Chris Lewis you have OLO to counter with facts, Alan Austins points;lets read them.

Yes, maybe in time.

First fact is that majority of Aust's dont think much of silly comparisons with other countries. They are far more astute than people living in France about what goes on here.

For a variety of reasons, Labor is going to get the boot (at least I hope so). I have been a Labor voter most of my life, but wont be for a while until it lifts its game.

What do I want Alan?
Well we could do with a reduction in burgeoning record foreign debt; and personal debt, which are still miles too high for any sort of comfort.
I want house prices that resemble something closer to the EU/USA average, rather than the 60% premium we pay here, those of us that can afford it.
I want a return to infrastructure roll-out preceding development, not the reverse of recent years.
I thought the Govt reaction at the start of the GST was right on the money.
Nonetheless, the current leadership is far too timid to take on the big picture reforms we need to set us up for the future.
The baby boomers are hitting retirement age, and there are far too many of them in comparison to the remaining taxpayers.
I want to climb out from under the huge record foreign debt and reclaim our economic sovereignty.
I want a model of foreign investment based on capital need, minus the foreign debt laden speculator, who has crippled two formerly stand-out economies, Spain and Ireland!
I don't want to live in a fools paradise, encouraging everybody except we Australians, to buy property. Which as a consequence, is now out of reach of too many Australians.
We have the highest median house prices in the English speaking world!
I want a parliament and pollies who finally put Australia and Australians first.
I want to see us invest in our own people and their better ideas, not comparatively over priced, over rated bricks and mortar.
I want a Govt that gets back into the housing market, with a huge public housing roll out.
To that end, we do need a much more efficient tax collection system, rather than endemic avoidance, that pollies refuse to tackle for fear of repercussions from a powerful ATO and tax practitioners.
No such reluctance was evidenced when when we outsourced our footwear and textile industries and the jobs of around 60,000.
There's a lot more I want, but OLO word limits!
Rhrosty.

Alan

China now represents about 30% of Australia’s exports, and in the past 5 years exports to China have risen from $23b to $77b, or 27%pa. Other countries also export a lot to China, but I suspect few have grown in reliance on China so quickly in so short a time. Chinese demand and high prices also underpinned the second, and even more important, contributor to Australia’s ability to sustain growth during recent years, from mining investment. In the past 5 years mining investment rose from $24b to $84b. This has also generated spin-offs in other sectors. For example, engineering construction work done rose over the same 5 years from $53b to $119b (all data for FYs 2006/07 to 2011/12)

I agree that debt levels before the GFC would have made little difference to the effectiveness of stimulus packages, but they made a big difference to how economies looked once the stimulus was ended. The resulting high debt levels of Europe and the USA will mean years of fiscal stringency. We didn’t share the same fate because we started from a better base and didn’t need to spend as much.

I think the speed, quantum and direction of Australia’s response was pretty average. We all know about the pink batts and extravagant school funding. One problem is that stimulus spending was not withdrawn once it was no longer needed, and this has contributed to the current fiscal deficit problem, which it seems everyone except Treasury know was coming. Both capital and current government spending by the Commonwealth have grown every year since the GFC. If the government had really followed the “three T’s” of effective stimulus spending – timely, targeted and temporary – then spending should have fallen once the crisis receded.

Just love comparative logic.We are less poor than the rest of the planet.We had a Govt surplus of $20 billion before these morons took control.

The main reason why the world is a mess is that private banks create from nothing all the money to equal our increases in productivity + inflation.

The debt can never be repaid when even our inflationary money gets created as debt.

First we lose out by depreciation of our currency,then having to repay the principal and lastly the interest on what was already ours.This is the same scenaro when our increases in productivity get created as debt.

No wonder banks are the powerful institutions on the planet.They can buy anything or anyone with the click of a computer mouse.

Hi Rhrosty.

Impressive list. All sound aspirations.

Except “burgeoning record foreign debt”.

Where, Rhrosty? Australia’s debt is quite modest in historical terms. No?

Would you agree your Government is delivering your economic wishlist better than any past Australian Government and better than any government anywhere else?

If not, which has done better?

Hi Rhian,

Re: “Other countries also export a lot to China, but I suspect few have grown in reliance on China so quickly in so short a time.”

Pretty sure South Korea and Japan have equivalent reliance, Rhian. Perhaps greater. The time over which that has grown may be different. Why would that matter?

Re: “Chinese demand and high prices also underpinned the second, and even more important, contributor to Australia’s ability to sustain growth during recent years, from mining investment.”

Correct. But the question remains why no other nation with equivalent benefits from trade with China was protected at all during the GFC.

Re: “We didn’t share the same fate because we started from a better base and didn’t need to spend as much.”

But you did spend as much. You spent more than most. Of OECD nations only the USA and South Korea spent more. Their stimulus was slower, however, and less effectively targetted.

Re: “I think the speed, quantum and direction of Australia’s response was pretty average.”

All the evidence suggests otherwise, Rhian. Have you researched this?

Re: “We all know about the pink batts and extravagant school funding.”

Really? What do we know? What the mainstream media told us? Those two strategies were the key reasons Australia’s intervention worked so well. They were extraordinarily effective as all the objective research now shows. Governments around the world wished they had done exactly the same.

Except they could have done without the frenzied hysteria and blatant lies of the Murdoch media.

Re: “If the government had really followed the “three T’s” of effective stimulus spending – timely, targeted and temporary – then spending should have fallen once the crisis receded.”

Yes. But has the crisis yet receded? Not here in Europe it hasn’t.

Cheers, AA