Peter Martin links to Norway’s Government Pension Fund where they invest the excess oil revenue. It currently stands at US$292.5 billion growing to $500b by 2009.

Not bad for a country of 4.6 million. The whole country should be able to give up work and go on holidays any day soon!

BTW: The table is at the bottom of the (long) article, and you can get directly to the table without lots of paging down with this link

Its quite weird. They all match.

Propitiatory sacrifice of the biggest offender is probably the best option.

Best explanation I’ve heard yet, Dave Bath. Now I get it, with all those ancient sacrifices of high priests. Time to apply the blowtorch to Ratty. If it worked before it may work again.

Pablo, yeah I noticed that unsuppressible smile (almost a loud laugh) as the PM explained how perfectly banal and non-political all those ads on New WorkChoices were.

Took me back to Clarke and Dawe doing an i/v with ex-Defence Minister Reith explaining between howls of laughter how Reith (though not now a Minister) had just done the supervisory report for the Defence Permanent Head’s bonus issue payment, almost concurrently with the Head doing a report clearing Reith of any impropriety (more gales of laughter from interviewer and interviewee).

Life does seem to be imitating art.

Shit, please no, I’m already jack of the current round of government ads on TV, and have more than once seriously thought of damaging my set with anything that is close to hand, but the promise is even changing channels will not get you away from tax payer funded party political propaganda.

I hated it when Keating did it and hate it even more now, especially since in Howard’s 1996 election campaign he promised to get rid of it once and for all but has just raised it to a whole new stratospheric level.

Norway I understand controlled the exploitation of oil by the state and had a policy of investing any profits in the currency in which they were earned. So nothing was used directly on current expenditure, only the subsequent fund earnings. Something like what Cossie is doing for universities, only more so.

I think the Brits also had a national authority which arranged for private enterprise to do the work. But like us they’ve pissed the profits up the wall.

We’ve just opened it up to private enterprise, with rake-offs through royalties, company tax, tax from the employees, the service industries, the halo effect etc. And it’s created some infrastructure.

But you could argue that the resultant higher dollar and higher wages causing skill shortages elsewhere has stuffed our manufacturing, employing about a million people, as well as stuffing our farming and a fair bit else besides.

In recent years the money has been just rolling in. Cossie talks about setting things up for the future, but it’s a con to cover his vote-buying and middle-class welfare.

There is absolutely no rationale to his universities fund, it’s just plucked out of the air.

Swan has been talking non-stop about setting us up for when the resources boom is over (actually the Beazer did too) so maybe something will get through to the meeja and the voters.

Any passing economists, please set me straight about the above.

On the other hand, people may be sick to death of Ratty but when it comes to the point the economic outlook is so seemingly rosy that they may very well just plump for Ratty again. Depressing thought.

That ain’t myth, Guido, that’s pure spin.

Tory/Nats have reduced the Federal debt, and built budget surpluses, by not spending on the infrastructure that the country needs just to stand still, let alone grow. They sock it away for their retirement - whoops, pardon moi - Future Fund, et al. I shan’t mention their GST revenue windfall. At least half of the Democrat senators fought against that morsel.

We currently have one of the highest interest rates in the world. It’s the comparison with the rest of the world that is important, not what the rates were here, back when Howard was treasurer. (Or should that be Keating? No. Interest rates were lower then, relatively, I’m sure. Wink wink.)

Tax Cuts from the budget. - Unlikely, big petrol price rises are upon us and the tax cuts will all be eroded before they arrive.

A one off big rise in the first home mortgage Scam - Possibility but houses quickly rise by the amount of carrot and then some.

Cutting red tape to business - will be laughed at after all the thousands of pages of GST and Workchoices he has clogged up the tax and industrial relations areas with over the past decade.

Twisting the arm of the Reserve Bank to cut Interest Rates - Possible because even the ‘independent’ Reserve Bank Board are all appointed by the Federal Government. would be breathtaking hypocrisy.

Offer a huge and off budget ‘Fistful of Dollars’ taxcut to everyone. A bribe with a catch that Howard has form on this one from when he was Treasurer in the Fraser Government. Although it was advertised on TV and billboards all major newspaper full page ads in every major city newspaper, was declared noncore and too expensive after he won the election. Don’t think he would get away with that one again.

Abolish business taxes - possibility but would feed into the anti workchoices script and opinion polling

Anyone, who imagines Howard is not looking to the Pervez Musharraf’ bat are not watching the ball.

Rudd and Labor seems to be already out there and working on it, but surely the economy thing is going to be Ratty’s biggest game plan. The L-plate thing is just a sideshow. However I wonder if people are thinking that they are not going to vote for him despite how well he seems to manage the economy. If so, then this coming election result is going to break all the rules - wouldn’t that be great!!!!!!!!!

Think APEC, Sept 6-9th with threats from here to there.
Meedja in a frenzy and cut to free ads of our heroic PM.

A quick election and democracy overboard again.

Because while the electorate continues to flirt with Rudd they recognise the Government’s achievements and its superiority on the core issue of managing the economy.

I hope to heaven that Labor gets in just to knock that myth out of the water!

they will try everything they can. All I can say is that I hope it’s not enough.