Margo I finished your book finally. I previously wrote when I was up to the chapter on John Dubya Howard's attack on charities. The chapter written by the economist ex-patriate left me a little flabbergasted by the way this self -confessed lib cannot break the mould of its trend-setters. It is fine to express a point of view, but a view should not contain a lie. This guest writer of yours was going on about companies going broke (HIH, Ansett etc) due to its directors. In the next breath he stated that Kim Beazley's 'black hole of 1996 for $8 billion almost sent Australia broke. This is such rubbish especially coming from an economist. The facts are that the economy was going through its cycle at the time the libs won in 1996. The deficit was no big deal as it was self-correcting as history shows. If this writer is going to keep making the same cheap shots about Labor's black hole then, he and all Libs should know that when Labor won in 1983 the budget deficit was $12 billion dollars (source John Stone). The 12b was huge and was such that it would have got worse had Keating and Hawke not addressed the problem and reconstructed and revived the architecture of our economy. Back to the $12b of 1983, when John Howard was the treasurer, if Labor's $8b was expressed in 1996 $$$$ terms (npv) it would be $5.4b, Libs $12b high inflation (actually stagflation) high unemployment etc. Interest rates were also the highest under J dubya Howard. Its bad enough that we have to read this crap in the Tele, your economist should check facts before he repeats the same Lib/Costello bullshit. So this should be corrected in your book. Margo you also should have known better, give them an inch and they will take a mile. Let's hope to fix the system by people being diligent about weighing up policies and track records themselves before they vote in the next election, we cannot rely on anyone but ourselves.