Chris,
I understand your reasoning but am uncomfortable with a number of underlying assumptions to your piece.

1. That a fair/accurate assessment of Howard’s performance is by comparing figures with OECD.
2. That Countries should be corparatised and Governments merely executive managers.
3. They ignore world wide philosophical swings in economical reasoning.
4. They ignore unique foreign policy issues.
5. Differences in the structural basis of economies

OECD figures show outcomes not specific circumstances that created them. A booming mining sector (a comparatively low employment sector) can cover a multitude of sins. Especially when it comes to high technologies sectors of many of the European countries.

There are scales of economy that make services delivery cheaper in many of those same compact countries this would in effect mean that their 10% of GDP would go further than our 10% GDP. The comparison is moot if you’re in a rural centre and need urgent specialist medical care. Simply put the structural differences in these economies make comparisons and a measure of government competence dubious.

The concern is that good business is all about profit, this financial year and benefits management and a minority (shareholders). Conversely Governments’ focus should be longer, more strategic and whole population oriented.

Business will always go where production costs are cheapest in a developed country the answer must be in Technological advancement. We can’t compete with 3rd world labour costs. Attracting Sunrise as opposed to life support for Sunset industries. In the latter the ultimate winner is the opportunistic businesses not the people.
Foreign policy has long term effects including economically on the country therefore must be part of the competence equation.
OECD numbers in this perspective are so generalized/qualified that they are little more than feel good comparisons. Short term measurement in this situation isn’t a realistic assessment of the long-term health of an economy.

Party politics doesn’t necessarily mean the most competent come to power.

To me Howard Government was 3rd rate. I doubt that Rudd will ultimately be any more than a style change.

No offence intended but Politics and Science don’t sit comfortably together. Science deals with laws and hard facts (Predictability, Measurability, Testability and Provability) but Politics is more about Perception than Substance. Together as discipline they are equivalent to that of History subject to bias and constantly changing orthodoxy. Therefore assessment by comparisons as a methodology fails most of the requirements for objectivity.

Less than 55% in any test is hardly a ringing endorsement (‘D’ grade result) a mediocre result. Would you be happy to submit to surgery from a mediocre surgeon? How about one who gained 36% pass (Liberals vote level)? Would we even let him practice? Yet we still trusted our collective lives to a government with such a result.

Why else have we constantly put a 3rd party to play monitor? Hence two dubious philosophies battle it out by casting the other side as MORE of a risk than them.(lesser of two evils). In effect the PEOPLE are telling us that they aren’t happy with either side. Even the voters WANT more.

To now offer comparisons with other country’s vagaries is subjective at best irrelevant at worst. visa vie the extraordinary claims of some of the commentors. "anyone who breathes and wants work could get it" comes to mind.(what would we do without runner to add colour?)

In reality Chris I think it would be more productive for Political Scientists to help the public to focus on.
• Rectification of the errors
• Intelligible nation planning
• Generally look forward rather than backwards.

The jury has voted on the Conservative regime it was found wanting.
Both parties need to ditch platforms built of century(s) old wood and prejudices/self interests and consult to build new alternative. I don’t mean Rudd’s show piece of ‘eminent (?) invitees’.

History shows that 10/20 years from now many of the reasoning, principles and comparisons will be derided as a ‘manifestation of the era’

1. I can not forget Howard's lies for Iraq, he did not care at all for international organizations and law or for the Australian public opinion. He was from the most fanatic supporters of Bush's war in Iraq.

2. I can not forget his lies against migrants on Tampa. He attacked innocent migrants to win votes!

3. He did nothing to protect our environment, although Australians are number one polluters,( per person) in the world. He did not care at all! He and Bush was the only one from developed countries who did not signed the Kyoto protocol.

4. He was not very friendly with Aborigines and it was impossible for him to apologizes to Aborigines.

5. His attacks against labor's rights and against the Australian Union movement was out from any comparison, if he could convert us (labors) to slaves you could do it. I can not understand his hate against the labors.

6. He was fanatic monarchist! he did everything to block Australian majority to demolish the Monarchy in the last referendum.

