May

19

Hmmm…in the land of Oz

May 19, 2006 |

The PMO sends me Harper’s speeches…you too can sign up. Australian PM John Howard is in Ottawa and Harper’s welcoming speech was interesting. Particularily interesting was this,

Furthermore, as announced by Treasurer Peter Costello last month, Prime Minister Howard’s Government has paid down the country’s net debt.

An amazing accomplishment considering that the net debt stood at almost $100 billion when his Government took office in 1996.
pmo

Huh…How come we have not heard anything in MSM about this? I googled up this speach from Peter Costello:

As best as we can tell, tomorrow, the Commonwealth of Australia will eliminate its net debt.

That makes tomorrow:- April 21, 2006:- Debt Free Day.

It is the day we pay off the mortgage. From tomorrow our Government will no longer be a net borrower. In fact from tomorrow we will start to save – to save for some of the big challenges of the future.
government of australia, treasurer

Note this is the deficit gone. Not reduced to some fraction of GDP. Gone.

Mr. Harper might wish to pass the following on to Finance:

The policies we put in place to turn things around were as follows:-

1. Admit the problem
2. Determine to do something about it.
3. Enact a Charter of Budget Honesty to prevent, by law, false and misleading accounting designed to hide or cover up the true situation.
4. Publish independent pre-election forecasts.
5. Set up an independent mechanism for costing election promises.
6. Set medium term Budget goals and stick to them.

Our medium term goals were to balance the Budget; to halve the debt to GDP ratio by 2000, then to eliminate it; and now to improve the Australian Government net worth position.
government of australia, treasurer

Points 3-6 deserve special attention.

It can be done.


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