http://www.petermartin.blogspot.com/200 ... nyone.htmlThe first two Howard Budgets were excellent. They cleaned up the profligacy of the last Keating budgets and began seriously implementing a small-government agenda of the sort a lot of us had been looking for for years. But after that, you dropped the ball. Subsequent budgets got slacker and slacker, especially once the mining boom kicked in. After 2001, your budgets got downright bad as you shelled out money to buy votes. After 2004, you were shovelling money out the door so fast slow-moving people were getting buried under it.
If you'd had just a little regard for the longer term you could have used the boom years to hand out tax cuts and built the surplus up further, or make a serious start on fixing our infrastructure, or get an ETS up and running so we had it built into our economy before the crisis hit.
But no, you died vomiting money to anyone registered to vote.
You also completely abandoned the small government agenda. This was a profound betrayal, one that has left Australian with a legacy of middle class welfare and a handout mentality that will take years to undo -- if any politician has the guts to try to undo it. You could have used the boom years of full employment to wean voters and businesses off government handouts. You’re the conservatives. You're the ones who are supposed to keep government in check, to reduce the burden of government on a free society. But instead your reached hitherto undreamt-of heights of profligacy.
Oh dear, hope Sheepy doesn't read this! Seems there was a mining boom, the government did piss up against a wall all the revenue from it and did not move towards small government.
Then again, if he did read it he would dismiss it and keep living in fantasy land
