HOW MUCH difference did the Howard government make to Australian society? In the heat and hyperbole of political controversy it’s often difficult to get perspective on a government’s achievements and failures – particularly because the political credit and blame games tend to focus wholly on domestic and party-political factors. A comparative and historical perspective can give greater context to the claims and counter-claims. Here we compare Australia’s performance against seventeen other advanced democracies including the United States, Canada, Japan and the countries of Western Europe.

Central to the political credentials of the Howard government was its claim to have been a successful economic manager – a view to which the figures give some, but not unqualified, support. Figure 1 shows that Australia’s per capita economic growth rate moved very broadly in alignment with the average of the eighteen countries. But until after the Hawke government, Australia had a growth rate rather less than the average; then, under Keating and Howard, it grew more quickly than the average. The highest rates of growth were between 1992 and 2000 – four years under Labor, four under the Coalition – with all countries having a somewhat lower growth rate between 2001 and 2006...