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Costello - Next PM of Australia?

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bunyip said:
To see Keating on TV throwing stones at Howard and Costello - two men who were always streets ahead of him in terms of both character and ability - is almost too much to bear.
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Gee wonder what your definition of character is. Someone who couldn't stand Asians, refugees.
Funny how his electorate ended up being in a large Asian community. Maybe if he had his way most of those people wouldn't have been in the country to vote him out.
 

Yep, you could be right. And that might have been a good thing.
I've never yet seen anyone put forward a good reason why Australia should be a dumping ground for refugees.
 

Not quite right beeman.

It is commonly documented that immigration (and particularly Asian immigration) actually increased under the Coalition reign.

The myth that Howard was anti Asian stems from Keatings bleatings that only he "understood" Asia and that a Howard government would drive Asia away from Australia. Proven to be a load of garbage, and it must peeve keating off no end seeing how Australia was able to maintain cloase ties with the US AND at the same time make such inroads into Indoneasia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan and China.

With regard to Tampa - don't hold up part of a refugee policy as being clear evidence of wide-held and far reaching racist anti-asian policy. It doesn't stack up. In fact in many polls taken before the election, the Asian community in Bennelong was satisfied with Howard.

Duckman
 

Opposition leader John Howard first flagged the concept of the One Australia policy on a trip to Perth in July 1988, having recently returned from a visit with Margaret Thatcher in Britain. One Australia was to be the name of the Liberal-National Coalition's immigration and ethnic affairs policy.[1]
During an interview on the John Laws radio programme on 1 August 1988, Howard detailed the policy, expressing his preference to bias immigration towards skilled applicants rather than family reunion.[2] Later that afternoon, on the ABC PM programme, Howard discussed the policy in relation to Asian immigration to Australia:
"I do believe that if it is - in the eyes of some in the community - that it's too great, it would be in our immediate-term interest and supporting of social cohesion if it were slowed down a little, so the capacity of the community to absorb it was greater."[3][4]
​
Howard's Shadow Finance Minister, John Stone, elaborated, saying "Asian immigration has to be slowed. It's no use dancing around the bushes".[5] Ian Sinclair, National Party leader in the Coalition, also supported the policy, saying "If there is any risk of an undue build-up of Asians against others in the community, then you need to control it. I certainly believe that at the moment we need [...] to reduce the number of Asians." [6][3]
There were widespread objections to the policy from within the Liberal Party, including from Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett, New South Wales Premier Nick Greiner, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, as well as former immigration ministers Ian Macphee and Michael MacKellar.[5]
The Labor government sought to quickly exploit Howard's Asian remarks by introducing a parliamentary motion rejecting the use of race to select immigrants. Howard opposed this motion.[7][8][9] In an unusual show of dissent, three Liberal MPs, Ian Macphee, Steele Hall and Phillip Ruddock, defied their leader by crossing the floor and voting with the Labor government.[10]
Criticising his own party's policy, Liberal MP Steele Hall said in a speech to Parliament:
"The question has quickly descended from a discussion about the future migrant intake to one about the level of internal racial tolerance. The simple fact is that public opinion is easily led on racial issues. It is now time to unite the community on the race issue before it flares into an ugly reproach for us all."[10]
​
 
Steering back to the thread topic, Peter Costello will not be the next PM of Australia. He may or may not be, but ill put my case forward for why i think he won't be.

Australians did fairly well under his "steer" according to just about every economic indicator. Whether it had much to do with stewardship is debatable according to which side of the fence you sit on. What most people can agree on is that the rosy picture of the past is coming to an end and that the next few years will indeed be challenging to a range of domestic/external factors.

Now, if you were Pete and everyone around you attributes the economic success of the past as a result of your handling, would you risk putting your hand up for the leadership at a time where things seem to be dropping off (and possibly for an extended period). Probably not! - and that is why Pete will not be the next PM of Australia. For the record i think he will remain in politics and only challenge the leadership when he feels that the economy has turned the corner.
 

I too feel that Costello will stay in politics, but will bide his time in choosing the most advantageous time to put his hand up for the top job.
As for his feelings on immigration, I neither know nor care. Even if he's against Asian immigration and importation of refugees as claimed by the bee man, neither he nor any other politician is likely risk a backlash by embarking on a policy of banning them or even severely curtailing the numbers we bring in. More's the pity.
 
Julia said:
Skint, given your vehement criticism of Costello as Treasurer, may we assume you have complete confidence in Mr Swan's ability to guide Australia once more to financial health?
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No please do not assume that. Although it would be unwise to go gangbusters and restore spending in research & development, education and other important infrastructure in one fell swoop, I would have liked to have seen more evidence of what was promised. That said, if Australia follows the rest of the world over the economic cliff, a golden opportunity would exist for re-investment at a time when the economy is in need of a stimulus package, rather than when inflation is very high as it is now. Surpluses are most often, but not exhaustively, a positive thing. Spending is inevitably higher when elections are closer, by whoever the incumbent is. Hopefully, by the next election, Labor will have come good on their re-investment promises. Time will tell. Further, whilst Labor were locked in to delivering their election tax promises, they wimped on the opportunity to make the tax cuts value neutral. This was my post on page 2, 15/8/08

"Its a pity with such a big win at the last election, Labour hasn't taken the opportunity to do what needed to be done in their first budget. What they came up with was a bit less inflationary than what the coalition were proposing, but they needed, I think, to go further. Whilst they needed to match part of the Lib's tax cuts to get them over the line, I think they could have delivered the cuts with a commensurate increase in super contributions. The long term benefits to the economy at large, and also to individuals, would have far outweighed any short term benefit and also dampened pressure on inflation and interest rates. In short, an improved but insufficient budget IMHO"

As far as stuctural reform goes, one of Labor's acid tests will be the flagged reform of the tax system. If they get it right, it will be evidence of positive structural reform. If they don't, big smack. Again, time will tell. As is obvious, I believe Labor has achieved a hell of a lot more in regard to economic reform than the coalition over the past 25 years. Given that it is better to view a party's record over a full term, I think it is a bit early for definitive assessments regarding the current government one way or another. I live in hope based on previous reform, but am not blinded by optimism. I am glad, however, to see the last of Costello, who did have the opportunity to reform many things for more than a decade and failed.

