It would have been a more impressive accomplishment if half of that "Labor debt" hadn't actually been racked up by Howard when he was Treasurer of the previous Liberal government. Flogging off $72 billion worth of public assets isn't exactly "hard work" either.
You mean like the "Peoples Bank"? Flogged it off to forever grateful people like me for $5.40 a share, and i will be selling them soon at over $70! ONYA KOMRADE! ...and the proceeds went to the teat sucking zombies, while Howards proceeds went to the Future Fund. Stop arguing, you will always lose! OC
Hey, how about I sell your CommBank shares and keep the money? Please? I want to be an economic genius like John Howard and Peter Costello!
reminds me of the old words of wisdom, "any fool can borrow money, it is only the clever ones that can pay it back". OC
Pfft, that's nothing. Borrowing money, selling off all your stuff to scrounge the money together to pay back the loan and then convincing everyone you're a financial wizard for doing it...now that's really clever.
Absolutely agree - neither party should have sold off public assets. And Costello selling off the nation's gold at rock bottom prices was sheer genius wasn't it ? What spin do you have on that f*ck up OC ?
Not a lot, it was the spot price at the time, and all or most of the Central banks were flogging it off. Insane of course, but 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially for a socialist! OC
Costello should never have paid back the debt. He should have stayed in deficit, raising taxes just enough to keep the interest payments from exploding and not created the Future Fund. Defaulting on their superannuation promises, keeping large inefficient monopolies and higher taxes would have been far better for everyone. Thank goodness for Swan and Conroy getting us back on track.
If we're going to go back in time, I recall that the when the Fraser Government came to power, they had to still implement as their first Budget the same Whitlam Budget that had brought down that lunatic Whitlam government in the first place. A pretty bad way to have to start! The whole Fraser government was unremarkable but mostly spent trying to undo the mess Whitlam had left us in. Hawke/Keating/Howard all trying to pay off that debt. Took a long time. Anyway how did this turn to domestic politics when we're talking about the US debt ceiling.
