Otokonoko,

You say "they made statements that they KNEW were incorrect, but made them anyway. Surely there is some sort of law against this?"

Indeed there should be but I bet a great proportion of the electorate new they were lying but are so numbed by these continually lying politicians that they voted for them anyhow.

As is the case with big business, politicians of the mainstream have no ethics and are no longer expected to have them. We, the voter, by continually voting for the status qou send a message to the mob that, yes, basically it's okay to lie.

Scott, I generally agree with you, but it's hard to classify the fuel subsidy as a distortion, given that petrol is taxed much more heavily than most products through the fuel excise, and that competitors have lower tax (gas) or are heavily subsidised (ethanol). With no distortions, petrol would be cheaper than it is.

Leaving the GFC aside, the State government has weakened the economy and its budget over several years: it has wasted the massive GST revenue and mining royalties, using them to increase "public service" numbers and wages faster than those in the wealth-generating private sector, with no improvement in services; and has drained revenue from government-owned enterprises while allowing infrastructure to be run down. The infrastructure projects it has undertaken have been knee-kerk and ill-directed (desalination, water grid).

Of course Anna & co should, and probably did, know the poor state of the budget pre-election. However, she showed little grasp as Treasurer, and the risk-averse Treasury has always been reluctant to bring bad news, there may well have been an unsustainable gloss put on their briefs.

Of course, the LNP made the ALP's continued nonsense possible by not choosing a strongly-performing Liberal such as Mal Brough as leader and by squeezing the ex-Libs out of the election process when they could only win through reclainming Liberal-inclined seats in and around Brisbane.