Most of my depiction of Costello as treasurer shows him with his hands in his pockets... now you know why...

Former Labor prime minister Paul Keating has blamed Australia's current economic woes on "lazy" former Liberal treasurer, Peter Costello.

Mr Keating said that productivity dropped to one per cent "under that lazy Costello".

"Dumb, dumb, dumb," Mr Keating muttered to much laughter from a faithful audience at the Melbourne Writers' Festival, a crowd which included feminist Germaine Greer.

"If you're paying wages at five (per cent) and productivity at one (per cent), you've got a four per cent inflation rate," he said.

http://news.smh.com.au/national/costello-lazy-on-economy-keating-20080823-40yv.html

Former treasurer Peter Costello warns tax reform hard without 'padding' in public opinion, more difficult than balancing budget

Australia's longest-serving treasurer Peter Costello has warned the government that tax reform will be difficult and that it may not have the political capital to pull it off.

"I say if you're going to have a discussion about tax reform it's preferable to have some padding amongst public opinion because this is hard," Mr Costello told the ABC's 7.30 program.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-12-17/costello-says-tax-reform-harder-than-balancing-budget/5974576

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I'd like to stop laughing but I can't... "harder to do tax reform than to balance budget" says the former laziest  treasurer... Ho-ho-ho, I know it's the silly season but balancing budget in this present climate is like using an elephant to weigh the atom... Talking about "political capital" is like talking about people with numbers tattooed on their forehead. And how is our sad lazy hackneyed Hockey who promised us before the G20 meeting that "we would tackle the "corporate tax cheats" BUT in a small line on page 117 of his MYFEOHGFDT%$#@! document more or less abandoned the idea... without much explanation... Possibly it would be too hard.... So why the grand standing to all the G20 finance ministers?... Another photo op that was a big con before a big piss up......

Governments around the world missed a golden opportunity to raise "unbelievable amounts of money" by putting a tax on access to the internet when it was in its infancy, according to former Treasurer Peter Costello.

Speaking to Fairfax Media in his new role as chairman of free-to-air broadcaster Nine Entertainment Co, Mr Costello recalled sitting in his Parliamentary office in the 1990s in the early days of the web, and pondering the vast future revenue such a levy could generate.

"I was Treasurer at the time. It would have been the easiest thing in the world, by the way, for governments around the world to have put a charge on the internet. It wouldn't have had to be very big but it would have raised a motza," said Mr Costello.