Howard’s legacy
Howard govt - - Posted on December, 17 at 8:49 pm by Ken L
The insufferable Smirking Pete - the man who will go to his grave with curvature of the spine caused by the chip he’s been carrying on his shoulder since John Howard made one of his better decisions and declined to hand over the prime ministership to an immature bag of wind - gloated on Lateline shortly after the election, Mr Speaker, about what an awesome legacy he’d left the incoming government, Mr Speaker:
Let me make this point, Virginia, when you have a change of government, by this stage shouldn’t you have had the announcement shock horror, Budget secretly in deficit, books cooked?
You know what’s amazed me? Just the quietness of this week. There’s been no revelations about the Budget.
Here you have a group of people who have inherited a beautifully balanced Budget, no debt, $9 billion of interest savings, 2.2 million more people in work, a GST which is in place, they inherited our policy which they should enact now, which will make the tax system competitive.
What a complacent stupid man. His main cause for smug self-congratulation is that he hadn’t cooked the books. Well I guess for someone who’s come from the Melbourne corporate world, that is something of a novelty.
Let’s look at the first evidence emerging of the state of the nation that Costello and Howard and the rest of the bumbling amateurs left for Kevin Rudd’s government to wrestle with.
Firstly, in foreign affairs, it took about a week for the new team to demonstrate that Howard and Downer were despised by the international community as a pair of Bush arse-lickers. The spontaneous applause that greeted Australia’s Bali commitment to Kyoto wasn’t some carefully crafted piece of spin. It was a heartfelt recognition that we had at last rejoined the global collective, with all its many faults.
Secondly, in defence, it’s suddenly apparent that the Afghanistan exercise is a shambles. Now I wonder why the new leader of the opposition failed to tell us that when he was the responsible minister. Perhaps he didn’t want to worry us:
“The previous government would have us believe that good progress is being made in Afghanistan. The reality is quite a different one,” Fitzgibbon told The Australian after returning from the meeting in Britain.
“We are winning the battles and not the war, in my view. We have been very successful in clearing areas of the Taliban but it’s having no real strategic effect,” he said.
Yes. Well I seem to recall a few bloggers writing exactly the same thing during 2007 and being reviled as terrorist-lovers for their pains. Perhaps now a more rational reflectivity might slowly come to inform our analysis of our military adventurism, replacing the puerile ‘once more unto the breach’ ranting that characterised Howard’s mob.
And what of Teh Economy, the jewel in the Liberal crown, the field in which Howard and Costello awarded themselves lifelong achievement awards about once every four days? Well it seems the Howard Government’s management of such bits of Teh Economy as they hadn’t outsourced to somebody else was as incompetent as their handling of everything else:
And yes, there - this as an incoming government has a rich vein of potential savings before it than any other because of the sheer size of spending decisions out of Canberra in recent years. They’ve been almost Whitlam-esque, but I don’t pretend that it’s easy.
Two main themes in the spending of recent years: one has been a big increase in, well, a lot of it’s middle class welfare, money in, money out; and also a big increase in the spend on security. I think the incoming government can get better value for money for tax payers on both fronts.
‘Whitlam-esque’. Can we go with that tag for Howard and his smartarse pussy offsider who cut and ran as soon as the going got tough and his party actually needed him? It might be a reasonable comparison from the point of view of an economist but Whitlam had vision, and ideals, and a stunning intellect. Oh, and integrity and honesty. I don’t think you could accuse Howard and Costello of any of those things with a straight face. Let’s not bother with comparisons. Let’s just call them lightweight self-regarding nonentities whose impact on our society is vanishing by the day, like a debilitating disease that we have finally thrown off.
But we need to bring out and examine and publicise to the whole world the damage they have done to this country, including their inept economic performance and the irresponsible way in which they have sent our troops off to war. Never again must millions of people be hoodwinked by the lie that these clowns deserve our trust in matters of national security and economic management.
Posted in Howard govt |
December 17th, 2007 at 11:22 pm
positively blistering.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:10 am
No we can’t. Whitlam introduced universal funding for tertiary education and medical treatment (Medibank). That was a fundamental revolution, which the U.S. still hasn’t caught up with thirty years later.
Fraser used his senate majority to block supply and caused what? Fraser won government, and stopped Medibank. In 1983, Hawke got in, resurrected public health care, this time called Medicare, and we’re still laughing compared to the U.S.
Keating and Howard have both fucked up tertiary education funding to an extent that’s almost unbelievable, but that certainly ain’t Whitlam’s fault.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:14 am
To be clear, I’m not disagreeing with you, Ken.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:52 am
That’s always the thing that weirded me out — Howard and Costello being held up as good economic managers. In eleven years I never saw a scrap of evidence to back that up; nevertheless, they kept claiming it, and people thoughtlessly believed it.
