Thanks for your article.

I think you are being too kind to the former government which has presided over
- the destruction of a mass higher education system,
- the wholesale flight of Australian jobs and manufacturing to India and China.

Howards wedge politics not only caused a rift in the relationship between the prime minister and the treasurer but their divisive politics made Australia a meaner society with one system for wealthy working families and another system for aborigines and welfare recipients.

The masters of the Liberal Party view Australia as one large quarry to be stripped of its resources, mineral and human. The previous government failed singularly to engage in nation building.
To be honest Rudd and Swan haven't shown any great vision yet.

Well-written article ,but we-all note different things ,so-i=will add my-bit that-i-noted-across-the-howard-reign.

pre-howard we-owned things telstra telecom/water/electricity/etc for egsample ,
that now-has-gone into some 'trust' fund-or-share-holder-fund [locked-away/stolen for use of a burdon-some public-service or stockbrokers-bonus[that dosnt serve the-public but the big-buisness-greed-is-god-adgenda]

Ok we did-away with the tax-burdon on the ritch [via numerous tax cuts to the big-guys ,as well we gave them several-other-bonus'ss [no more death-duties ,[a huge one that-those having their wealth in private-trust funds particularilly hated]

Then we lost our wage increase
[that now props up a failing stock market ,yet despite holding [via our compulsory-super ,ie-ongoing-compulsory-support that distorts the-free-market]
thus-we-'own'-a failing de fact ownership of the-shares BUT-we get none of the huge-increase the market got-nor-did-get their huge bonus ,
nor get the discounts traditional share holders get ,

further we got gst
[while the high tax earners got more tax cuts]

,the list goes on and on [basiclly on the premise of placing ever more burdon on the poor while giving aid and tax reform to the higher-income elites

Yes swan couldnt find the fat

because the fat has all been given to the all ready wealthy
[the poor now-carry the whole of the burdon,

its not-too-hard to-see labour has more-of-the-same [
now we poor are-stuck supporting the whole of this blood sucking elite

That even gets subsidy on their private schooling and their insurance ,
while we get bank fees and ever more extra charges ,while still supporting via our pay as WE go the elite perks [like subsidised medicine, that dosnt cure us but gets huge ammounts of tax dollars ,

as a form of coorperate welfare [noting the libs are propposing much the same again now for big oil]

so lets do away with this burdon on the poor
[bankfees, gst ,and bring back death duties] and a transaction tax ,of say half a percent
[thats no real burdon
[but better than the percentage we are now bonded to pay where drawing out pennies or billions costs an equal bank charge,

much-more burdon-some on the poor than the elite, but-such was howards-way

ONE UNDER GOD
I'm beginning to think you might be happier in Cuba

Thanks David, though I also think you're too kind to them.

The Government budget might have been balanced (not least from selling the family silver - great bookkeeping isn't it?), but PRIVATE debt has been going through the roof and and could be our subprime crisis.

See Steve Keen's work at
www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/

Nobody else seems to be looking at this most basic fact, least of all Treasury and RBA.

The one thing for which I will always remember John Howard, and for which I will be forever grateful, occurred on the 29th August, 2001, Tampa Day, when the armed forces of the Commonwealth prevented several hundred illegal immigrants from landing in Australia. The great racket called people smuggling came to an abrupt end, and has not resumed despite the election of a labor government. Kevin Rudd has had the sense to maintain the navy patrols that guard our borders, and protect us from the millions of third world immigrants that would come given half a chance.

The cheering that you could hear all over Australia, from the 80 or 90% of the population that supported Howard's action, was, of course ignored by the chattering classes, who only seem to favour something if it is against the national interest. Most people is Australia are profoundly uninterested in politics; it is only when a deep primal instinct comes to the fore, such as the principle that entry without leave constitutes invasion, that they become concerned at what is happening.

In the very traumatic decades that lie ahead, when global food shortages (caused mainly by population pressure, peak oil, and the need to turn a lot of food into biofuel), cause mass starvation in the third world, when nuclear war very likely ravages our planet, and when millions of people are desperate to escape the hell in which they live, the action of our armed forces in preventing their arrival here, if necessary by sinking their boats, will be even more necessary.

More than any other day so far, Tampa Day signalled one of the overriding issues of the 21st century. In a very difficult time, Australia will remain one of the best places to live, as it is the only country to have the four vital things:

1. A surplus of food.

2. A surplus of energy.

3. A surplus of minerals.

4. Most important of all, a sea boundary.

under one god, the rich are still paying a hell of a lot of tax (have a look at the ATO website under tax payable by income band).

