It is becoming clear that Kevin Rudd will challenge Julia Gillard for the Labor Party leadership. The latest poll has him as Preferred PM by 57% to 35% for Gillard.

However I don’t think he will win. Too many in his caucus hate him, and going back to Rudd will just lead to more infighting.

Gillard though seems to be a walking corpse. Many Australians regard her a a liar and backstabber, and don’t even regard her Government as legitimate. Personally I think it is a pity, because as Labor PMs go I think she is better than Rudd and Keating.

Hence I think that Rudd will challenge Gillard, but the caucus will turn to a third choice to become Leader and Prime Minister.

The SMH reports:

An Australian Prime Ministerial staffer has been linked to yesterday’s ugly protest incident in Canberra, forcing his resignation and acutely embarrassing PM Julia Gillard.

In an early evening statement, the Prime Minister dismissed as ‘false’ claims that one of her staff had spoken to people at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy prior to yesterday’s angry protest that temporarily trapped her and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott.

But Ms Gillard acknowledges that a member of her media unit ‘did call another individual yesterday and disclose the presence of the Opposition Leader at the Lobby restaurant. This information was subsequently passed on to a member of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy.’ …

He is Tony Hodges, one of four press secretaries working in Julia Gillard’s media unit.

The link is deeply embarrassing for the Prime Minister and leaves her shouldering some of the blame for an incident where many had pinned responsibility on Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.

This is typical Australian Labor tactics.  The press secretary would have leaked the info, hoping it would lead to anti-Abbott protests.

Instead it led to his own boss having to be dragged out by Police. And now they can’t blame anyone else for it.

A week ago I blogged on the fraud allegations around federal Labor MP Craig Thomson:

A federal Labor MP, Craig Thomson, is under huge scrutiny as when he was the head of the Health Services Union he spent around $150,000 on his union credit card including several prostitutes. He sued Fairfax a couple of years ago who reported this, but has now dropped the lawsuit, but Fairfax has all the documents under discovery.

There is no doubt he stole money off the union, and used their funds for his personal expenses. He denies he hired prostitutes and say someone else signed the chits.However the escort agencies were also rung from his cellphone and handwriting experts say the signatures are his.

There’s a more detailed post on this from someone in Australia tomorrow, but I want to focus today on the issue of why has he not been charged? Well simply because the Police say they can’t investigate unless the union complains.

So why has the union not complained? Wouldn’t any other organisation that had someone do this, complain?

The answer is because he is a Federal Labor MP, and if they complained, then he might be found guilty and might have to resign his seat which would cause a by-election. And if Labor lost the by-election, they may lose Government.

So to protect their mates in Labor, the union won’t complain to the Police. Never mind the fact $150,000 of their members fees were spent by this Labor MP. They put protecting Labor above their own members interests.

Now I am pleased to say the situation has changed. The union has now complained to the Police, after huge criticism of them for not doing so, and being seen to be complicit in covering up a crime.

But one can now have some sympathy for the union, in terms of the pressure they were under from Labor. Like a bad plot from the Godfather, the union secretary had a dirt-covered shovel left outside her home at 2 am. The story notes that “Labor party figures are angry Ms Jackson referred the allegations Mr Thomson faces to the police.”

I’ve actually recruited people to join a union in the past, and believe some unions do a good job of advocating for their members. There are some bad employers out there, and sometimes a collective approach is desirable in dealing with them.

But a real issue I have with many unions, is that they are literally part of the Labour Party, and put the interests of the political party ahead of the interest of their own members. A situation in Australia is a prefect example of this.

A federal Labor MP, Craig Thomson, is under huge scrutiny as when he was the head of the Health Services Union he spent around $150,000 on his union credit card including several prostitutes. He sued Fairfax a couple of years ago who reported this, but has now dropped the lawsuit, but Fairfax has all the documents under discovery.

There is no doubt he stole money off the union, and used their funds for his personal expenses. He denies he hired prostitutes and say someone else signed the chits.However the escort agencies were also rung from his cellphone and handwriting experts say the signatures are his.

