Beautiful One Day, Broke the Next

Gene Tunny is a Brisbane-based economist and former Australian Treasury official. During the late 2000s financial crisis, while working in the Treasury Building in Canberra, he was profoundly disturbed when he witnessed visiting Queensland Treasury officials pleading for Australian government intervention to rescue the Queensland state government from its fiscal troubles. This prompted him to investigate how Queensland got itself into such a fiscal mess. This book, Beautiful One Day, Broke the Next, is his attempt to tell that story. It is based on a considerable amount of research and analysis of state budgets since the late 1980s, as well as interviews with important players, including former state Treasurers and Under Treasurers.