fed alp now 20 pcent ahead in polls, page-83

Cortis, here's some facts for you on interest rates.

I work in the finance industry. I have at least two clients who had rates rise to 22-23% when John Howard was Treasurer. Here's an interesting blog that will back that up which reviews the 90 day bill rate which is the effective underpinner.

http://alertandalarmed.blogspot.com/2006/05/john-howard-v-interest-rates.html

Howard has always been a devious manipulator of the truth - hence the nickname Honest John.

The interest rate lie he tells ie rates always higher under Labour is easily disproved. It ranks alongside the myth that somehow the Coalition built the modern economy - perhaps they did if giving support from the backbench to courageous leaders in the ALP particularly counts.

No sensible review of Australia's economic history could fail to come to the conclusion that the strength of the economy we enjoy now largely rests upon the massive reforms conducted by the ALP through the 80s and into the 90s (floating the dollar, opening up the banking system, the Accord, removal of tariffs - essentially the modernising of Australia).

Due must go to the coalition that they have been good if dull stewards of what they received. Against that goes the reality that they have wasted political capital with failure to continue with serious reform, (the GST is not economic reform and the effectiveness of Workchoices is still unclear with declining productivity underway) and their patent failure to invest in the future of Australia with dramatic declines in research and innovation in this country - partly a consequence of their ideological and cultural wars against academia and tertiary institutions.