Once more as an actual thread. #auspol https://twitter.com/dawsonej/status/1287185880550010881

Howard as treasurer left Australia’s economy in an awful mess. The Hawke-Keating government put in place reforms that spurred growth, lifted school completion rates, created universal health care, boosted welfare and reduced inequality. They created modern Australia. 2/14

In hindsight, it’s easy to criticise some of the deregulatory policies that laid the groundwork for the insecurity of our current labour market but Australian workers were more protected from the ravages of neoliberalism as practiced by Frydenberg’s heroes Thatcher & Reagan. 3/14

Hawke and Keating engaged in real, hard reforms, usually in the face of trenchant opposition from the conservative parties. This is when hysteria over debt took hold, leading Keating to try to restore a surplus at the wrong time and creating the “recession we had to have”. 4/14

When Howard & Costello took over, the economy was back to growth, and what followed was a massive mining and export boom, due to foreign investment made possible by Hawke & Keating’s reforms. So how did Howard & Costello use this windfall to set Australia up for the future? 5/14

They didn’t. They squandered that boom - the profits from selling Australia’s natural assets, our common wealth -in pursuit of electoral gain, handing out billions to wealthy people to be hoarded in shares & private property, and sold off most of our remaining public assets. 6/14

They made no investment in our economy, built nothing that would provide a return to future generations. The ‘reform’ they are remembered for is a lazy, regressive consumption tax, and a poorly designed one at that. 7/14

Responsible economic managers in the late ‘90s/early 2000s would have invested the profits of those asset sales in a sovereign wealth fund, to safeguard the future of the Australian people, funding world-class education, health care and welfare. They spent it on tax cuts. 8/14

Imagine where we would be now had they invested that money, which came from the sale of natural resources that are the birthright of all Australians, rather than using it to further their own political fortunes and put private wealth in the hands of a few. 9/14

By contrast, the Rudd and Gillard governments, with Treasurer @SwannyQLD, saved Australia from the GFC, invested in schools, public housing, a real NBN, accessible health care, paid parental leave, the NDIS, and lifted the wages of women working in social services. 10/14

They did this when the world was in recession and still managed a better rate of growth than did Howard as treasurer last time Australia faced a recession, or than has the current gov’t over the six years BEFORE this current depression. 11/14

So, tell me again which party provides Australia with better economic management? If the purpose of gov’t is to create a strong, cohesive society in which everyone is given the best chance to succeed, rather than to funnel wealth to a ruling class, the answer seems obvious. 12/14

The scary thing is that, during the biggest depression in a century, the wrong people are in charge. The LNP has never managed Australia’s economy out of a recession. Howard & Costello enjoyed the luck of presiding over a massive boom. 13/14

Only Labor has ever restored our economy after economic collapse. They did it after WWII, the recessions of the early 80s & 90s & the GFC. They did it by investing in the Australian people, reducing inequality & restoring our common wealth. That’s how you manage an economy. 14/14