December 18th, 2007 at 5:53 am
There must be one hell of a lot of dust those creepy Liberals swept under the carpet. For sure they worked the shredders overtime before Eviction Day, but there must still be oodles of evidence for investigators, academics of the future, or even the new Rudd government to bring to light to discredit these shonks. Bring it on! Please.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:20 am
Personally I’d like to see one of Krudd’s lot implement a couple of their pre-Campaign press releases on,I don’t know,.. litle things like freeing up FoI, effective green directions, that pulp mill thingy, the disgrace of persecuting .. err prosecuting.. the Sydney airport whistleblower,abolishing NoChoices - not the tinkering and quarantining that this bunch of trimmers & fudgers are currently offereing.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:24 am
A good assessment. It is interesting to note tat captain Smirk still doesn’t have an email address on the parliamentary website even though most of the other fallen Libs do. Is he still too important Why is this allowed to happen? We all have a good given right to send him a few robust touch ups when the need arises./ Why are we being denied our rights?
December 18th, 2007 at 10:33 am
A good assessment. It is interesting to note that captain Smirk still doesn’t have an email address on the parliamentary website even though most of the other fallen Libs do. Is he still too important Why is this allowed to happen? We all have a god-given right to send him a few robust touch ups when the need arises./ Why are we being denied our rights?
Sorry for previously uncorrected post
December 18th, 2007 at 11:21 am
To be clear up front, I’m not disagreeing with you either Ken — on the contrary, good post and I wholeheartedly agree that $weetie was/is a fraud of ‘Catch me if you can’ proportions.
But… Quoting Chris Richardson as Teh authority is where you lose me. He’s been prattling on with the ’savings’ and ‘cut spending’ mantra for a while now. The quote about the previous government is mainly opportunistic, even if partly accurate.
Perhaps Chris fears if Govt. spending continues to grow, agencies will develop sufficient modelling capacity as to remove the need for lucrative Access Economics consultancies?
December 18th, 2007 at 11:57 am
The trouble with outfits like Access Economics and the practice of using their ‘expertise’ and analysis in place of the public service, is that they are trimmers by design, since to be otherwise might risk the commercial contracts on which their businesses rely. Nothing wrong with being in business, flogging a model here and there, with a bit of specious analysis thrown in, but actually, where was Access when the governemnt was bundling out oodles in upper class and middle class welfare? Nowhere, that’s where.
The whole economic model of the last decade, based as it has been, on oodles of private debt generated by markets that are as opaque as they are indifferent to the needs of the ‘real economy’ has generated the worst of all possible worlds-stagflation, which the last time around was blamed on greedy unions, a sense of entitlement among the welfare classes, and the influence of the ‘Left’ on general social plicy.
We have had at least two decades of retrenchemnt of social, economic and political rights since, and guess what? We are back where we started, except this time, the markets did it all by themselves, with a little help form the US Reserve and the wondrous Alan Greenspan
December 18th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
I am nowhere near as eloquent as Ken, but I hope this farewell nods my agreement with this post in as rousing a fashion as I can muster.
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=T4RQaLBwN70
PS If you don’t like the F word, don’t watch…
December 18th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Aussie Shiela asked:
Probably in fear of their corporate lives. As Peter Martin reveals here:
http://petermartin.blogspot.com/2007/11/peter-costello-at-close-quarters.html
Costello is a real thug who is apparently willing to go to extreme lengths to punish those who tell the truth about him.
If the threat he reportedly made against the ANZ is’t illegal and punishable by a loooong prison sentence they should be!
December 18th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
It’s worth noting that the principals in Access Economics are former Treasury officers, who would have a pretty good idea what the Treasury was likely to be telling the government of the day. What we are finally seeing is the attitude of the government to that “frank and fearless advice” that they were supposedly asking of the public service.
December 19th, 2007 at 2:15 pm
The ultimate legacy of the ‘Howard years’ is the death of the Left in Australian public debate and the ALP. They have now been securely sequesterd within The Greens and The Dumbocrats, and can be safely ignored.
The old dears are starting to get a batty in their seniority. Alas, current medical ethics will require us all to suffer their inane rants to such vital organs as the Byron Bay Echo, New Matilda, and various blogs in The Luvviesphere.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
John G. you’re just another arrogant ‘hater’ who pretends to exist above the “shooting arrows” line.
In fact, JG has nothing to offer to the discussion as he throws around bitter terms & twisted phrases as though they have any real meaning (”luvvies”?…lol), when in fact they are merely expressions of his anxiety towards any type of politics that leans towards government regulation of the market/business, government ownership of assets…& higher taxation of any kind.
