Poor John Quiggin. He runs a civilised blog; his economics seem to me to be about 300% more reliable than the guff that comes out of Catallaxy; yet he seemed to have a complete blind spot towards the problems with Kevin Rudd. If anything, he was aggressively against Julia Gillard because, he argued, everything she had put in place had been Kevin's brilliant idea anyway.
No, some of us argued: what you should consider is that Gillard got some things done by doing the hard slog, working collaboratively, and not just coming up with ideas by doodling on the back of a envelope during a plane flight. (My evidence for that: changing education and disability funding after getting reports and recommendations first; the negotiations that led to carbon pricing; how Kevin came up with the NBN.)
Well, those of us who were pro-Gillard can at least take some bitter satisfaction that it would appear our view of Kevin has been reinforced by his sudden (partial) adoption of Coalition policy and rhetoric about the bright future of the North, if only tax rates would drop there.
Admittedly, Rudd's policy seems more limited than Coalition ideas (which sound a tad more grandiose, but are really just to have a good hard look at what to do after forming government), but the worrying aspect of it is - how did he arrive at this idea? What collaboration within his team and instant Ministers took place before it was announced?
It's a very worrying sign.
1 comment:
the policy doesn't occur until after the forward estimates and it is mad.
Gillard was one bad politician with even worse advidsers
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