A good start

It could have passed through the GFC much the same way.

All Rudd needed to do was guarantee the banks deposits (which he did) and keep an eye out for some opportunities to pump prime the economy if need be by building some vital infrastructure while prices were low.

Instead he threw billions of dollars at consumers, which they promptly and rationally saved, and implemented schemes to build infrastructure that no-one needed, like school halls, which were still being built years after the crisis was over.

You can't point to a single policy change that Labor has implemented in office which has improved the efficiency of the economy (and quite a few that have done the opposite).

Instead, by insisting that now is not the time to run a surplus (if not in the greatest boom of our lifetimes when?) their economic policy boils down to spending $50 billion more than we earn each year they've been in power.

They're right, our government debt is small compared to other countries, but at the rate they were increasing it, it wasn't going to stay that way, and voters, who've been consolidating their debt ever since the GFC, know this.

In fact, as the NDIS and Gonski are unfunded past the forward estimates, which is when their biggest impact will hit, debt is likely to accelerate.

Added to this, when they did see the need to get spending and income back into balance, it was almost always by seeing which sector of the economy they could rob.

The mining tax and bank tax are examples of kleptocratic policy where the government hit-up an industry for money it had no legitimate right to using an excuse.

At the same time, changes to the industrial relations laws, plus plenty of nods and winks to the union movement, have been moving Australia in the direction of a less flexible, and ultimately less profitable and fair, economy.

So, the economy was a looming disaster.

But what contributed far more to their defeat was the fact that they were out of touch with the average Australian.