I assume his anxiety regarding Socialism stems not just from those wayward experiments in the USSR, Cuba & China that were basically taking hostage by paranoid extortionists & criminals of the highest order…but also a distaste for wealth re-distribution…and the worry he can’t exercise his beliefs & sell his propagandic views, that derive from mythology and superstition, to all and sundry.
I imagine a fear of the Islamic bogeyman & Aboriginal warrior wanting to reclaim their land, is also part of his makeup, particularly since the shifts in Sth African & Zimbabwean politics.
In all probabilty, he is from British descent and has a superiority complex. And struggles with the ongoing emancipation of women & their deviation from stereotypical roles and images that dominated pre-early 60s. Angst related to “future shock’ & social evolution, bar those socio-technological transformations that can be conveniently invested in to acquire further capital & assets and so on. For some like JG, investing in the nuclear industry & tree felling to create bio-fuels are worthwhile ventures, even tho they go against the spirit of their Conservatism. Acquiring money for security & in order to “not to be mediocre” can overcome any of their fears and doubts. Unless it’s happening in their backyard. Compassionate Conservatism is a convenient “sell” line…everyone else is actually disposable to the “me, me, me” Neo-Cons.
Strange this new mob on the Right…Liberals one moment…ultra-con the next.
This idea that the Social Democrats have abandoned their so called “leftist” ideas is a nonsense…rather, we are seeing a mutation of theories and ideas that still focus on bringing about the utopic society which sees “a fair go for all”…an unobtainable, yet worthy goal.
Whereas, the Right-Wing under John Howard have transformed into “big government” that survives by regulating business in order to benefit a FEW lobbyists & supporters, pork-barrelling & subsidies to acquire votes, & creating middle class families addicted to welfare & tax cuts…whilst these families remain as public service dependant as ever, depending on which child they believe has less potential than the other(s)…:)
The moment they realise that the “prosperity” game is up…& their Man of Steel & his motley crew have left them in the lurch, the sooner they’ll decide as to whether they prefer a decent safety net…or want to compete in an primarily uncompetitive environment & consequently act like real Liberals & free-marketeers. About Sept-Nov 2008 i reckon.
John G. and his brethren are just irritants, hoping to wedge Labor with their purile comments & dated political analogies. And play out their acts of catharses at the expense of those who are relieved that we have witnessed a democratic change in government.
In some ways they are like Scrooge, mean-spirited, bitter, pompous, tight-arses leftover from an another era, handing out nothing but “negativity” messages…& attempting to spoil the celebration.
Considering the complexity of the socio-economic & enviro maze we have ahead of us…& the increasing possibility that unless we work collectively on dealing with the obstacles that lay before us…you’d think individuals like JG would have more insightful comments to contribute. These spiteful vomits are about as useful as the Iraq invasion. Ill-conceived, fear & monetary driven…and in fact not only hindering global cooperation, but intensifying division & conflict.
December 19th, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Nas he’s like obs. They are desperate to get the shit off their livers that seems to be a chronic condition with them but if they post it on their own blogs, nobody bothers to read it. So in good capitalist fashion they try to leech onto somebody else’s readership.
Blogs have unfortunately seen the death of good manners. I mean who but a rude buffoon would dream of interupting a conversation amongst strangers with an intemperate comment along the lines “Yous guys are all up yourselves?” Yet the anonymity of the net encourages these timid souls to be very brave on blogs.
Mock or ignore is my policy.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I agree Ken. As I do with the following:
The more i examine their policies the less i can see the logic in their approach (unless they intend to wipe out a good part of the population down the road)…I’m seriously worried that The Coalition have applied the wrong medicine to the ailments that beset this Country…and by providing resources to other Nations in vast quantities w/out regard to the enviro-consequences in both the import & export Nation. And in turn, by supporting the Busheviks in their Energy & Religious Wars they have opened a Pandora’s Box that could lead to a worsening of social division & environmental inaction that will have grave & unintended effects for generations.
I find it difficult to see how a heavily indebted population like Australia’s will be able to weather comfortably the oncoming shift to clean energy, carbon output restrictions, high oil prices, escalating food prices related both to cost of transport & increasing demand for bio-fuels, liquidity problems, Chinese taking their foot off the accelerator due to inflation etc.
Certainly a great deal of the transformation to alternative & independent sources of energy will be driven, as it already is, by local government…but one only needs to look at the infrastructure & maintenance problems in the USA to see that shifting the cost & burden of social transformation & public service from Federal to State/Local govts can lead to neglect and social stratification…& the pressures on each household can become suffocating. California is setting a decent standard/example…but not all States & local areas have the underlying wealth to draw upon that California does.
