Governing in Good Times

Fiscal Policy and Tax Reform in Australia 1996–2006

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6233963
AutoresAlan Fenna (0000-0002-3692-7954, Curtin University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2007
Volumen42
Número2
Páginas329-350
Fecha de publicación2007-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaAustralian Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1036-1146 • E-ISSN: 1363-030X
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10361140701320059
OpenAlexW2004636137
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas9
Referencias citadas9

Over the course of a decade in office since 1996, the Howard government has pursued a policy and a politics of fiscal responsibility. Moving the budget out of deficit, retiring the Commonwealth government's accumulated debt and running continued surpluses to hedge against future demands have been the main expressions of this policy. The virtuousness of this has been contrasted with the record of previous governments, in particular with the record of the Keating government, which left office after 4 years of economic sunshine with an undisclosed deficit of $10 billion on top of a greatly swollen public debt. In addition, the Howard government has staked a claim to being a government of tax reform—having reformed the indirect tax system by introducing the GST in 2000, and having reformed the direct tax system by making a number of accompanying and following adjustments to the personal income tax. The economic and financial data suggest, however, that the Coalition's budgetary achievements must be credited much more to good fortune than to good government. The challenge—unprecedented in a generation—has been of governing in good times, indeed of governing in extraordinarily good times. At the same time, tax reform has been much more modest than many of the Howard government's market-oriented supporters would have liked

Commonwealth · Debt · Deficit spending · Economic policy · Economics · Government (linguistics · Government Debt · Political science · Politics · Quarter (Canadian coin · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Finance