Seems you people need a history lesson once again.
"The Liberal Party worked hard over the past decade to paint itself as the party of the surplus and ingrain the mantra that any deficit is bad. That's quite a turnaround for a party that left office in 1983 with a deficit of 3.3 per cent of GDP.
Paul Keating reintroduced modern Australia to the surplus, bringing in the first substantial surplus in living memory in 1987. The Keating surpluses were built in much tougher economic times than the commodity-driven nirvana of the Howard years.
When the economy turned down in the early '90s, a return to deficits was prudent. To ignore the change in economic circumstances around the world and the potential of a deficit would be to ignore reality.
One of the beauties of fiscal policy is the operation of automatic stabilisers. This means that as an economy slows, tax revenues fall and government expenditures go up. Often, trying to counteract these stabilisers is counterproductive and irresponsible.
When economic growth around the world, and in Australia, is under strain, the worst thing the Federal Government could do would be to work against the intended effect of the automatic stabilisers. It would also be irresponsible to leave all the heavy lifting to monetary policy. Every credible economist knows monetary and fiscal policy need to work in tandem to give relief to families and strengthen the economy in tough times.
The Government has made it clear that the deteriorating circumstances of the world economy may make a budget deficit unavoidable and indeed responsible. We will do everything we can to protect Australian jobs. We must respond to changing circumstances.
The Liberal Party believes having a budget surplus is always the answer, regardless of the question. It's akin to them getting up on a hot morning and turning the heater on, simply because that's the habit they got into when it was cold.
When questioned over a change of view, John Maynard Keynes famously replied: "When the circumstances change, I change my mind. What do you do?" The Liberal Party's ideological obsession with surpluses at the expense of jobs and growth means it gives the wrong answer to Keynes's question."
