Call me a cynic, but I do have to shake my head at the naiveté of apologists on both sides of politics who believe that, in the face of a global recession, anything done or not done by the government of a minnow country like Australia is going to have a significant effect on our economy.
Stimulation packages and public works projects may ease the pain in the short term, but the main reason we survived the GFC virtually unscathed was a resources boom driven by an expanding Chinese economy. Now the inevitable has happened and while we will probably be spared the nightmare of, for example, the Greek or Spanish economies, there is no doubt we are going to have to do some serious belt tightening; and there is virtually NOTHING any government - be it Labor or Coalition can do to avoid that.