[ChrisL]

Tim, I echo that remark. I enjoy your comments on this forum too.

But just to try and get this thread back on track, I consider myself a swinging voter. All up, between federal and state, it's probably about a 50/50 split in the lower house, and the upper house has seen me vote for the minor parties regularly. I agree with Tim whole heartedly that we need to keep the governments on their toes by giving them the boot when they don't perform.

... and incidentally, I honestly believe that the parting government has performed very badly on the economic front. This may confuse some people so I shall explain.

The biggest error that they have made is to base economic policy on a combination of ideological and populist grounds rather than sound economic analysis. "But look at all the good figures" you might say.

OK lets look at them one at a time...

Government Debt:
We now have no public debt. Is that a good thing by economic standards or by populist consensus? Well its actually very easy to have no debt. For example, if you sell your house you can pay of your mortgage and you will have no debt, but then you will also have no house and no way of getting one. Responsible public debt is not only good for a country to prosper, its essential.

Interest rates:
Now this is definitely based on a populist rather than an economic argument. Interest rates that are too low are just as bad as interest rates that are too high. With very low rates, you reduce the income for those who rely on invested savings to fund their retirement. You also cause a situation where money becomes so cheap that housing prices go through the roof. You then end up with hoards of home buyers who suffer greatly when the rates go up slightly (a 1 point rise at 5% is 20% increase in payments, whereas a 1 point rise at 10% is a 10% increase in payments). So you see that the hype that low interest rates is good economic management is just that, hype.

Growth:
The economy has grown rapidly but, if you ignore for a moment the resources boom which was not of the government's doing, it was not because the gross domestic product has improved. The growth is primarily generated by that fact that the government has falsely convinced the general population that we have a strong economy. This results in people going to the shops with credit card in hand so boosting economic activity with money that they don't have. Consequently, we as a nation have the highest level of credit card use and private debt of all the western economies. This type of economy will live quite a long life but it is hollow because the economy is floating on a false floor of private debt. It is a bubble and it will burst.

Unemployment:
Well this IS an interesting one. What IS our employment level now compared to years gone by. Employment levels were calculated very differently 30 years ago. Today you are considered employed if you work one hour per fortnight. 30 years ago you were considered employed if you had a full-time job. The government does actually have the figures to perform a realistic comparison but they won't release them under our FOI laws. So on that basis I will assume that they have something to hide.

Average earnings:
There has been a large divide created between the wealthy and the battlers. Break down the statistics and you will see that the average salary of a company director has increased by close to 70% in the last financial year and expected to increase yet again this year. On the other end of the scale, the number of people below the poverty line has also increased significantly over the period of this government. So yes, average earnings have increased, but the few at the top have skewed the figures.

Average wealth:
The average wealth of each Australian has increased considerably. But this is primarily as a result of the booming house prices. This wealth is effectively useless. It is not wealth that can be accessed. You had the wealth equivalent of one house before the boom and you still have the wealth value of a single house now. You can't sell it and buy a house and a yaught.

Budget Surplus:
We have a deteriorating infrastructure, declining health services, declining education system and I can go on, but the government thinks that its a good idea to keep our billions of dollars in the bank so that they can count it each morning when they wake up. I think this is the final straw that shows that the parting government had lost the plot on why it is good to have a booming economy.

Finally, the parting government did not have a concept of value unless it had a dollar value. This created a moral vacuum that resulted in actions within our shores by our government that caused Australia to be branded by organizations such as Amnesty International as abusers of basic human rights.

A dark cloud has lifted.

Just my 2c worth.