by god - check this out!, page-16

We also have to remember Costello and Howard benefited from a 1 in 100 year type revenue boom... they couldnt spend enough to send the budget into deficit.

They were getting 10% p.a. revenue increases. 10% equates to $30-40 billion per annum... enough to cover most annual deficits post GFC...

To put it another way, we all know the USA has a pathological history of running deficits... they've had 6 or so surpluses in the past 100 years.

At the same time Costello was pretending to be a genius, Clinton ran 3 of those very rare surpluses.

At the same time Costello was pretending to be a genius, the Labor state governments ran plenty of budget surpluses. Plenty.