Re your post which included; "... Where would you like to be placed? Where Howard left us, or where Rudd left us? ..."
Under John Howard the preconditions for the GFC were allowed to fester unchecked and despite protestations from the RBA: that MASSIVE housing bubble, risky lending by our banks [those massive bad debts that accumulated on balance sheets], record levels of private debt, record low levels of personal savings, massive welfare for the wealthy measures embedded into the budget based on an ever-continuing mining boom, ...
That's what prompted Peter Costello's flippant remarks about the approaching 'economic tsunami'; Costello even locked $50b away from future governments in the Future Fund he now oversees.
In contrast and despite the GFC, Kevin Rudd bequeathed Tony Abbott a $1.5 Trillion economy that boasted first time ever AAA ratings courtesy of world best macroeconomic KPIs. UBS even declared Australians the wealthiest people on Earth [per capita]. People had actually started saving again and rocketing private indebtedness had been halted - though not reversed.
In case you missed it Rudd's Govt also paid off Howard's war costs, refurbished the corroded clapped out naval fleet Howard passed on and invested heaqvily in core infrastructure IGNORED by the inept, lazy and profligate Howard Governments.
And then along came Tony Abbott, exhorting people to spend like drunken sailors.
Already under Abbott the property bubble has re-inflated as Abbott and Hockey made an artform of trashing the economy and blaming Labor - even more so to overseas audiences and as never before in our history.
