Most of our financial troubles started with the weird financial policies of Keating"
It astounds me that we have so many retards in Australia who have no idea about who actually had the fincicial and economic accumen. Here's a hint....IT WASN'T PISTOL PETE AND JOHN HOWARD!!!
These are the Keating/Hawke policies. They cam about when Keating was either leader or treasurer:
- Floating of the Australian dollar in 1983. The best automatic stabiliser for a small economy such as ours.
- Reduction of tariffs on imports to expose our inward looking dinasaur of an economy to external competition.
- Enterprise bargaining. This removed central wage fixing and allowed for a flexible labour market.
- Deregulation of the banking industry.
- Prices and incomes accord btw govt. and trade unions.
- Opeining us up to Asia economically and politically (APEC)
- Compulsory Super
All of these, particularly the first 5 on their own in singularity are better than any piece of economic reform Howard and Costello were responsible for collectively. Their biggest achievement was essentially an economically neutral GST. I CHALLENGE ANYBODY TO GIVE ME AN ECOMICALLY SIGNIFICANT REFORM THAT HOWARD AND COSTELLO CAME UP WITH BETTER THAN THE 5 I JUST LISTED??? Howard was treasurer when we were an inward looking back water of an economy.
KEating was responsible for the economic reforms that dragged this country into the 20th century and gave us a flexible and mobile workforce and opened us up to foreign competition. This is why we haven't had a recession in 20 years. KEating took the short term hit with these reforms and
Howard and Costello did nothing but ride the wave. Worse still they used the cheap credit conditions created by our newly flexible banking sector coupled it with silly policies that squandered the windfall via middle class welfare, instead of making the tough calls and instituting the next wave of reform.
I'm really starting to get sick of our STUPIUD "aussie" populace and this myth that Howard was some kind of economic doyen. You people are stupid. Down right stupid.
