Best example is useless Menzies. Tried to stop the Snowy Mts scheme, then just coasted, farting around with banning the commo Party etc. The vision of John Curtin, our best PM EVER by a country mile, kept things happening. Mid 60s, Menzies finally pisses off, Libs left with no vision. Holt and Gorton then Billy Bigears, total shambles.

Whitlam may have tried to do “too much too soon” but handed down three surplus Budgets and drags the country kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Stagnation and stagflation under Frazer/Howard, finally Hawke/Keating modernise the economy.

Libs good economic managers? Naaahhhhh!!!!!!!!

red baron wrote on May 15^th, 2017 at 6:35pm:




I shouldn't laugh, really, as Mr Baron reckons posting in cliches is something which brings light and mirth to a discussion.

To me, it is like watching a one armed, one legged kid trying to qualify for the Grade Three Gymnast Team in Primary School.  Just awful to watch and evokes great sympathy.......and it would, if Mr Baron was a kid.  The prose is grotesque, artificial and tortuous.

red baron wrote on May 15^th, 2017 at 7:12pm:


It didn't take Malcolm Fraser very long to piss the Whitlam surpluses away either. Swings and roundabouts really.

red baron wrote on May 15^th, 2017 at 6:35pm:


On some topics you use some sense and knowledge but then you come up with rubbish like this.

You fail to consider the impact of Howard / Costello gearing the economy to require the best economic situation in a century to remain in surplus, they left the economy doomed to certain deficits.

You fail to factor in the GFC and devastating economic crash that took place.

You fail to acknowledge that all the economic analysis concluded that the Liberal oppositions proposed actions during the GFC would have led to recession and increased deficits and greater long term debt.

You fail to acknowledge that the Liberals since gaining office have been the ultimate of economic irresponsibility and incompetence. They did in fact manage to double the debt in half the time with no excuse except for them being highly skilled in economic ineptitude.

Remember it is now 4 years after the Liberals promised first surplus.

You fail to acknowledge that Australia won economic awards for out performing most of the world during the GFC.

The Lefties just deny FACTS as the TRUTH means nothing to them because ALL they care about is ENDLESS WELFARE paid for by someone else.

Sir lastnail wrote on May 16^th, 2017 at 10:14am:



Hi sir Nail,
& where does it end?
Will the debt eventually reach $3 trillion?
or twice our GDP.

Whitlam had three surplus budgets, Fraser had zero. So much for Labor being the spenders.

The debt will be paid off by growing the economy, just like the post war debt got paid off, mostly by growth in the economy: Whitlam paid some out of the Budget surpluses but the debt had been mostly paid off by then—with deficit budgets every year until 1972!

So the idiot Libs by threatening the low paid are preventing the economy from growing. FTTH would have boosted GDP, jobs and exports. The idiotic Libs, for ideological reasons, FTTH was a Labor idea, killed FTTH and rolled out a shambolic copper internet over Telstra’s rotten copper. No gain to GDP, jobs or exports and the $60Bn crap will have to be ripped up and replaced with FTTH.

I think the Libs spend like drunken sailors. Howard certainly did and the Howard era spending and tax cuts is STILL stuffing up Budget and economic management!

