costello legacy: average to poor, page-33

Dave

Forget what the statistical unemployment figures say, under Howard/Costello anyone that wanted a job could get one. To the point many employers could not find good workers.

You talk about manipulating unemployment figures, Hawke/Keating were the masters. They moved tens of thousands of unemployed onto Disability payments, introduced Parenting & Newstart Mature Age payments to "officially" get people off unemployment statistics and then still got to the magic 1m unemployed mark.

I also have to laugh that some pundits rave about interest rate cut announced today. Don't forget there have been 3 official rate rises of 25 basic points since November last year plus 3 unofficial rate rises of 25 basic points courtesy of the banks plus petrol increases which would amount to another effective interest rate rise of 25 basic points. That's an increase of 1.75% in effective interest rates within 10 months. I cannot ever remember such an increase in such a condensed period of time. A decrease of 25 points is not much to brag about, and may in time say more about the state of a once booming economy than any good economic management. Todays cut also confirms that many got it wrong in regards the speed of previous rate increases and may in fact been done for political gain.

My guess is underlying inflation is still high due mainly in part to wages growth. May time prove me wrong! I do hope so.