| SlayerRondo said: The Labor party would have had to have achieved things to talk up for that to work as a strategy. They ran up a large deficit, introduced highly unpopular new taxes and tried to implement an internet filter within Australia. |
They saved Australia from recession that all of the other developed countries suffered from (and were praised by the IMF for it), they kept interest rates low, they kept jobless numbers relatively low, they set up the emissions trading scheme (which Gillard stupidly allowed the Liberals to call a "carbon tax" - it was never a tax at all) which meant that the biggest drop in emissions ever occurred in 2013 (and the only other two times it dropped at all was in 2009 and 2010, when talk of the ETS first began), removed Work Choices, boosted funding to education significantly, invested in new infrastructure that private companies weren't willing to invest in but are going to reap the benefits of, and much more.
Yes, there were downsides. All governments have downsides. But the point is that they let the Liberals define the terms of the election, with all of the focus on the downsides and none on their achievements. And what's more, the Liberals are set to do even worse on all of the same fronts (and it was obvious that would happen, yet Labor never called them out on it).
