Costello says:
"Over 11 and 1/2 years we had delivered the most successful period of economic management in Australian history. We had lowered interest rates, brought unemployment to historic lows, eliminated Commonwealth net debt and managed the longest period of uninterrupted economic growth our country had ever known. We had turned Australia from the 'sick man of Asia' into a respected regional leader. We had built an Age of Prosperity. That would be the verdict of history. It was a record of which we can all be proud."
The myth is that the Liberals know how to run and grow the economy for the benefit of everyone, or in more common fashion, they know how to "look after money" ... better than Labor.
But the claim is revealed as myth making through the more serious critical examination of the Australian economic "performance" in the latest (and timely) Journal of Australian Political Economy (no. 61, June 2008).
For example, Ashley Lavelle, using data from the Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund, and individual commentators, can say:
"Australia's average economic growth rate in the 1990's was slightly better than the 1980's, about the same as the 1970s, but much lower than the 1960s and lower than the 1950s and 40s.... The 1990s figure is also only just above the 20th century average of 3.4%."
And so the myth busting continues in devastating fashion.
Lavelle, and this issue of JAPE generally, have bigger fish to fry than just the performance of the Howard government. The whole issue critiques the neoliberal prescription (and also what I call the neolaboral perspective of new Labor) to save capitalist economies from themselves and, describes the endemic tendencies to destructive instability and crisis creation, both within the years of expansion and afterwards.
Justifiably, there are other "thinkers" who get the serve they deserve, including the shallow and rather stupid Bill Shorten who in his maiden speech urged (on behalf of someone) that "old class war conflicts should finally be pronounced dead."
Furthermore, the information and analysis in this issue, confirms the relevance and strength of a class perspective on what is happening in Australian society. (Absolutley appropriate and necessary, even after the defeat of Howard's neoliberalism at the 07 election by working class mobilisation.)
Not as many people read the JAPE as it deserves. But, if you are looking for information and analysis that will help you understand what is going on in the world right now, it is essential.
You will get
- a historical perspective - short and longer term;
- an international and internationalist perspective;
- clarity on growth - recession and boom bust;
- hard information that helps you understand inequality through the boom and fight for more equality;
- the inadequacy of dependence on the minerals boom;
- and much more.
But, unfortunately, what you will not get is very much in the way of an alternative political strategy. In Australia, that remains very much in recession.
