Do you actually do any research on these issues before you type...

Do you actually do any research on these issues before you type this sort of unthinking tripe?

Let's pick 1974 as an example of Gough Whitlam's amazing visionary powers shall we.

Beginning 1974 unemployment was 2% at the end of 1974 it was close to 5%.

Thanks to Gough's profligate spending and asinine welfare programs that were always going to end up as unaffordable, wages and prices soared out of control. Consumer prices rose 16% in 1974. Wages rose 28%! This in just one year.

Powerful unions, take note for current situation, came back for second and even third rounds of pay rises in 1974. And in just 6 months of that year, 5 million working days were lost to strikes as unions viewd for the top wage rises.

Australia's current account slid into deficit for the very first time, never to return to surplus.

From a surplus of 1.5% of GDP in mid-1973 the balance of payments crashed to a deficit of 3.2% by the end of 1974.

!974 saw a massive rise in the Commonwealth budget. Despite pleas of restraint from Treasury, Whitlam increased spending by 46% in 1974-75. Dwarfing the 20% rise of the previous year.

Amazingly, possibly because of the massive spending, Whitlam got back into power on May 18. But then the shite really hit the fan.

Profits gave way first. Wage rises were escalating as global demand was slowing. At the same time, tariffs had been cut by 25% while raising the Australian dollar by 25% against the $US dollar to $1.4875c! It is estimated that in the June Quarter of 1974 GDP slumped by a massive 2.8%!

By the time the budget was due in September of 1974, Crean (Simon's father) was warning of hyper-inflation and Treasury wanted income tax rises and petrol excise rises amongst a number of proposals to raise revenue and cuts in new spending.

Ignoring Treasury, Whitlam and co wanted another 32% rise in spending on top of previous year increases and in November brought in a stimulus package, prepared with no input from Treasury. But where was this extra money going to come from? On Nov 11, Rex Connor met with Tirath Khemlani...and the rest is history.

Whitlam had two opportunities to get back into power - !975 and 1977 - but the people of Australia knew by then he was a dud.

Apart from some worrying similarities with today's bunch of economic pygmies there is little to like or learn from Whitlam apart from how not to look after an economy.