Howard stated in a recent speech that he was fearful that economic reform would halt under Labor. Aside from the fact his government didn't actually reform anything, I found it interesting that a) he's finally recognised the reforms of the Labor government and b) he excluded the period when he was treasurer, which finished 25 years ago.
 
I should add that Howard in his speech was referring to reform being curtailed after 25 years of reform.
 
Costello is about as popular as Dennis Ferguson. He'll be Prime Minister when hell freezes over. He's our Dick Cheney.
 
Skint, thanks for your comments. Good to know you retain some objectivity.
I made the same point about the tax cuts more appropriately being directed into super. To me, this was the first test the Rudd/Swan government failed.
They decided the populist "keeping of an election promise" was more important than doing the right thing for the economy.

I don't know what will happen with Costello. I do know that I'm becoming increasingly irritated by his silence. He can, of course, quite reasonably say that he offered his decision months ago when he elected to go to the back bench, that he himself has had nothing to say on the whole Liberal leadership subject, and that all the present conjecture is generated by the media - he has had nothing to do with it.

Hard not to conclude, isn't it, that he figures the longer he delays making any comment, the more books he is likely to sell.

Whatever his reasons, his silence does not reflect well on his character.
 
We would still be in this same economic session if Costello was there or not.

I sorta feel sorry for Rudd. He's getting all the blame for the soon-to-be recession but it would be exactly the same no matter who was PM
 
xoa said:
Costello is about as popular as Dennis Ferguson. He'll be Prime Minister when hell freezes over. He's our Dick Cheney.
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ROFL!!:iagree:

Thats gold!
Yeah I'd never vote for the "Only interested in upper class Liberals"

He does nothing for me.
 
Dowdy said:
We would still be in this same economic session if Costello was there or not.

I sorta feel sorry for Rudd. He's getting all the blame for the soon-to-be recession but it would be exactly the same no matter who was PM
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In fact it would be worse.
 
Duckman#72 said:
Not quite right beeman.

It is commonly documented that immigration (and particularly Asian immigration) actually increased under the Coalition reign.
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I wasn't talking about the immigratin policy of the late 90's when Liberals actually had any say.
My reference was to comments he made in the lead up to the 1987 election.
I think Kauri's reference was one made after the election. I recall some other comments in 1986 I think that were clearer on his anti Asian views.

Also shows IMO why he said and did nothing on the Pauline Hanson issue.

As for Costello, did you do anything different in the Asian Crisis than what Swan is doing now. He talked up the economy as far as I can remember but did not actually instigate any changes.

Oh and as head of Treasury, surely he should be held responsible for selling 50% of Australia's gold reserves at what were rock bottom prices.
Even compounding bond returns at 7% from when the sales are, would have only returned about 96% to last year.
Most of the gold was sold at around $300-350 an ounce if I remember.
 
John Howard may have made many unwise decisions, but his decision not to hand the reins of power to this smirking gutless wonder was a wise one.
 
lol - its fun to be educated isn't it Duckman.

Kevin Rudd getting blamed for the recession is as silly as attributing all the growth in the recent period to Costello. Have a look at the growth of various national sharemarket indices in the last 12 years. Notice anything similar? Was that because of Costello. Was the growth in resource needs/prices anything to do with Costello? And yet these are the primary reasons that Australia has had a strong economy for the past 12 years. Notice anything about the sharemarket action recently around the world. How Rudd could possibly be attributed with this is funny.

It is well documented (and if you study economics you will learn this), that the vast majority of microeconomic reform that expanded and opened up Australia's economy was done by and during the Hawke/Keating governments. You can read a little about it at the wiki entry below

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microeconomic_reform

Talking about bleating Duckman, that is all the Liberal party did about the first budget and how bad it would be for interest rates, inflation and the economy (do you remember that - only a few months ago, so you have a better chance). On the other hand, the RBA said the budget would be mildly contractionary (what is required to stem inflation). I know who I would rather believe about the national economy. I personally would have rather seen them break some election promises to bring in a tighter budget but I understand that they felt they needed to be true to their word prior to the election. I mean blind people (and those from the right) would accuse them of either being economically irresponsible or lying before the election whatever they did.
 
Calliope said:
John Howard may have made many unwise decisions, but his decision not to hand the reins of power to this smirking gutless wonder was a wise one.
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By allowing the speculation that he might take up the leadership of the Libs to continue all this time, presumably in the hope that it will increase his book sales, he has confirmed his shallow character.

What will happen to Dr Nelson's position now? Will this cause a rush of blood to the heads of the party to encourage Malcolm Turnbull to take over?
 
Garpal Gumnut said:
I have it on good information that Peter Costello has decided to take leadership of the Liberal Party.

Next stop Prime Minister.

The interrigium of Kev07-10 is close to an end...
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This friend of yours gg, lol
what was he smoking at the time, you recall?
 
Calliope said:
John Howard may have made many unwise decisions, but his decision not to hand the reins of power to this smirking gutless wonder was a wise one.
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One of the few he got right in the last half of his time as PM.
 
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