Big corporations, extreme nationalists and monarchists lost Howard's protection!

As you understand I never voted Liberals and I never could vote a party which have a leader like Howard!

Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide

Antonio Symeonakis

1. I hope you did not vote for Kevin Rudd either, he voted for the iraq war too. but unlike Howard, he changed his mind.

2. Australian now accept more migrant than at any time in the previous Labor Government

3. US is no 1 polluter in the world and Kevin Rudd's environment policy is a copy of the coalition policy

4. I guess we should all sit around and do nothing, like the Labor NT government on aborigines child abuse.

5. If you are talking about (Labour rights), why do you think kevin Rudd is not scrapping work choice - IT PRODUCES JOBS, it stops inflation and stop us from interest rate of 15% like the last Labor government. One thing people do not understand is that if everyone in the economy gets a 15% wage rise, all it means is that inflation goes up 15% and everyone who has a mortgage is worse off.

6. Howard allow the republic convention to choose their republic model and then he allow a referendum on the replubic. Australia rejected it. I guess you wanted him to not allow a referendum to prove your point?

Please get your facts right before posting rubbish

I’m not one of those with a rosy view of Howard’s economic performance.

Remember the sale of most of our gold reserves at bargain prices and the billion-or-so lost on currency swaps? The ongoing privatisation of Public assets has resulted in a significant percentage of our GDP now leaving the country as dividends to overseas owners.

The deliberate failure to fund CSS pensions (to keep the bottom line looking good) resulted in having to sell Telstra to pay for it.

Cutting of capital gains tax led to too much money pouring into the real estate market and driving up the cost of existing housing instead of creating the additional housing that was needed in years to come (ie now).

Telling everybody they are somehow individually wealthier than they really were, fed the debt industry.

Then, when personal debt levels were at an all-time high, along came Workchoices and down went personal income levels for many vulnerable workers.

Many also came to realise that about 10% of all the after-tax cash they had in their wallets/purses and of all their accumulated savings was actually already earmarked as GST, so not only were they getting deeper into debt, their ability to repay was also eroding.

At the end of his reign, we were left with a deskilled country, stripped of public assets with reduced manufacturing capacity and dependent on demand for resources plus an ever increasing middle-class welfare tax burden.

Of course, some people did very well indeed but despite all the statistics and interpretations, I think the election results spoke for themselves.

It probably doesn't matter what Rudd does. For many, the fact that he's not Howard is good enough for the time being.

Chris Lewis “I am also one of those who advocate some sort of taxation to aid renewable energy, so you would probably disagree with me on that issue.”

I would, same way I disagree with taxpayers continually being duded over funds for (say) the motor industry, which the once much lauded “Button Plan” was supposed to fix. Today we see the motor makers once again begging at the public purse.

Maybe if the taxes spent on subsidizing cars in Australia was left in the tax payers pocket, we would be able to afford the vehicle of our choice, instead of the one favoured and cherry-picked by government.

With all due respect for your view, I fear ‘renewable energy aid’ is no different to ‘motor vehicle aid’. It deprives the individual of choice through excessive taxation and favours deals engineered by bureaucrats behind closed doors.

I guess too, if we were to measure our ‘carbon footprint’ against say, the French, the environmental question should be how much does ‘carbon’ offset ‘nuclear waste’ with its half live of centuries?

Seneca “Point to one major Howard initiative to protect Australia for future generations.”

Examples:.

It was the liberals who instigated the “higher education endowment fund” with some of the surpluses of their fiscal responsibility, after funding the previous unfunded civil servants superannuation fund. Actions which directly go to the benefit of future Australians.

It was the Liberals who managed their role as regulator to bring the economy back from the brink of Hawke and Keating’s incompetence.

http://www.liberal.org.au/about/ach.php
go read it for yourself

I further recall it was the Victorian Labor State government who blocked the liberal initiative on the Murray Darling plans, jeopardizing the rivers system for now and the future.

Wobbles “Cutting of capital gains tax”

Actually what happened was the rate was cut and the index allowance abolished. All it did was make a complex system simpler

but don’t let the truth get in the way of your bias.