Either John Howard and Peter Costello believe that they have supernatural powers, or they are desperately lying in order to win the federal election and implement their plan to cut taxes for the rich and increase them for everyone else.
Since the Australian dollar skydived against the US dollar last month, Howard and Costello have insisted repeatedly that "Australia will not have a recession" and will remain "the strongman of Asia".
But Howard and Costello know they can't prevent Australia being engulfed by the world economic crisis. They know that it is going to inflict pain on working people in Australia. They are simply denying reality.
Already, the government has been forced to reduce its economic growth forecast from 3% to 2.75% for this year. Yet still it insists that the economy will grow by 3.5% each year between 1999 and 2000.
Given that most economists regard a 3.5% growth rate as wildly optimistic, why are Howard and Costello sticking to this figure? Because the GST "compensation" measures in their tax package are dependent on a 3.5% growth rate and a big budget surplus.
If the government's claims of 3.5% annual growth and a big budget surplus turn out to be false, it won't bother Howard and Costello if they are re-elected: they can always renege on parts of the "compensation" package and cut deeply into spending on public services.
Australia will be, and already is being affected by the world economic crisis. Not only have the economic growth forecasts been reduced, but unemployment estimates have been increased from 7.75% to 8%; Australian manufacturing firms are suffering the lowest profits in two years, with only 58% of them operating above 70% capacity; the price of commodities on the world market is continuing to decline, affecting Australian exports; and massive overproduction has led to a saturation of world markets resulting in a decline in the price of almost all internationally traded goods and services.
When Costello is interviewed by the media, he has one response for everything: What will the Coalition do about the world economic crisis? Implement a GST. What will the Coalition do about unemployment? Implement a GST.
Costello does not explain how a GST will solve these problems. This is because a GST can't solve them. Costello's only concerns are getting the Coalition re-elected and the GST in place. He and his cronies are prepared to tell whatever lies are necessary to achieve those goals.
The Howard government is desperately hoping that the election will be over before the impact of the world economic crisis on Australia is fully evident. That's largely why Howard called an early election.
Regardless of whether the Coalition or the Labor Party is elected on October 3, the economic crisis — an inevitable result of the anarchic nature of capitalism — will hit Australia.
If the price of commodities and other goods and services are being driven down as a result of over-supplied world markets, there is nothing that one capitalist government can do to prevent being affected.
Whichever party wins government, we can be sure that it will attempt to make workers, not the capitalists responsible, pay for the crisis. It will attempt to quarantine capitalist profits from the crisis by driving down wages, driving up unemployment, making us work harder, restricting access to welfare and privatising more public assets and services.
But the ability of either party to implement such an anti-worker program is not assured. It will depend on our ability to defend our rights against government attack.