Howard gov wasteful spending - IMF study

It's official. The Howard gov was the biggest spending gov in the last 50 years. All that middle class welfare he dished out to buy votes, it's taking years to undo the mess he's created. Today 23% of all welfare paid out by the Australian gov goes to the top 40% of wage and salary earners. That's obscene when the unemployment benefit is diabolically low, and poverty levels are around 13%.

Of course we'll still get the same old lies from the conservatives claiming that they're way better at running the economy than Labor. Interesting they use the spending on the GFC stimulus as an example of this, when the IMF doesn't rate it as wasteful.
 

Australia's most needlessly wasteful spending took place under the John Howard-led Coalition government rather than under the Whitlam, Rudd or Gillard Labor governments, an international study has found. 

The International Monetary Fund examined 200 years of government financial records across 55 leading economies. 

It identifies only two periods of Australian "fiscal profligacy" in recent years, both during John Howard's term in office - in 2003 at the start of the mining boom and during his final years in office between 2005 and 2007. 

The Rudd government's stimulus spending during the financial crisis doesn't rate as profligate because the measure makes allowance for spending needed to stabilise the economy.  

The Whitlam Labor government of 1972 to 1975 also escapes censure. 

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The IMF study mirrors findings of a 2008 Australian Treasury study that found real government spending grew faster in the final four years of the Howard government than in any four-year period since the 1990s recession. 

The number of spending decisions worth more than $1 billion climbed from one in the first Howard budget to nine in the last. The proportion of savings measures fell from one-third of budget measures at the start of the Howard era to 1.5 per cent at the end. Read more