10 May

The myth is still out there. But the truth is as well: "The conservatives did not spend conservatively at all, it turns out. Howard and Costello engaged in net new spending of $133 billion, and net tax cuts of another $117 billion, says Anthony, a former budget analyst with the Treasury and the Finance Department. This is an overall fiscal giveaway of $250 billion, funded mainly by windfall tax gains courtesy of the mining boom that arrived in 2004. Separately, the Treasury has estimated that the Howard-Costello government spent, or gave away as tax cuts, a staggering 94 per cent of the windfall gains delivered by the mining boom's first phase. Budget nights in the final years of Howard and Costello were like "Christmas night in the pirates' cave," Anthony observes."