You're cherry picking here, look at debt levels under the current LNP government. As for Howard, the economic performance under him was underpinned by the reforms of the Hawke/Keating years. Worldwide interest rates at that time were extremely high coming at the end of an economic boom not just Australia.
Do you realise IanG that you're the only poster that's bothered to mount anything of an argument!
I agree with you re the debt levels of the current LNP. A lot of that is from the Rudd / Gillard years, but they haven't helped much. I go back to my statement about the Philosophical view point though, as i see the current Liberal party as being not much different to the Labor party of 20 years ago. High wage growth under Keating / Hawke contributed to the inflation and high interest rates at that time. It also started he end of manufacturing.
The globe does seem to go through a cyclic run of mostly conservative leaders, then mostly 'progressive'. At the moment we're in the later, with even Boris Johnson who started as a conservative, but seems to have cahnged mid stream when he married a young lefty!
I will concede to you that neither side of politics has helped the situation we face right now. Our inflation growth seems to be running a few months behind that of the USA, but we are heading in the wrong direction with inflation as we write now.
But again, i really prefer to step away from Libs v Labor as in my mind it is really elites v's the middle class, and i've said that a few times over the last few months.
Just this morning i was going over some data re gold prices, and there is a lot looking very odd with that. We have much higher demand for jewellery across the glode, demand for gold bars and coin is massively up. In fact all the data points to prices being at record levels but they ain't. Interestingly, all the largest global banks are buying the stuff up as quick as they can, so it looks like their is price manipulation going on yet again through futures and paper.
JP Morgan copped a 900 million dollar fine for manipulating the price, but thats a slap on the wrist relative to what they make out of doing what they are doing.