in incomings, Keating and his ministerial colleagues led a process to significantly reduce Government outlays instead, resulting in some criticism from the grassroots of the Labor Party, who opposed cuts to spending. Despite the criticism, the Government was able to produce a national budget surplus for the years 1988, 1989 and 1990, with the surplus of 1988 proving to be the largest budget surplus in Australian history. During the campaign for the 1987 election, Keating was credited as dealing a "fatal" blow to the Liberal-National Coalition's hopes for victory, after giving a press conference in which he exposed a significant accounting error in the costings the Liberal Party had released to demonstrate how its economic policies would be paid for. Then-Opposition Leader John Howard accepted the error, and subsequent opinion polling reported that the mistake greatly contributed to Labor's vote in what proved to be a landslide victory. Keating's later tenure as treasurer was heavily criticised by some for consistently high interest rates, which Keating argued was necessary to reduce economic growth gradually so that demand for imports did not grow out of control. Throughout the 1980s, both the global and Australian economies grew quickly, and by the late 1980s, inflation had grown to around 9%. By 1988, the Reserve Bank of Australia began tightening monetary policy, and household interest rates peaked at 18%. It is often said that the bank was too slow in easing monetary policy, and that this ultimately led to a recession. In private, Keating had argued for rates to rise earlier than they did, and fall sooner, although his view was at odds with the Reserve Bank and his Treasury colleagues. Publicly, Hawke and Keating had said there would be no recession – or that there would be a "soft landing" – but this changed when Keating announced the country was indeed in recession in 1990, several months after the Hawke Government had won an unprecedented fourth consecutive term in office. Announcing the recession, Keating memorably stated that the recession was a "recession Australia had to have". The remark was referred to by political journalist Paul Kelly as "perhaps the most stupid remark of Keating's career, and it nearly cost him the Prime Ministership." Kelly did also concede that, "...however, it is largely true that the boom begat the recession." The economic reform package throughout the 1980s has been claimed by numerous economic commentators and