Also, as we also see in America, allowing a FEW to set themselves up as New Aristocrats by way of abolishing wealth tax/death duties…& reducing regulation of “uncompetitive behaviour” & in turn seeing valuable assets shift from Govt hands to private hands (like gold bullion previously) we are setting ourselves up for an “all eggs in a few baskets” crash.
The previous Australian government fed the wealthy as efficiently as any American political system. But will this new wealth be used to assist social & environmental demands? or will it primarily be used to collect tangible assets to be stored away for a rainy day? Or be shifted to tax-free havens & offshore accounts? And once the demand for Australian resources diminishes due to the cost of transport & manufacturing in a carbon-restricted future…what then?
Will Future Funds & Super Funds need to be raided in order to pay for defense as other Nations greedily set their goals on claiming our resources as their own once the economies begin to shatter and Governments decide that Wars & conflicts are a good way to divert public criticism? And having contributed to such a project in the Middle East & East Timor…will we be considered “fair game”?
And by penalising cautious & responsible mortgage holders by way of interest rate increases based on an inflexible Reserve Bank inflation target of 1.5 - 3%, that seems to punish all for the sins of the more irresponsible investors & speculators - including the war-mongers…& promoters of oil-related goods in China who drive up the price of energy & consequently inflation, it’s hard to see where home owners & small business will find the confidence in the long run to alter their lifestyle & broaden their consumption & investments.
By leaving so late in the piece the bulk of energy transformation, and training of tradespeople & specialists to deal with industry & public service demands, the Coalition have left Labor with the hard work & a terrible minefield to traverse. Costello & Howard should be ashamed of themselves.
You can see that the Coalition front bench were quite willing to savage the “safety net” & entrap people in terrible debt & low paid jobs in order to deal with the necessary socio & enviro-economic transitions.
If I were Labor I would OUT the Coalition & put all their cards on the table. In fact, I think Access-Economics is being used to pave the way.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:10 pm
Workchoices according to Dr Nelson is officially dead. (Where’s Tone?) Howard’s main political agenda. Industrial relations reform was the cause dearest to his heart and he kept pushing it to the forefront his whole political career. His baby. Dead. Deemed unpopular (hey no kidding?) by a desperate bunch of, well. . . losers.
Great post Ken, I too sensed the heartfelt appreciation from the Bali crowd that Australia was back to being Australia. What a relief.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:18 pm
NB. They didn’t dump it because it was intrinsically unfair, but because it was unpopular. What a bunch of tossers.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:46 am
JG I delete comments on my posts that consist of nothing more than childish name calling directed at previous commenters.
I really think you would be happier commenting on other blogs.
December 20th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
They may have got the books balanced but…
Is good economic management wasting around $4 billion on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that we shouldn’t have been involved in?
Is good economic management not properly investing in education?
Is good economic management allowing a skills crisis, due to lack of education investment, which then puts upward pressure on inflation and interest rates?
December 21st, 2007 at 2:50 am
Alastair, I have a suspicion that the Coalition were preparing to hand out a darn site more 457 visas once they won…
& were preparing to promote slave wage apprenticeships & create a sh*t load of technical schools free of Unions & dominated by Workchoices.
And in turn, do a bit of a Premier Jeff Kennett of Victoria on the public secondary schools by using “Performance Pay” & “No Child Left Behind” (USA) tactics to categorise plenty of schools as “failing schools” & worthy of receiving the “head on the chopping block” act…or to break them up. Vouchers to entice the poor but more acedemic students into leaving public for private would’ve probably played a role. As would’ve religion…big time.
They probably were holding off on investing in & constructing too many new trade schools until they had used the Corporations’ act to infiltrate the public schools, push back the Unions, reduce many educator’s wages and conditions…& start their razor work on individual public school teachers…so more revenue would be available to bring in teachers straight from industry, military etc.
They might even have been waiting to bring some of the “trained by military” Afghani tradespersons over to create further competition in the wider society.
Eventually, you would end up with plenty of locally trained “obedient” & “God-headed” tradespersons competing with the 457 visa workers & the War refugees.
But then, i’m just guessing. I’m sure tho they were preparing for economic downturn in 2008 & to drive trade wages/income down in order to reduce inflation.
And the skilled workforce would never touch base with social studies or media criticism or so called “greeny & feminist issues”…only highly competitive, rampant capitalist ideology.
The NASCAR Dad’s of the future, Australian style.
January 1st, 2008 at 11:27 pm
I like that one. At least Keatings award for worlds best treasurer came from the non Australian “Euromoney Magazine” (Although it had also given the award to Mexicos treasurer the year before)