Word: howard
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...trust to keep the Australian economy strong and to protect family living standards?" Howard asked at the start of the election campaign. The answer has not been in doubt for a long time, given that the Labor alternatives have been miserable. According to a Newspoll published last week, 58% of those questioned said Howard was more capable of handling the Australian economy (Latham was preferred by 27%). Since the conservative government was elected in March 1996, the economy has grown by one-third. Unemployment has fallen from 8.5% to 5.7%. Mortgage rates have dropped from 10.5% to 6.5%. Inflation...
...household indebtedness is at a record level. Consumers are paying a higher proportion of their income to service their borrowings (and thus are more vulnerable, as is the economy, to a fall in asset prices or a rise in interest rates). Under Howard and Costello, foreign debt has doubled to $A393 billion (equivalent to 50% of national output). No wonder voters think the cost of money is the marker for economic safe hands - they're geared to the back teeth, and interest rates will only have to rise by a few points to burn the most vulnerable. As soon...
...Howard and his ministers have grown accustomed to taunting Labor about the high interest rates that choked the economy to a standstill at the start of the 1990s. That interest rates have stayed low, as they have internationally, is as much a matter of luck as prudent policy. But it's also the payoff for market reforms over two decades that have raised productivity in almost every part of the Australian economy. Beating down inflation and expectations of future price rises for goods, services and labor has been the country's most impressive economic achievement. In any case, an independent...
...legacy of the profligate Whitlam era (1972-75) and the wild ride of the Hawke-Keating years is that Latham will be forced to eat up much of this campaign pleading the case that Labor can be trusted with managing the money. Howard and Costello can continue spending taxpayer funds - outbidding Labor on health spending or tax cuts - and not carry the stain of profligacy. Appearing as a pale imitation of his former self, Latham signed a low-interest-rate guarantee a few days into the campaign. The stunt reeked of the forlorn Crean years and brought gleeful ridicule from...
...does the Howard-Costello partnership measure up on these points? Is it looking beyond the three-year election cycle? Although some may grumble about the 10% goods and services tax introduced in 2000, it was a necessary adjustment and modernization of the tax system that required bureaucratic toil and a willingness to take political risks, but not great courage or imagination. Reforming wage bargaining and introducing user-pays for education and health across the board have been done gradually. A fairly benign, mainly symbolic, deal such as the Free Trade Agreement with the U.S. is a metaphor for the Howard...