In the 2004/5 financial year (last one there is data for)

The top 1% of income earners (over $201k per annum) paid 15.8% of all income tax paid.
The top 5% of income earners (over $97k per annum) paid 31.7% of all income tax paid.
The top 10% of income earners (over $75k per annum) paid 43.1% of all income tax paid.
The bottom 50% of income earners (under $36k per annum) paid 14.3% of all income tax paid.

As is clear from the people who collect the tax, the rich (not that I would call over $75K per annum a particularly high salary) DO pay their way.

It is precisely because higher income earners get taxed much more heavily than lower income earners that they get (deserve?)larger tax cuts. In any case the tax cuts are much higher for lower income earners in terms of the percentage of tax paid. A $10 dollar a week tax cut when you only pay $100 tax per week is much better than a $100 dollar a week tax cut if you pay $1500 tax per week.

Howard has indeed left us with an enormous ecological debt.

But I disagree with David Ritter that the major issue is, or was during the Howard years, climate change. The major issue that Howard completely failed to address is that of peak oil, or the energy crunch, and its potentially catastrophic impact on our society and most other countries around the world.

The second issue is overall sustainability, which is obviously interconnected with the energy issue. Climate change, as real as it probably is, is a far lesser thing, which will probably be addressed more effectively by rising oil prices and shortages of supply and our efforts to deal with them than by anything we could have otherwise consciously done to mitigate it.

“Eyes turn to the Rudd ministry, faced with the solemn responsibility of redressing the decade of waste and neglect…”

Well, I still glance occasionally at them to see if they are actually doing something meaningful, but I have pretty much given up hope already. With the boost to immigration and the total pandering to the continuous human expansion paradigm even more so than Howard, Rudd is laying the foundation for an even bigger ecological debt, in a shorter timeframe and at a point in our history when it is even more critically contemptible.

“Progressives of the left (but hopefully also, within the Liberal Party, wet liberals and conservationist conservatives) must now seize the agenda…”

Absolutely! I don’t hold out any hope for the Greens, but I do hold some hope that the Libs will see the light and become the new sustainability party of Australia. Either that or a new party rising from the grassroots which can directly take on Rudd’s economic-rationalist record-high-immigration never-ending-expansion rush-towards-the-cliff lunacy.

Thanks David,

Notwithstanding Billie's pertinent point and in spite of the grave shortcomings of the Rudd government it is important that we remember the miserable despicable incompetent Howard for what it was, and let's also not forget who it was was who helped keep these people in power for so long, namely the Murdoch newsmedia, who now seem to be engaged in attempt to prepare public opinion for the return of a Liberal government.

No-one who ever served in that government (with the possible exception of one minister who fixed Australia's defamation laws so that they can no longer be used as they once were to stifle free speech) must ever be allowed near the levers of power again.

If Rudd does not prove equal to the task before him, let's move on to better alternatives and not allow ourselves to be conned into voting the Liberals back in again.

dear miner
how conveniant that 2004/5 figures are available
but not 2007/8 considering shortly it will be 2008/9

recall 06?
there was 36 billion of tax cuts then alone [mostly for the high earners [how ever you decide to lable them ,there suppression [unavailability [after years is revealing in itself]
]
same 07 [i cant be bothered to even try look up the egsact number

but howard promised late 20o7 36 billion

[thankfully cut to 30 billion by labour ,and alp changing the auto bias howard showed into low income earners tax cuts , yet tax cuts non the less]

thing is gst is on the rich and poor alike [it wasnt the cure all but did manage to get the cash back to the rich][taken from the poor.

but i note you couldnt respond to the other many points i made about income tax /fee burdon shift from the elites [and their trust funds][from death duties , nor the wholesale state and fed privatisationS, that the govt's now have locked up govt trust funds [noting qld's lost 1 and a half billion because of the bank mortgauge fiasco]

how much else has disappeared?[then how much disappeared from our compulsory super [used to prop up falling stock market returns every pay day?

