The policy of tarrif reduction was put in train in the Hawke /Keating era.Howard's Govt just maintained that policy.I don't agree with it.There are no level playing fields and it won't be long before our car industry goes too.We have gone for agressive tarrif reductions which no other developed countries have dared embark.

You cannot just blame everything on John Howard.If the Labor Party had their act together and presented real competition with credible policies,then the Howard Govt would have performed a lot better.

When you play a weak team too often,you end up playing like them.

I agree that unilateral tariff reductions are utter stupidity. Both sides are indeed culpable. Nevertheless, Labor actually has an industry policy, as opposed to the "hands off" approach adopted by the Coalition. Costello may ridicule the mere notion of an industry policy, but the fact is that growth in manufactured exports has slowed from 15 per cent a year under Labor to 5 per cent under the Coalition.

According to Tim Colebatch at The Age:

"In 1994, the then Bureau of Industry Economics (later abolished by the Howard Government) published a forward look to 2005-06. It predicted that by then, exports would have grown 130 per cent in 14 years, cutting the deficit on manufacturing trade deficit to 4 per cent of GDP. It forecast a growth of 90,000 jobs, manufacturing growing roughly as fast as the rest of the economy, and the volume of sales up more than 50 per cent.

It was possible to think like that in 1994 because manufactured exports were in the middle of a decade of rapid growth. Hard to believe now, but Australia's manufactured exports between 1986 and 1997 were growing as fast as those of the Asian tigers, growing in volume by almost 15 per cent a year. Projecting that growth forward, the bureau saw Australia starting to become a significant global exporter of computers and telecom equipment, pharmaceuticals, aircraft parts, and of course, processed foods."

What happened? The Coalition.