The notion of the Liberal Party as the sound guardians of our economy is a myth; One that
their sycophantic followers accept far too readily.

During the Howard/ Costello years foreign debt grew at the fastest rate in Australia's history – up by more than $100 billion between 2003 and 2005 alone.
This is the one part of John Howard’s legacy that nobody in his government wants to talk about:

Australia’s foreign debt during his reign. But then Labor never brings it up either. This is the question every Labor candidate should ask as soon as the economy is mentioned:

What was the net foreign debt at the start of the Howard/Costello years? What was it at the
end of the Howard/Costello years? And what did John Howard promise to do?

Howard said before the 1996 election that he was concerned about the net foreign debt
because:

‘This idea that foreign debt is in some way removed from and remote from the daily lives of
Australians is completely false.
If it weren’t for the level of foreign debt, interest rates in this country would be much lower.
And every Australian today who owes money on his or her home is paying a higher interest
rate than would otherwise be the case because of the size of our foreign debt..............’

If Rudd gets in our debt will be over $600 billion in 3 years.

Tony won't be much better - maybe $400 billion.

Bobby. wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2013 at 11:15am:


Wayne Swan managed to increase our debt by some 334% in a 6 year period.

He inherited a debt of $58bn and succeeded in leaving a $252BN debt.

Absolutely appalling. Not a single surplus in 6 years in a resource driven economy.

John Howard and Costello knew the problem. But a decade later, Australia's foreign debt had not fallen. It hadn’t stayed the same, increased at the rate of inflation, or even increased at the pace of Australia’s economic growth.

It had blown out to two and a half times the level it was when John Howard took responsibility for the economy.

Export growth had halved from 10.8 per cent under Labor between 1983 and 1996, to 5.3 per cent since John Howard took office.

After ten years, John Howard became too arrogant to even acknowledge the problem, let alone work on the solution. Everybody said the economy was going ‘gangbusters’. Well it wasn’t. When a country is losing two thousand million dollars a month and has been doing that for the entire term of office of the Howard government then we are listening to spin not living in reality.

National debt went from a third of GDP in 1996 to more than half when Howard left office in 2007.

Peter Costello had a formula for assessing the burden of foreign debt in 1995. It broke down as $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. By the time he left it was well over $20,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

They were seduced by the revenues from a credit boom. They were so seduced by the tax revenues from the boom that they did not cool it in the period 2000-2006 when it obviously needed cooling.

There was much crowing about paying off Labor’s government debt of 96 billion. Well it wasn’t Labor’s debt, it was part of Australia’s debt and so was the new 610 billion dollar debt they left.

FACTS THAT EVERY LABOR CANDIDATE SHOULD KNOW

Bobby. wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2013 at 11:15am:



____ wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2013 at 11:18am:



Did both of you read the article in full. The article is not about if debt is good or bad or what the debt is going to be under Rudd or That idiot that wants to be Prime Minister

It is about the government passing debt off on to the private sector then saying there is no government debt, but guess what who pays the debt back?

If Rudd gets in our debt will be over $600 billion in 3 years.

Tony won't be much better - maybe $400 billion.

Andrei.Hicks wrote on Jul 23^rd, 2013 at 12:22pm:


I notice the worlds best accountant totally ignores the OP and repeats his usual rhetoric. No comment on the foreign debt dopey?