[As for public servants using flexi time to give partial responses destracting away from the other issues [that will thus be distracted from rightfully serving the PEOPLE ]

its time to stop complaining and wake up to your civic duties ,lest we realise who 'pub-lic serve-ants' are really serving , but yeah we dont have the figures for that [YET]

Respond to all my previous points [dont just pick on one obsolete referance]
cheers eh

Agreed plerdsus. What you call Tampa Day was indeed one of the most significant milestones in Australia’s political history. Bringing the rapidly escalating onshore asylum-seeker movement to a rapid end was just about the only significant good thing that Howard ever did. And he did it in such as way as allow all those caught up in it to have their claims assessed, instead of just rejecting them outright… or accepting them all straight-up, which would have served to encourage the continuation of large-scale asylum-seeking.

I shudder to think about the magnitude of that issue if Beazley had been PM at the time. It would probably have been at least ten times worse.

The fifth vital thing that Australia needs to remain one of the best places to live is the development of a genuine sustainability ethic within all levels of government. Your other four points will not be sufficient if we continue on the mad future-destroying path that Rudd has inherited from Howard, and actually accelerated!

“There should be no doubt: the Howard government was vicious, complacent, smug, and in many respects, simply incompetent.”

Spoken with the arrogantly vicious, complacent, smugness of a third rate lawyer, cosily esconced in academia.

I guess if he were to, by some remote act of electoral lunacy, ever hold political power, we would all suffer the consequences of his incompetence too.

The great thing with Howard & Co is they respected the individuals who elected them sufficiently to not interfere in their individual lives, beyond the minimum.

The danger we now face is the twisted political philosophy of people who actually think they know better than the people who elected them.

Pull the other one David.Why don't you address all the Labor State Govt debacles?They are responsible for infrastructure,health etc.They squandered it on bureaucrats,incompetence and inefficiency.

Remember the $90 billion debt that Keating Labor left in 1995.Now what Govt had to clean up the mess?

A very good article, David; difficult to find anything with which to disagree.

Alan Ramsey, writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on the Monday after the Liberals' electoral annihilation in 2007, described the Howard government thus:

" ... the nastiest, meanest, most miserable, self-absorbed Commonwealth government to blight Australia in living memory"

http://tinyurl.com/2ltu5e

Again, difficult to dispute that summation.

What 'did' it for me was WorkChoices. Before the 2004 election, Howard did not mention a word about WorkChoices. Then as soon as practically possible AFTER the election, he set about imposing his own Industrial Revolution, with the most draconian IR laws in 100 years, among the most radical in the Western world.

This IR extremist, Howard, never had a 'real' job in his life, or employed anyone in private enterprise. Yet he sought to impose his ideological will on millions of unsuspecting, innocent employees just because ... well, just because he could.

Giving us no "choice" in WorkChoices makes Howard the IR Coward.

I have no doubt whatsoever that if the Liberals had gotten away with it (been re-elected, that is), they would have gone much much further down the same road.

I also have no doubt that radical IR 'reform' remains squarely centrepiece to the Liberals' agenda even now. Though they will never tell you this, in the same way they never told us about WorkChoices before its introduction.

And that is what makes me an ex_liberal_voter. I am determined not to leave a country for my children with Third World employment pay and conditions.

All the Liberals' other assaults while in government - on our democracy, our way of life, our economy, our international reputation - these all contribute to my anger, and my resolve to never again vote for that miserable party.

*Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world*

It seems to me, this is more about how you crunch the numbers.
Some people with an interest, mind be wanting to send average
Aussies on a guilt trip, a bit like the Christians do, when they
claim that innocent babies were born with sin etc.

Yes Australia mines coal, for others to run their power stations.
Yes Australia exports gas, so that others have energy. Yes
Australia smelts aluminium, as it makes more sense to do it near
where the coal is, rather then export the lot to China.

We could simply move those smelters to China. Our figures would
look alot better, the guilt ridden might feel better, but it
would achieve exactly nothing.

Last time I checked, in much of Europe and much of America,
households consume large amounts of gas and oil to stay warm for
months at a time. I could be wrong, but I don't know of too many
Aussie households with central heating.

In fact the house in which I once spent some time in central Europe,
burnt as much diesel heating oil per year, as I consume here per
year, for vehicles etc to run a farm, as well as personal use.

So if somebody would please explain why Aussies should go on this
guilt trip, as suggested by the author, I would like to know.

Fiddle with the numbers all you like, but at least be honest about
it.

Ex-liberal-Voter.It is a nobel notion not to have your children living on 3rd world wages,but will Labor be any different?

I see it already in the building industry whereby Chinese tradesmen are undercutting everyone. Since they have poor language and education price becomes the critical factor.At least the Italian immigrants had a price with a floor.

