Australia’s Reform Agenda Is Now A Car Wreck

As the haze lifts (in the short term at least) on Canberra’s leadership ructions, we can see the extent of the car wreck that is Australia’s economic reform agenda.

“Political uncertainty hits business”, screams one headline.

“Wrong turn on budget repair”, says another.

They’re right.

The reality confronting even the most optimistic reform advocate is that little of reform substance will now emerge from the current government, and probably the next.

This at a time when the tide continues to go out on the mining boom, the jobless rate hits 13-year highs, and reform of our economy is becoming increasingly urgent.

A year or so ago all seemed possible.

The corporate sector lobby had done a lot of ear-bending in Canberra to shape much of the tone and substance for a “big-bang” approach to economic reform.

So it was delighted to see tax reform, workplace relations, federal-state relations, budget repair and infrastructure all on the table – at the head of which was a new “business-friendly” government with a big stock of political capital and an apparently big reform appetite to match.

One terribly-conceived federal budget later – compounded by repeated missteps and gaffes by the prime minister and his senior team – and all this has given way to plummeting opinion polls and a backbench revolt.

When political leadership is under such potentially terminal pressure, the animal ‘ism’s of politics take over.

This news story is reprinted from www.businessspectator.com.au

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