The question should be asked "are we better off after 11 years of Costello or not"

- Inflation down
- Interest rates down
- Unemployment down
- Gov debt turned to surplus
- per capita income nearly doubled in real terms

After a year of labor how do we fare against the same measures? "are we better off?" I'm not.

The economy was so strong that we could afford the expense of a feel good labor gov, but not for long. It looks like they intend to rack up as debt in 2 years as it took them a decade to do previously.

How long before we are all suffering from the Swann flu?

Divergence, interesting post. I remind you that a great deal of
the meat which we produce, is exported to the third world. Should
they cough up more, so that meatworkers earn 80K$ instead of
50k$?

As to your Canadian URl, I have serious problems with it and the
way things are evaluated. Yes we've had a number of species
extinctions in Australia, it was Europeans who introduced rabbits,
foxes and cats after all. That has little to do with present
environmental situations.

Judging agriculture by the amount of organic farming is a pretty
poor way to judge an industry. Things like no till farming in
Australia, are in fact going ahead in leaps and bounds, far less
damaging to the environment then organic farming.

Fishing sustainability was another amusing one. In WA, which makes
up a big chunk of our coast, huge efforts are put in, to make sure
that stocks are not overfished. The Europeans which your URL
quotes, found another solution. They simply go to Africa etc and steal
their fish. Hardly sustainable.

So your source might be a little questionable and certainly biased.

Yabby,

Poor Third World people eat very little meat. I suspect that most of what we sell goes to the middle and upper classes. We just have to disagree on whether to put the welfare of meatworkers ahead of export earnings. Personally, I would prefer to live in an Australia that had the relative equality and social cohesion of Finland rather than having a higher GNP in a country that looks more like Brazil. In any case, meat was quite affordable in the US when meatworkers were earning those high wages, judging by how much was consumed.

On the Canadian URL, there are always going to be arguments about choice of indicators. I agree with you about the organic farming. Australia actually ranked quite highly, a B, for threatened species, which can't be based on what the early settlers did. The fisheries indicator was also a B until after 2000, when it dropped to a D. Management may well be better in WA than elsewhere. The Marine Trophic Index measures change in marine productivity, which is quite reasonable, although, as you say, it doesn't capture the disgraceful behaviour of the EU in Africa.

Shadow Minister

"are we better off after 11 years of Costello or not"?

He and Howard entrenched the continuous expansion economic model for another ~twelve years, when it was patently obvious by the mid 90s that it had to be progressively wound back. They palmed the transition off of continuous rapid expansionism and onto a dynamic steady-state economy, stable population and an overall paradigm of sustainability to the next government, which was grossly irresponsible.

Costello committed the taxpayer to supporting an artificially boosted birthrate, along with a ridiculously high immigration rate, which was precisely the opposite of what we needed.

He told an incredible blatant porky to the Australian people; that births weren’t keeping up with deaths, and repeated it many times.

Would we have been better off if we’d dumped the Howard government after its first term? Probably not. Labor is no better. But that doesn’t excuse Costello from not only going along with the absurdity of rapid continuous expansionism but of going out of his way to boost it.

*I suspect that most of what we sell goes to the middle and upper classes.*

That depends on what it is, little is wasted. Tripe, hearts, livers,
tongues, kidneys, cheap mutton cuts etc, all is sold largely to
the third world.

*Personally, I would prefer to live in an Australia that had the relative equality and social cohesion of Finland *

What meatworkers earn here, would still be considered a good wage
in Finland in seems. Globally, we are simply a very high wage
country. Many Aussies have had it so good, they don't want so
called crappy jobs.

http://www.stat.fi/tup/suoluk/suoluk_palkat_en.html

*Management may well be better in WA than elsewhere*

Well its is, because its all within one State. Over East,
four states seemingly keep squabbling between themselves about
whose fish are really whose. There is also a lower population.
Our main problem is overseas trawlers out to sea, taking the lot.

Ludwig,

I cannot find the particular quote you are referring to, but I can see many quotes on the changing demographics and the consequences to the economy.

These comments are echoed by the national statistics.