big blowouts

In his column in The Australian today, Christopher Pearson has a go at Julia Gillard over her guilt-by-association with Mark Latham. Pearson is particularly scathing about Labor's Medicare Gold proposal and writes it could've led to a massive budget blowout if they'd won. It's strange that Pearson has plenty of criticism for Labor but doesn't mention in this context the Liberal Party's Medicare policies which led to a huge blowout and broken election promise on the Safety-Net.
Another thing I found interesting in Pearson's article was this:

The other elements of Gillard's panacea--delivered with the usual flattened vowels and that strangely affectless tone--are "bold social policy and economic policy that delivers prosperity for all". Perhaps by the time she next proposes herself for a leadership role, or the shadow treasury, someone will have explained to her that governments can't reasonably hope to deliver on millennial fantasies of prosperity for all and that most of us would settle for modest fiscal competence.

Which is what Australia has had to settle for with the Liberal party--modest fiscal competence. I thought the Liberals were meant to be the party of the aspirational voters. You'd think Pearson would expect as much from Government as Government expects from us.

(btw, I haven't read any more of the Quarterly Essay on Howard etc yet that I mentioned below. Hopefully I'll get to finish it over the Long Wekend when my son is with his father.)