Howard created the meme, knowing that Gorton, McMahon had done a crap job, and Fraser, with Howard as Treasurer had also been quite failures at managing the national accounts, yet Hawke/Keating had generally done a revolutionary miracle opening up the economy and stimulating manufacturing and foreign trade thus building the economy. but Keating's management ran into a brick wall with the recession that was sweeping the world in the early 90s and so Howard capitalised on this adverse event by making up the lie.
yet Howard/Costello did do an pretty good job, though I wonder if Howard had a different treasurer would the management been a failure.
Rudd then prevented Aus from falling into recession during the GFC, only 2 other nations avoided recession and they were small and had not engaged in the investment gamble that destroyed the economies of 98% of nations around the world. pretty sound management there.... what would Howard have done if he were still PM under the GFC? he believed in austerity as the sole means of managing adverse conditions so imo he prob would have sent us into recession.
now take a gander at the last 3 PMs economic befuddlement and very poor decisions. And yet now we have reduced spending and paying off debt instead of increasing debt.
