westernred, enjoyed your synopsis. Cheers.

Personally I think Australians have been lucky to have the experience of Howard in government these last years. The whole world is going through an economic redress and a shift in appreciation and use of some natural resources that where once the mainstay of their economies. Thankfully we have had good overall leadership and they have provided an atmosphere that business can expand in, and become stable enough to manage the down turn resulting from lessening the reliance on natural resources. In a year or two when everything settles down again, and who ever elected whatever party that is running the show, will gladly take the credit for making it all possible I'm sure.

Does Australia have a Conservative party? I thought they were all different degrees of left.

Change does. :-)

How hard is it to pay off Government debt by selling off public assets?

The Commonwealth Bank (Keating, I know) for example is now worth ten times what it was initially sold for. What a great deal for the taxpayer who previously owned it.

How much of our GDP now directly leaves the country as share dividends to foreign owners. The last I heard was about 5% and is probably greater than the interest payments we were making on that original debt.

How hard is it to cut costs by cutting back on essential services to those who need them the most and then encouraging private philanthropists to carry the burden?

Yet on the other hand, how many people are now in receipt of the myriad of allowances handed out on behalf of the taxpayer to cover things they could previously afford. Talk about a Welfare State!

How much of the surplus is made up of accrued and predicted student HECS debt? More than most people realise.

We have never had so much personal debt and perpetuating the myth that we are living in boom times only encourages us to borrow more. The country is living off its credit card and despite the claim that we have low interest rates, how do they actually compare with those of our trading partners?

For those lucky enough to own them, our houses have never been worth so much, yet been so unaffordable by the next generation for decades.
Now we are experiencing a once-in-a-generation resources windfall and what have we done with it?

Ideally we would be replacing or building new infrastructure for the next generations and to to help ourselves when the boom ends, but no, we have frittered it away on schemes to keep the government in office.

What about the other social statistics on homelessness, crime, bankruptcies, suicide and underemployment that contradict living in a booming economy. Somebody is missing out.

I prefer to think that people have not become complacent about who can run the economy better but are more aware about what is important in their lives.

Hear hear "wobbles". To your excellent list, I would add the doubling in net foreign debt over the past decade and the fact that we are running a massive current account deficit at a time when our terms of trade are the best they have been in five decades.

But you hit the nail on the head with the big picture theme - people realise that "prosperity", as defined by Howard, is a narrow concept. We are enjoying a once-in-a-generation rise in our national wealth because of an externally generated event. Yet we are wasting the opportunity to invest that dividend in our future by boosting our skills base and improving our infrastructure.

Instead, we increasingly transfer risk to households, while allowing fatcat merchant bankers to seize public infrastructure assets, load them up with debt and then rip the public off. And these people have the gall to accuse their opponents of socialism! Welfare for the rich.

In the meantime, we have a government willing to trash every concept of good governance, lie, cheat, drag us into an illegal war, outsource our foreign policy, curb hard-won civil rights and appeal to ignorance and fear at every opportunity for naked political gain.

I am not a Labor supporter by any means. I am a centrist small 'l' liberal who believes in free markets with a strong social safety net. But the case for ridding this nation of this miserable, mendacious government is so strong - and Rudd offering an acceptable alternative - that we actually have a moral imperative to change.

If they want to form a political party and put themselves up for election, I'm voting for wobbles and Mr Denmore.

BC2,
Thanks but no thanks.

I'm reminded that the word "politics" may come from two other words.

"Poly" meaning "many", plus "Ticks" meaning "blood-sucking parasites".

I didn't always feel this way - it just seems to be getting worse.

be careful, justaguy, you may find yourself on the soapbox next to me haranguing the crowd on the need for real democracy.

you, wobbles, have highlighted another feature of 'professional' politics- the character of those who "do it for money." shouldn't blame them, though. most of us would also lie, cheat, and steal, if it paid as well and we were in charge of police, courts, and army.