The Labor Party are still in denial of the financial crisis they created 2007/2013.
Henry Ergas sums up the World's greatest treasurer and Holy praised by Chris Bowen.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...se-of-wayne-swan/story-fn7078da-1227581725294
It may be symptomatic of that “instinctive distaste for the past” that historian Keith Hancock thought characterised Australians that there is no official history of the Treasury. Chris Bowen’s The Money Men doesn’t claim to fill that gap, but it does provide vivid and insightful portraits of some of our more prominent treasurers.
In doing so, however, it also confirms Labor has learned nothing from the policy errors of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.
Assessing treasurers, as Bowen aims to do, is hardly simple. Of course, their insight, diligence and endurance must count in the balance, along with their mastery of the craft of politics; and in the end, it is surely outcomes that matter.
But what Machiavelli said of human action is especially true of those at the helm of public affairs: that all attempts at controlling events are confronted by Fortune with an irreducible element of opposition, which Machiavelli described as arising from the forces of chaos, fatality, necessity and ignorance. Only by the exercise of Virtue can Fortune be overcome, avoiding the otherwise inevitable fate of decay and defeat.
And more.
Whether the Rudd government’s stimulus spending during the global financial crisis “saved” us from recession is controversial; what is certain is that instead of subsequently winding it back, Labor kept adding to long-term spending commitments even once it was clear that the waning of the resource boom meant they could not be funded.
Rather than showing the political courage, and strength of character, to refuse to make promises that could never be honoured, Swan and his colleagues laid time bombs for their successors. But Bowen includes Swan in his pantheon of heroes, with his harshest criticism being that individual measures “could have been improved”.
Ultimately, Fadden took fiscal stewardship seriously; Swan did not. And still now, as Bowen’s discussion highlights, Labor refuses to acknowledge the mess it left behind, much less help resolve it.
Bowen has therefore missed an opportunity to honestly reconsider the future in the light of the past.
Until Labor does, it will be doomed to repeat the errors that have cost it, and Australia, dearly.
Henry Ergas sums up the World's greatest treasurer and Holy praised by Chris Bowen.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opi...se-of-wayne-swan/story-fn7078da-1227581725294
It may be symptomatic of that “instinctive distaste for the past” that historian Keith Hancock thought characterised Australians that there is no official history of the Treasury. Chris Bowen’s The Money Men doesn’t claim to fill that gap, but it does provide vivid and insightful portraits of some of our more prominent treasurers.
In doing so, however, it also confirms Labor has learned nothing from the policy errors of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years.
Assessing treasurers, as Bowen aims to do, is hardly simple. Of course, their insight, diligence and endurance must count in the balance, along with their mastery of the craft of politics; and in the end, it is surely outcomes that matter.
But what Machiavelli said of human action is especially true of those at the helm of public affairs: that all attempts at controlling events are confronted by Fortune with an irreducible element of opposition, which Machiavelli described as arising from the forces of chaos, fatality, necessity and ignorance. Only by the exercise of Virtue can Fortune be overcome, avoiding the otherwise inevitable fate of decay and defeat.
And more.
Whether the Rudd government’s stimulus spending during the global financial crisis “saved” us from recession is controversial; what is certain is that instead of subsequently winding it back, Labor kept adding to long-term spending commitments even once it was clear that the waning of the resource boom meant they could not be funded.
Rather than showing the political courage, and strength of character, to refuse to make promises that could never be honoured, Swan and his colleagues laid time bombs for their successors. But Bowen includes Swan in his pantheon of heroes, with his harshest criticism being that individual measures “could have been improved”.
Ultimately, Fadden took fiscal stewardship seriously; Swan did not. And still now, as Bowen’s discussion highlights, Labor refuses to acknowledge the mess it left behind, much less help resolve it.
Bowen has therefore missed an opportunity to honestly reconsider the future in the light of the past.
Until Labor does, it will be doomed to repeat the errors that have cost it, and Australia, dearly.