Just the other day a powder coating company told how his Chinese opposition quoted a price for a rate equal to his material costs.Sounds impossible,but I hear this story too often.There must be also an illegal immigrant component to these scenarios.

Now kevin Rudd wants to bring many more of these immigrants who ultimately drive wages lower.The big Corps donate to both the major parties.Ex CEOs make up most of the RBA board and now they have virtual autonomy in regards interest rates.

It won't matter which party you vote for,since the slow war of attrition will win.Perhaps it's time to emigrate and leave it all to the Chinese.

Arjay,

I agree with you in what you wrote in your last post, if little else.

The prospect of large numbers of immigrants being used to reduce our wages is a scary prospect. This is the openly stated rationale behind the call to massively increase immigration. When Murdoch's Australian newspaper published an article ("Bring in the Chinese" at http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23693124-7583,00.html on 14 May) arguing that we should be prepared to have Chinese guest workers employed by Chinese companies that are to be given contracts to build the infrastructure necessary to increase our exports of raw materials to China, I responded by writng the article "The Australian proposes apartheid 'solution' to Australia's labour shortage 'crisis'" at http://candobetter.org/node/507

I also worry greatly about the Australia China free trade agreement which I assume is now under agreement. I suspect it will be even more damaging to Australian National Sovereignty than was the AUSFTA.

---

Cartman wrote, "Fiddle with the numbers all you like, but at least be honest about it."

As one who has had the misfortune of having engaged with Cartman elsewhere, I hardly see him as someone fit to give others lectures about honesty.

Cartman wrote, "Some people with an interest, mind (might(?)) be wanting to send average Aussies on a guilt trip."

Cartman has shown that he is utterly incapable of feeling guilt or, indeed, any concern whatsoever, over the terrible environmental damage that is being wrought today in order to satiate the selfish uncaring greed of people like himself.

Ludwig,

I agree with you on the need to devise a way we can live sustainably through the next few troubled decades. Unfortunately there are two problems in the way of doing this.

Firstly, the small matter of our enormous foreign debt. If we fail to maintain a satisfactory rate of growth of exports (in the opinion of our creditors), we may have our debt called in, with rather catastrophic results. In addition, we have a very export/import oriented economy (i.e. we can't eat the bauxite we mine), and so would have difficulty surviving on our own produce.

Secondly, with the rate of productivity growth due to technological change being so high, any decline in economic growth would immediately translate into higher unemployment figures. Coupled with high interest rates and high transport costs, this would produce a degree of social distress that would be fatal to any government.

If Prime Minister Scullin (sorry, Rudd) is to survive he will need more than just the platitudes and spin he has come up with so far.

It may already be too late. Twenty years ago forecasters postulated an earthquake in Tokyo that would trigger a major world depression. Only time will tell if the recent quake in China will translate this forecast into reality.

Yabby “*Australia has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in the developed world*

It seems to me, this is more about how you crunch the numbers.”

Agree with all your post and would only add

It might also change if we adopted Nuclear power as the primary source for electricity generation, like, say the French.

Ultimately all the waffle about denigrating the performance of the liberal government is just that, the political waffle of the malcontents.

The next three years will be interesting. Somehow I think we are going to experience a significant economic downturn which will force people to reflect:

All this socialist rubbish just produces sentimental rhetoric and no results; maybe the Liberals had it right and the three years of Krudd have been the great leap backward.

I see another “recession we had to have” on the horizon.

It reminds me of Lenin’s saying

“The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”

Australia is wealthy enough to be called a nation of the bourgeoisie

Of course Lenin also said

“ There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.”

The Me-Too political manifesto of Krudd and Co was one of the most expedient I have ever seen.
Certainly the since discovered conduct of Evans, Kernow, Richardson and Bob Collins suggest a scoundrel or two were available for use. I wonder what we will come to find out about the current bunch of scoundrels?

Obviously, David is still in the gloating stage after the last election. The Howard government was by no means outstanding but was extraordinary good at managing the economy and brought about some much needed reforms. Waterfront reforms; GST.

On the question of CO2 emissions the Howard government dragged its feet rather than show leadership. Not signing the Kyoto protocol was symbolic but immaterial as it was a flawed document aimed at gaining a trade advantage for the EU rather than any real attempt to cut emissions. Nevertheless, the previous government did fund programs to reduce carbon emissions.

