Rights and wrongs

THE right government for the wrong reasons – that’s my summation of last Saturday’s election result.

The Howard Government deserved another term. The only thing the Liberals have really done badly is in their handling of the introduction of the GST and it would have been unfair to see that painful process wasted by partial roll-backs, let alone Labor reap the benefits of a changed tax system.

Having said that, the Liberal’s partial roll-back on income tax could be taken further.

Another thing favouring a return of the Liberals is a clear sense that good government policy takes time to deliver.

If we see out a full term, the next poll will be after about nine years of Conservative reign. That will be the real test of their power.

The Libs have been better at micro-managing reform than their Labor predecessors. The sweeping deregulation of the 1980s had equally sweeping impact in the early 1990s, along with a devastating recession.

With the exception of the tax system, the Liberals have tended to pick off sectors for reform one by one. Pushing the boundaries in certain industries or demographics but leaving room to pull back if the reaction is overwhelmingly bad.

The result has been steady incremental change, which is good for business and politically more sensible.

Labor did not do enough to deserve a win. Big picture talk of improving education has all been heard before. It costs money and people are too concerned about the future right now for a high-spending government.

Education is important, but Labor has to find another way of attracting talent here without taxing those of us who have chosen to live and work here.

WA’s Labor Government did not help. Its premium property tax scared everyone and made many believe that Federal Labor was quite capable of repeating such poor decision making.

So why is this the right Government for the wrong reasons?

At the end of the day, Howard’s team played the race card. No matter how strenuously they deny it, they needed to win back those One Nation fringe dwellers and a tough stance on a few leaky boats was enough to do it.

For the rest of the population who voted Liberal, that was just an embarrassing sideline to the real game – the global economy … where we are the tiny, leaky ship on the turbulent economic seas.

With the Asian crisis, Howard seemed to navigate these troubled waters more smoothly than his predecessors. Let’s hope we are more successful in our current journey than those asylum seekers have been in theirs.

Number’s up

IF anyone is any doubt about the economy’s downturn, the number of stories about redundancies should be evidence enough that some serious restructuring is taking place.

For the first time I can remember, I know of one family where both breadwinners with young kids have been made redundant.

In neither case is it by choice.

While it is easy to counsel these people with stories that most people made redundant are better off in the longer term, that period of uncertainty is clearly a stressful time.

And there are many factors that influence the degree of stress.

For the younger set, the current downturn serves as a reminder to be prepared in all facets of life for change, which can manifest itself in so many ways without any warning.