Herald Sun
October 22, 2014 9:14pm
GOUGH Whitlam was lucky his government was sacked in 1975. To our cultural elite, that turned him from a failure to a martyr.
That allowed the ruin he caused to gradually become obscured by the giant shadow of his myth. More ominously, it also allowed Labor to gradually forget what it learned, painfully, from Whitlam’s disasters.
So Labor today weeps for Whitlam and much of the media with it. The ABC’s massive coverage in particular has resembled the state-ordered mourning for a socialist dictator.
But how must this astonishing torrent of tears strike most Australians? Fact is, the elite’s verdict of Whitlam — the hero reformer, Great Leader and victim of a conservative conspiracy — has never been shared by most voters.
Aloof and arrogant, Whitlam was no man of the people and no prime minister was shunned by them so comprehensively — twice.
Whitlam ruled chaotically for just two years and 11 months until he was sacked by governor-general Sir John Kerr to end a damaging stalemate in the Senate, where the Opposition had cut off the scandal-racked government’s money.
The Left raged at the dismissal. On Monday, hours before Whitlam died, prize-winning author Peter Carey was still spluttering on the ABC that his sacking was a wicked conspiracy — “the US government destabilised and helped overthrow our elected government”.
But at the election the public wholeheartedly backed Kerr’s verdict, destroying Labor in a 44 per cent to 56 wipeout. Whitlam the martyr — bellowing “maintain the rage” — nevertheless held on to the Labor leadership, convinced he’d be seen in time as more sinned against than sinning. Instead, two years later the public made clear to Whitlam that he really, really wasn’t wanted, rejecting Labor again by another massive margin, 45 to 55.
There’s no sign that the public’s damning verdict ever changed.
The reason is simple. Whitlam may have had big dreams, but voters prefer to live their own.
What they value most are not the kind of grand gestures that had mourners this week ringing talkback to say Whitlam made them “proud to be Australian” — recognising communist China, demanding joint control of US spy bases here, signing a flurry of international conventions and replacing God Save the Queen with Advance Australia Fair.
What counts more is that a prime minister helps Australians to realise their own dreams — of a good job, a house, savings in the bank and proper schooling for the children, with work at the end of it.
But Whitlam gave them only as much — or as little — as a Big Government man can, quadrupling spending on health and education and letting wages explode by 28 per cent in a single year. Money fell from the sky. But Whitlam had little care for where it came from — so little, that the Labor Party even negotiated with Saddam Hussein’s Baath socialist party for a $500,000 loan to fight the 1975 election.
The disaster was inevitable. With the Budget blown and the international oil shock hitting a weakened economy, the Whitlam government saw unemployment nearly triple, the tax take double, the deficit blow out and inflation soar to almost 20 per cent.
Many Australians lost their jobs, their business, savings, dreams and hated Whitlam for what he’d done to them. A new generation of pragmatic Labor leaders — notably Bob Hawke — learned from the debacle. Whitlam was shunned and Hawke ministers used “Whitlamite” as the ultimate insult directed at colleagues who promised big government schemes with no care for the cost.
For these new leaders, the books had to balance and the workplaces had to tick over. It wasn’t romantic work, yet it made Hawke the great prime minister Whitlam never was.
But how far Labor has fallen. A new Whitlam emerged four decades later with Kevin Rudd, a leader with the same grandiose schemes and reckless spending, the same debt blowouts, the same incompetence, the same rising dole queues. In every way Rudd’s national broadband scheme is Whitlamite. Then Julia Gillard, an unrepentant Whitlamite, simply made things worse.
If only that were all. But Labor has forgotten other lessons it once learned from Whitlam’s fall — and many voters have forgotten, too.
Like many on the Left, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten this week praised Whitlam particularly for bringing in universal healthcare and giving people a bigger “shot at university”.
What Shorten didn’t actually spell out was that Whitlam had recklessly made both doctors’ visits and universities free. These “free” goodies, paid for by taxpayers, helped kick off our welfare culture, and later governments of both sides, alarmed by their cost, have tried to wind back Whitlam’s signature schemes.
The Hawke government reintroduced university fees and for a while brought in a Medicare co-payment, until public fury forced it to back down. Even today, the Abbott Government is trying to free us from Whitlam’s welfarism. Battling another Labor debt, it is trying to make students pay more for their degrees and plans its own Medicare co-payment.
YES, Whitlam made ambitious changes widely accepted as good, bringing in need-based funding for schools, transferring Crown lands to traditional owners, allowing no-fault divorce, legislating for equal pay for women, ending gerrymanders, decriminalising homosexuality and getting sewerage systems to many suburbs. He blew fresh air into power’s musty corridors and to many made Australia seem bigger, broader and brighter.
But other “reforms” came at