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.