A pox on both your houses - Bernie Fraser lets fly at both ALP and Liberal Parties

Former Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser isn't the most dynamic of speakers...which probably is partly why this knockout interview with him didn't get wider coverage and commentary.

But it should have.

In this ABC 7:30 Report interview he lets fly at the Labor Party and the Liberal Party:

In terms of my benchmark of competence, fairness and compassion, they've both failed, and they're both failing still, and the more distressing thing is I don't see a way out from either side.

Like most (all?) economists, he's scathing of the haste with which the ALP is pursuing a budget surplus this year:

This is another attempt to try to rationalise what is really a pretty poor political commitment to deliver a budget surplus next year irrespective of the economic circumstances. I think that's a dud policy.

It just doesn't make sense because on 1st May the Reserve Bank could well reduce interest rates by 25, maybe even 50 points. On 8th May we've got the prospect of the Treasurer introducing a policy that's going to tighten fiscal policy quite significantly. 

And he has scant regard for the Tea Party mimicking of Abbott's Liberals either:

To listen to the Coalition spokespeople, I hear echoes of the Republicans and the more extreme Tea Party Republicans. All this folksy nonsense about governments have to live within their means, governments have to behave like households and like businesses, that government spending is bad, deficits are bad, debt's bad - all this to me is nonsense really because governments are not like households, they're not like businesses, they have responsibilities that go beyond.

There's more. It's Flash so I can't embed it here - you'll have to jump over to the ABC site. There is a full transcript for iThing users.