So far the Rudd government has removed the $8000 rebate to install solar electricty for households earning more than $100,000pa, is introducing Fuel Watch that is likely to drive independant retailer out of the market, has scrapped the Commercial Ready grant for start up companies, and has not budgeted for any research money for renewable energy for upcoming financial year.

By your own standards David, don't expect to inhaling fresh air soon

I would suggest to Concupiscence that David Ritter's article shows conclusively that the Howard Government was grossly economically incompetent. If he wishes to maintain, to the contrary, that the Howard Government "was extraordinary good at managing the economy", then he should explain what facts in the article he disputes.

Personally I don't feel that we have to gloat about over last years' election victory. For me, it was as if a bunch of delinquents who had gate-crashed a party had finally been evicted in the early hours of the morning.

My apologies. I omitted the word 'much' from the first sentence of the last paragraph. The last paragraph should have read:

"Personally I don't feel that we have much to gloat about over last years' election victory. For me, it was as if a bunch of delinquents, who had gate-crashed a party, had finally been evicted in the early hours of the morning."

Plerdsus, I have never been able to get a feeling for just what our foreign debt really means. But it is pretty damn extraordinary and damning of Howard and Costello that with a decade of resources boom behind us, and continuing, that we should still have an enormous foreign debt....if it was truly significant to our economy and future.

I’d like to solicit views from posters on this thread as to just what it really means and if it can indeed prevent us from pulling back on our rate of exploitation of primary resources and developing a paradigm of sustainability even if we were to somehow get a government that was willing to go down that path.

I’m not so sure that your second point is true, if a pull-back on economic growth went hand in hand with a large reduction in immigration.

Ludwig when howard became Prime Minister in 1996 then was a large national debt that had been run up by governments to renew and develop infrastrucure. While the Liberals were in power government generated foreign debt reduced to about 0, or so the Liberals told us.

In the meantime private debt increased until now it is twice or GDP or the interest on the foreign debt is twice our GDP and growing.
Private foriegn debt is used to buy cars, consumer goods but more importantly to raise my for takeover deals, fund public private partnerships.

Yes its quite easy to see why the Liberal Party is condemned for destroying our financial sustainability and stability

John Howard gave us Work Choices yet, during the year long pre-election campaign run by the union movement prior to the November 2007 federal election, reports of workers being abused by Work Choices were almost totally absent. Six months after Rudd's election win, he's abusing his staff and demanding they work harder.
John Howard refused to sign the Kyoto agreement, knowing that it was largely irrelevant in the fight against climate change. Six months after Rudd's election, Wayne Swan's first budget was not just neutral in the fight against CO2 emissions, it was actively anti-environmental.
John Howard sent troops to Iraq, as well as to the Solomon Islands, Afghanistan and East Timor. Six months later, Rudd's ability to turn our foreign policy around is being put into effect by removing 600 troops from Iraq, but still leaving over 1000. Wow, that's a policy u-turn if I ever saw one!
The more the world changes, the more it stays the same. David Ritter's diatribe is incredibly short on detail but long on the sort of shallow, emotional criticisms that left wing apologists like David Marr summarised in an edition of Quarterly Essay last year. Ritter's OLO contribution would have been welcomed by those on the political left at any time prior to the election but now, 6 months on, we're seeing the emperor's new cloths and the feeling that the Australian population has been conned is just starting to bite.
Yours is a lazy, biased and poorly argued article, Mr Ritter. It feeds off every unsubstantiated, emotional argument that has appeared in the popular media over the last 18 months. As a lawyer, your trained mind should be better able to raise an issue, provide the facts to support or oppose it and then come to a rational conclusion about that issue. By any measure, your article fails miserably to tell us anything new except your narrow and uninformed view of the world.

Yes Billie, Howard told us at every opportunity about his government’s (apparent) complete elimination of the debt that they had inherited from Keating.

But the other side of the debt saga is a much more ethereal beast. The US has enormous foreign debt, but seems immune to any concerns of it being called in.

I’m completely at a loss as to what to make of it, to the extent that I don’t know whether Plerdsus is making a valid and very important point or whether it is a complete furphy, promulgated by big business and pro-growth governments in order to keep growth rates high...or somewhere in between.

Even if it is a very real concern, how does it compare with the imperative to develop a sustainable society and the consequences of not doing so, or the potential for other huge impacts, such as peak oil, climate change or a major earthquake in Japan or a major Chinese city?