[ChrisV]

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What a terrible result. For those who don't know, the winners are the Labour Party, 70% of whose members are former trade union officials. They're basically communists who believe in increasingly socialized services, massive budget deficits and no respect for freedom of association. A labour victory basically means an end to economic conservatism and responsible economic reform which as kept Australia going strong for the last 11 years.

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What planet is this from? While things turned bad towards the end of Keating's tenure, the Hawke government was a candidate for best government we have ever had in economic terms. A refresher:

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Among other things, the Hawke Government floated the Australian dollar, deregulated the financial system, dismantled the tariff system, privatised state sector industries, ended subsidisation of loss-making industries, and sold off the state-owned Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

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Doesn't sound much like rampaging communists to me. And who was treasurer in the government which preceded them? Oh right, it was Howard. How did he do?

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During Howard's tenure as treasurer, inflation had peaked at 12.5% in September 1982, and interest rates peaked at 22% on 8 April 1982.

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And the top marginal tax rate was 70% - which was promptly slashed by Hawke/Keating. And what reforms have we had in the modern Howard government? There was the GST, a bit of dabbling in privatisation, and AWAs and WorkChoices. Labor is not proposing to repeal any of this except WorkChoices, which is pretty weak sauce anyway. Meanwhile, the size of government has been relentlessly expanding. According to the OECD:

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Over the past 10 years of John Howard's Government, the personal income tax burden in Australia had risen from 11.7 per cent to 12.6per cent of GDP.

This has reversed gains made during the previous Labor government, during which there was a lowering of the personal tax burden between 1985 and 1995.

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A rough calculation by LDP candidate Terje Petersen indicates that:

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With the latest budget figures now out I did a quick back of the envelope calculation to find that our Federal government services now costs us 34% more than it did a decade ago. That’s after adjusting for population and inflation and omitting the GST cost component.

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Labor ran this election on a platform of spending less than the Coalition and cutting down on government bureaucracy with their vaunted "razor gang". Now might be a good time for you to check up on whether Liberal rhetoric matches up with the facts.