Until Costello and his ilk on the right accept some responsibility for the current financial crisis, they will remain irrelevant in developing any sort of solution.

However hard Costello tries to claim credit for Australia's relatively strong position, his is still unable to distance himself from the extreme philosophical position of minimal regulation and laissez faire economics. After all, Costello was one of the strongest proponents of this within the former Government, and nothing he has said since the crisis fell has indicated any change in his position.

Perhaps if he were to contrast the steps he took to strengthen regulation of the Australian financial industry with mistakes of overt deregulation made elsewhere in the world, and to put this in a clear philosophical context, he may get some traction. Until then, however, he appears to be a smug ideologue who was lucky to be treasurer in a time of economic plenty due mostly to booming asset prices, excessive consumer debt and the commodities boom.

I find it amazing that anybody could blame Costello for the GFC. Nobody ever says what he should have done differently. People waffle on about not enough regulation, but what exactly do they mean? No Australian banks have collapsed, even Macquarie is well capitalised.

Australia's main problem is too much spending and not enough saving. The banks have to borrow overseas and the credit squeeze is making it impossible for many businesses to get a bank loan. The squeeze is causing a big rise in unemployment.

Kevin Rudd has encouraged consumer spending but ignored business finance. His policies have greatly increased unemployment and lowered our standard of living.

Wattle. No Australian banks have collapsed because the average taxpayer is propping them up.
Profits are given to shareholders and directors in the good times, and the public props them up so the profits keep flowing in the current crisis.
Wealth cannot be wished into existence. When the banks make billions and the net economy isn't expanding this caused net wealth to be reduced elsewhere.
Under Howard/Costello the taxpayer funded non-viable insurance, welfare to the wealthy, restricted funding for public hospitals, schools, roads while giving millions in aid to his family.
Under Howard/Costello the rich got quite a bit richer, and many middle class were made poor. And the poor...well what have *they* done for the economy?
What is *really* bad about their performance is the sure knowledge that if you pump up markets, they will crash. Call me cynical but I reckon they deliberately pumped the economy in order to cash out and hand over an unstable system to the opposition when the inevitable cyclic electoral flip-flop occurred.
I almost wished the Libs had won the last election to see how they would shirk blame for such irresponsible policies.

Ozandy, the only part of your post I agree with is the bit about wealth cannot be wished into existence.

The big four banks contribute about $7 billion in Federal taxes each year. Rudd has offered a guarantee on overseas borrowing but the banks pay for this and the alternative is much higher interest rates.

In Australia, the rich certainly got richer under Howard but so did the poor although they didn't do as well as the rich. This is in contrast to the US where the median wage actually fell while the rich got richer. Howard used Family Tax benefits as a way of transferring wealth to lower income families. The wealth transfer is now in doubt because company profits have crashed.

The market was pumped partly by government but primarily by very low interest rates on money borrowed overseas. That money has now dried up.

I have this vision of the Australian population at the moment just sitting back enjoying giving M Turnbull a few slaps. But what they are really waiting for is P Costello to stick his head back up then Whack Punch him in the face.

The smug smirker was never well like and even less so after his cowardly efforts under Howard. People hated Keating but he got a lot of respect for his knifing of B Hawke. He even got voted in after it.

If Costello has good advice he will stay around just long enough to see off Turdbull and then retire to obscurity without risking an even worse drubbing from the Aussie public than rich malcolm is getting at the moment.

Why do Liberals do this to each other all the time?

I seriously doubt Costello will make any move , why would he crucify himself for a lost cause ? How could he win the affection of the voters who think someone else will pay Rudd's fanciful debts .

Rudd's borrowing means someone else will own our resources .

Our new Schools and the Rudd Internet to everywhere will be paid for by Chinese money and the Chinese will be reimbursed by our children's children .

Costello wouldn't want to be less popular than Adolph Hitler like he would be if he adjusted up the GST to 35% to get the Chinese Tiger off our backs !