"Only a government of sound economic ability can go close to guaranteeing Australians of sufficient services such as medical, education, security, policing, transport, etc."
I'd like to refute that hilarious, spurious and pompous assertion on several grounds.
The Liberals didn't cause the minerals boom that's responsible for much of our recent prosperity - they simply stuck their big tax snouts into it and sucked in huge great gobs of filthy lucre from it.
Having sucked in billions and billions more than Treasury forecasts, like the Disney character Scrouge MacDuck, Howard put the cash into his bank vault and ran his fingers through it gleefully day after day while patting himself on the back as the World's Greatest Money Manager.
Meanwhile, out where the real people live far from the pampered green lawns of Kirribilli House and Parliament House where Howard had the walls of his private dining room and private jet coverered with hideously expensive imported silk wallpaper...
... service deprivation was rife.
Why? Service deprivation is Howard's punishment for Aussie citizens having voted Labor in state/territory elections.
As punishment, Howard would *not* part with any of his ill-gotten loot for badly-needed upgrades in basic state and territory public services until the Labor state and territory governments ageeed to hand their constitutional powers over to Howard so Howard could get the pomp and glory for services upgrades - not Labor Premiers and Chief Ministers.
Howard is a very sick and twisted little chappy with a hugely overblown idea of how important he is to the nation.
Howard is also a very spiteful little chappy. His ministers dare not stand up to him for fear of totalitarian retrubition.
Tony Abbott is the most worshipful of Howard's fawning ministers and Howard treats Abbott with the aristocratic scorn that such a grovelling flunky deserves.
A tiny example of Abbott's self-abnegation to enhance his master's PR image:
Abbott was due to shine at a Press Club health debate in Canberra but Howard needed Abbott as as silent store dummy and set dressing while Howard hogged the media limelight during a Howard launch of a health announcement - so Abbott did as he was told and became a silent store dummy and was made to look like a total goose when he turned up late for the big Press Club debate!
But that's not the worst of Abbott's spineless store-dummy faults.
Because Howard hates the Doctors Union (the AMA) Abbott is under instructions from Howard *not* to negotiate a long overdue compromise on reducing the 'gap' between Medicare's scheduled fees (for a range of medical services) and what Howard's AWA-inspired idea about what doctors *should* get to maintain their practices.
So what has been happening out in the real world as a result of 11 years of cruel and incompetent Liberal mismanagement and misrule?
Joe and Mary Average have a son Billy Average. Billy gets stung by a wasp and his partents want the swelling checked out.
But first they check the family finances but as Joe is on an AWA, family finances are in a terrible way.
Big family dilemma!
Do they take Billy to their local GP and have to fork out $50 for a consultation, get a receipt and then drive to a Medicare office, pay parking fees and then stand in line to get Tony Abbot's $25 idea of what a GP is worth?
OR do they take Billy to their local hospital and wait several hours to have Billy checked out FOR FREE in an Emergency Department that has been so spitefully deprived of proper funding by John Howard that in a nearby toilet a woman is having a misarriage alone and unattended because the citizens of NSW had the collosal cheek to vote for a Labor state govenment and therefore needed to be punished by John Howard while his store-dummy Heath Minister sits by and twiddles his fingers!
There is something incredibly sick and twisted about the Howard government and no amount of razzle-dazzle PR hype can cure Power Disease.
