Armchair_Politician wrote on Apr 25
th, 2012 at 6:46am:
Johnsmith wrote on Apr 24
th, 2012 at 9:41pm:
Depends on how you decide what is failure... Under Gillards leadership we are Number I in the world .. Howard NEVER got us that far up the ladder ...
It's because of the hard work done by Howard and Costello that Rudd and Gillard were gifted a strong economy. Without that, I suspect we'd have been receiving money from the IMF, not handing it out. If you think Gillard and Swan are competent managers of the economy, look no further than these simple facts:
- Howard left behind a massive $20bn plus surplus
- Said surplus has been turned into a debt of hundreds of billions of dollars
- Gillard and Swan continue to borrow at more than $100m a day with no end in sight and no plan to pay back this enormous debt.
The $20 billion surplus was in the forward estimates accounting for revenue and spending for the following 4 years meaning it never eventuated due to the massive decline in revenue.....Revenue declined and the spending contained in the budget through entitlements and tax cuts put the budget into structural deficit.....Labor spent money to keep the economy afloat and prop up the budget when revenue plummeted or we would have gone into recession and seen massive job losses and a collapse of the Australian dollar!!!
Because revenue still has not returned to post GFC levels the Government must cut spending from the budget and introduce more taxes to help pay for policies needed to keep the Australian economy growing and help industries suffering whilst the Australian dollar is so high!!!
The mining boom is driving up the Australian dollar and harming other industries who export or compete with oversees imports....To claim the mining industry should not contribute to help the majority of Australians who are not benefiting from the mining industry would do long term harm to the economy when the mining boom ends and Australia has nothing else!!!
We need to invest in the future and help industries survive the problems created by the mining boom and not stick our heads in the sand and think the billionaires will give a stuff about Australia once they have raped our resources and made a killing with our mineral wealth!!!
Everyone who receives the protection of society owes a return for the benefit.
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), On Liberty