Costello despite the efforts by Howard to downplay his efforts deserves credit for the position that the Australian economy now finds itself. As Peter Hartcher stated in his article this week,
"Keating imposed the structural reforms that woke Australia from its economic coma and created the beginnings of a modern, competitive economy. And Costello imposed the discipline to prevent the political system from bogging the country down in a mire of government debt"
There is no doubt that without Costello the Howard government would have blown a considerably higher proportion of the commodities boom. The result is that Australia has been able to cope with the recession better than any o
ther developed country due to the subsequent budget surpluses and negative public debt. The following graphs from the Federal Treasury show Australia's Economic growth to be higher than all of the top 20 economies and to have lower net public debt than all of the top 5 economies.
However the question that needs to be answered is - Is Australia out of the recession?? (give the poll a go). After reading Gittins from the 13/06/09 a number of points are raised. Our recent trade performance has been exceptional- why? Well the Australian dollar feel sharply which meant that exports received an advantage and imports were higher. Combined with lower demand for imports by Australians in a downturn has meant that our trade performance has been very good. In addition during a recession manufactured good demand falls- now we our economies structure is weighted towards services and commodities. The demand for these has been steady.
However with the dollar heading back to 80c/US, business confidence picking up and thus higher imports combined with the prices gained for our exports sliding the future for Australia is not rosy yet.
