Howard squandered pre-GFC gold: Gillard PRIME Minister Julia Gillard has attacked the former Howard government for squandering the rivers of gold flowing before the financial crisis, saying there should be no false nostalgia. In a speech in Sydney, Ms Gillard said the upcoming September 14 election would not be a contest about some "lost golden age" and nor was it time for "cosy bed-time stories." "There should be no false nostalgia for the days that preceded the global financial crisis: the days when our household savings ratio hit zero, when easy credit and rapidly rising terms of trade created a sugar hit that could never be sustained," she said on Thursday. Even then, with rivers of gold flowing into federal coffers, a priceless opportunity was squandered. Ms Gillard said if the Howard coalition government had collected the same amount of revenue as a unit of gross domestic product (GDP) as her government now does, it would have spent its last seven years in office in deficit. "But rather than invest in the future, this (coalition government) revenue was spent on quick fixes, at the same time bequeathing a legacy of declining productivity, rising inflation and skills shortages," she told the Foreign Correspondents Association function. Ms Gillard also turned her attention to the coalition and its criticism of Labor's strategy in dealing with the fallout of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC) and the resulting rise in government net debt. "Anyone who pretends this debt should not exist is effectively denying the GFC happened," she said. Anyone who pretends the GFC didn't happen should be treated as the same kind of amusing curiosity as those who believe the earth is flat. The prime minister also talked up the need for Australia to prepare for the Asian Century, saying that by 2030 there would be more than three billion middle class consumers in the region. Australia was already "pushing on an open door." "But once we enter, everything that follows depends on our skill and ingenuity," she said. Nothing is guaranteed to us - success is not pre-ordained. Ms Gillard said the federal election would be a test of which side of politics had a blueprint for Australia's future in Asia. And it is only Labor that has that plan. The Labor strategy for Asia rested on five pillars, Ms Gillard said - skills and education, high speed broadband, clean energy and innovation, competition and deregulation, and tax reform. "These are the five pillars this government has identified as key to increasing jobs, prosperity and productivity," she said. Ahead of her trip to China on Friday, Ms Gillard said she would be promoting trade and economic interests and sharing views on global and regional security challenges. "The timing of this visit so soon after the new leadership has entered into office is deliberate," she said. Ms Gillard cited Australia's rapidly evolving relationship with China and the government's high-level political oversight of that relationship. "And more broadly, it reflects the centrality of Asia in the story of our nation for the 21st century," she said.