The economy

There is little dispute amongst most qualified non political economists that the Australian economy is not in good shape for the long run. The main reason seems to be that Australia spent too long firstly on the sheep's back and then as a quarry for an emerging Asia that had to buy our resources. This inflated prices and expectations and even with a right of centre government, the welfare state predominated so that it is now difficult to turn things back.

The problem is in how to turn it back under the current preference political system which can see the balance of power held by a person who only received less than 3% of the vote. Ridiculous of course but who is game to try to change this? No one on the current horizen. So deals have to be done with some senators who would draw crowds in a circus.

The problem now is that it looks like the current government is trying to do too much too quickly. You don't alienate the people you need to help you and its hard to see how you win that many more votes by a generous maternity leave scheme. You do alienate people by introducing a medicare payment even though the logic of this is sound. It should be "slowly slowly catchee monkey" but it does not seem like that lesson has been learned.