us that actually live in Australia listen to the business associations that make it clear that the cost of doing business in Australia has skyrocketed. Juliar promised to cut red tape, yet has added 20 000 new regulation that small and large business need to comply with, have taken IR legislation back more than 2 decades, and introduced a carbon tax with no compensation for small business.

Tax revenue has dropped because Australian business under the yoke of Labor incompetence is battling.

Morning all,

@cohenite, re: "We already have seen how the HIP was a disaster”

Really? Where, apart from the mendacious media and dodgy academics? Independent economists, environmentalists and occupational safety analysts are highly complimentary. Governments abroad wish they’d implemented the same ‘disaster’.

Re: “the BER featured gross cost overruns …”

Really? What was the budgeted cost? And the actual?

Re: “what was done could and should have been done for half the price”

We come to the point.

Anthony, what was the purpose of the scheme? This is critical, isn’t it?

That has been put to Chris Lewis and Raycom in this thread. No appearance, your worship.

What is your answer? Cohenite? Anyone?

@Grim23, re: “How can fiscal stimulus boost demand when the central bank is targeting inflation?”

It can, Grim23. It did. The evidence is overwhelming.

Tim Harcourt: “Australia went hard and went early and put resources in the right places. As a result, Australia was the only advanced country to have reported positive through-the-year growth to June 2009.”

Re: “Australia had much more effective monetary policy than Britain”

Correct.

Re: “Fiscal policy has nothing to do with it.”

That is is question, Grim23 The evidence suggests it did.

@Shadow Minister, re: “The only way you can put Juliar's government in any good light is to try and compare with countries that did not have Labor's rivers of mining gold.”

Not at all. Julia has a record of better outcomes than any current government or any government in history.

Can you name a better-managed economy anywhere, as measured by outcomes, SM?

Re: “Those of us that actually live in Australia listen to the business associations that make it clear that the cost of doing business in Australia has skyrocketed.”

Not at all, SM. The loudest voices Australians hear are the lying mass media. No?

Re: “Juliar promised to cut red tape, yet has added 20 000 new regulation”

Really? According to whom? How many regulations have been eliminated?

You have read Heritage Foundation’s analysis of Australia’s competitive business costs.

Who do you believe, SM?

You really can cheer up.

If you admit that monetary policy was effective, then by definition fiscal policy is ineffective and wasteful. If monetary policy can hit its target of 2-3% trend inflation, what's the point of fiscal stimulus?

While we are quoting people, how about prominent Keyensian economist Brad Delong:
"Here is the point: an optimizing central bank that cares only about inflation and unemployment because it does not find itself at the zero nominal lower bound and does not fear engaging in nonstandard monetary policy will engage in full fiscal offset: it will take care to make sure that if fiscal policy becomes more stimulative then it will make monetary policy less stimulative by the same amount."
Tim Harcourt did not take the monetary offset into account. In fact few studies take it into account when they really should.

Ultimately the point is that because fiscal stimulus boosts aggregate demand, inflation must also rise as well as GDP. If the RBA is targeting inflation (or preferably nominal GDP) then any fiscal stimulus is cancelled out by monetary policy, leaving a "fiscal multiplier" of zero.

Just for the record, in respect of the BER, and there are many examples but one is typical; Berridale Public School, which received a prefabricated, transportable library under the school halls program with the basic cost being $385,000; yet the total cost of the project is $895,000—an additional $510,000 to deliver and install.

At the time, by comparison, a standard four-bedroom, two-bathroom Timberline homestead delivered and installed to site within 100 kilometres from Lisarow cost only $143,000.

When dear Alan has obfuscated about that he can go onto Gordon East Public school where the BER buildings at the school were costing around $4,870 per square metre, at a time when average house rates were less then a 1/10th of that.

The purpose of the scheme was to obviously waste money.

The HIP was a disaster; lives were lost, houses were burnt down and the efficacy of the insulation was nil.

Austin, i am sorry we are not up to your scholarly standards, but you will be pleased to know i have another peer-reviewed article coming out later this year bagging the BER, another prime example of Labor's poor policy credentials.

I wont you try your luck in academia with your bs.