I was reading Keating's interview with Tony Jones on Lateline on 7 June 2007, and despite it being replete with typical Keating nonsense and abuse, they didn't follow his sage advice sadly:-
TONY JONES: I'll come back to the industrial relations question in a moment, but I want to get back to the question that I asked you before and that is with the Liberal Party mantra you can't trust Labor, or this current crop of Labor politicians with the economy, because they don't have the experience to run the economy, how does Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan counter that in your opinion?
PAUL KEATING: A huge market, the fourth biggest in the world in foreign exchange the size of the exchange rate every day, there are no tariff walls anymore to stop the tariff wall helping us with deflation. That has nothing to do with anyone in public life. The Reserve Bank is looking after the monetary lever.
All the Government really has to do is make sure it doesn't blow the budget. That's the final primary responsibility of the Government, and Kevin Rudd has made that as clear as day where he stands on that. As clear as day. He'll run, in fact, a more conservative fiscal policy than will Mr Costello. What's Costello really done? He's taken the money, spent most of it to leave the surplus on empty. That's what he's done. Outlays are pinned at about 24 per cent of GDP. If revenue to GDP is 26 or 27, ipso facto you run a surplus of 2-3 per cent of GDP. That's all he's done. The idea quite frankly we need those characters, what structural change has he done? The only one he claims is the GST, but it does not change behaviour. I'm not going to eat any less, you're not going to eat any less because our food is GST taxed or our hair is going to stop growing. The GST changes nothing. It's not a behavioural structural changer.
