Labour incurred a debt fighting off the GFC
SteeleRedux,
What an absolute crock. Deep, tainted, unbelievable rubbish.
Labor used up all the money Costello put aside for our future ! We're only just now starting to pick up again because the sane number of voters at the last two elections.
It doesn't matter how much you Lefties jump up & down enraged by feigned indignation, Labor can't manage !

Lets take a look at Liberal
economic supremacy.

Those who argue for this being true refer back to
the Howard years.

They seem to overlook a few facts.
Going back to those years - conditions were perfect.
It was pre-global financial crisis and there was a
mining boom. Frankly, you'd have to be totally
incompetent not to run a good economy back then.

Many commentators have argued that Howard/Costello
were dismal economic managers - it was just that
the economy was that robust when they were in power
(for reasons outside their doing) that it concealed
their poor economic decisions.

They squandered good economic conditions instead of
investing in needed infrastructure and Australia's
long-term future.

They preferred using the cash to give
handouts to middle-class and upper-class voters to
win elections, and we are paying for it today.

Tied to their social values was their guiding economic
philosophy which was (and still is)
- allow Big Business to do
whatever they like and their fortunes will "trickle
down."

In the 1980s and 1990s that philosophy was untested.
It has now been tested. It doesn't work.
All that privatisation and deregulation led to money
being sucked up by the rich and never trickling down.

It turns out that the rich would rather put that money
off into offshore tax havens. Use that deregulation
to ship jobs overseas, and slash wages and benefits
for those that remain here, and further use their
growing money and power, to lobby government to implement
more trickle down policies to grow even more money
and power.

The best treasurers they could find were Costello, then
Joe Hockey, then Scott Morrison. It's hard to argue
you're strong economic managers if that's the best
management that you can muster.

Thus far in the past 50 years Labor have not yet managed the economy better than the Conservatives. All they have succeeded in was ruining social cohesion & make Australian manufacturing unaffordable. That is not managing, that's mismanaging !
They ruined Education as well.

Foxy,

The only commentators that thought Peter Costello did a poor job were left whingers with little to no understanding of economics. During this period the real incomes of the lowest 25% of the population increased by more than any equivalent period in Aus history.

The problem that the government had was that the economy was overheated with unemployment at nearly 4% and needed to be slowed, and the absolute worst thing that they could do was embark on a state spending spree for infrastructure that would have boosted inflation to double digits which the pinhead critics don't have the IQ to understand. What they did was to take some of heat out by running back to back surpluses to pay off Labor's debt and build up the future fund.

The record of Labor is somewhat more dismal. While the way to stave off a recession is to inject money into the economy, which Labor did, Labor's expenditure was a litany of cock ups.

The $9bn cash splash went almost entirely on imported white goods and boosted department stores for few months.

The school halls debacle build mostly unneeded buildings that generally only started long after the need for spending receeded.

The pink batts disaster was a good idea that was so poorly implemented that 4 people died and many houses burnt down.

Not to mention the promised 4 surpluses that were all missed by 10s of $bns

IF any truth existed in the anti Labor rant, they can not be trusted with the economy existed
I would be the first to say so
Doubt that? read my post history
I DEMAND nothing less than constant improvement from my party
And can not find a single conservative here who loves his party enough to do the same of his/hers
Rudd kept us from recession Morrison will not

Shadow Minister,

Your track record for facts is a poor one.

I no longer take anything you say seriously.