There’s a more detailed post on this from someone in Australia tomorrow, but I want to focus today on the issue of why has he not been charged? Well simply because the Police say they can’t investigate unless the union complains.

So why has the union not complained? Wouldn’t any other organisation that had someone do this, complain?

The answer is because he is a Federal Labor MP, and if they complained, then he might be found guilty and might have to resign his seat which would cause a by-election. And if Labor lost the by-election, they may lose Government.

So to protect their mates in Labor, the union won’t complain to the Police. Never mind the fact $150,000 of their members fees were spent by this Labor MP. They put protecting Labor above their own members interests.

John Robertson got recently elected Leader of the NSW Labor Party. He is a former union boss who many hold responsible for the civil war which tore NSW Labor apart. Here’s what Paul Keating said to him, in a letter in 2008. Some extracts:

“Your manipulation of the union base in New South Wales, with the connivance and support of the Party President, Bernie Riordan, succeeded in destroying the political life of both men, and with them, probably the Labor Government of New South Wales itself.

“When I came to see you about the Iemma Government’s electricity privatisation proposals in April 2008, you will remember me telling you that reckless indifference by you and Bernie Riordan to the Government’s fortunes, may see the Government destroyed and for which, you and Riordan would be held accountable.

“This letter is about that accountability.” …

When I met you and went through the history of the establishment of the east coast electricity market by the Government I led in the 1990s, and why the privatisation of the NSW power stations was consistent with the benefits of that market, you never offered one serious point in rebuttal.Not one cogent economic argument to thwart the logic. You batted the argument to one side, implying it would somehow be sorted before any rupture arose.

But instead like a banshee on a rampage, you tore at the Government’s entrails until its viability was effectively compromised. …

Let me tell you, if the Labor Party’s stocks ever get so low as to require your services in its Parliamentary leadership, it will itself have no future … the people of New South Wales have their problems, but they would be way better rattling through than turning to someone like you in some hope of redemption.

It may be a novel concept for you, let me say that the conscientious business of governance can never be founded in a soul so blackened by opportunism. …

I am ashamed to share membership of the same party as you.

So that is from the former national leader to the current NSW state leader. I think it will be sometime until NSW is governed by Labor again.

Bob Carr was Premier of NSW from 1995 to 2005, winning three consecutive elections. He writes on Labor’s loss:

IT has taken political talent bordering on genius. The creativity of a master such as Disraeli or F. D. Roosevelt to deliver NSW Labor a defeat of this scale.

And I don’t mean Barry O’Farrell, although his political tactics are wholly vindicated and his occasional Liberal critics silenced. The genius was that of the Labor Party, in turning what could have been a swing-of-the-pendulum defeat into something far worse.

At last count Labor dropped from 50 seats to 21.

In 2007 Iemma held seats thanks to a capital works budget bigger than all the other states combined, bigger than New York’s or California’s.

Then he made the silly mistake of wanting to make that huge infrastructure spend even bigger by selling the state’s electricity assets.

In 2007 this was surely not too big a request of a Labor Party which had seen the benefits to living standards of the reforms of the Hawke-Keating years.

A reasonable response of a union-based party might have been, “Yeah, mate, well, can’t really hold out against this one. Let’s allow a Labor government a great chunk of capital so it can push even harder with public sector expansion. Nurses and teachers will be the winners. And we’ll get guarantees for our members in the electricity sector.”

There were precedents – and, happily, they also point to policy success during Labor’s rule – the privatisation of Freightcorp in 2002 and of state-owned coal mines in 2001. Both benefited the budget and taxpayer. Both were supported by the unions because the private capital modernised the enterprises and shored up jobs.

Yet in a display of wilfulness and obstinacy, the opponents of electricity privatisation staged a public brawl at the 2008 ALP conference. It presented a hideous visage to the electorate. It was a symbolic repudiation of the McKell model, the style of NSW Labor since William McKell (premier 1941-47). McKell’s moderate ethos was based on middle course policies which gave the party support in the bush as well as the city. It was possible because the machine supported the parliamentary leadership, the premier of the day. This pattern prevailed under Joe Cahill, Neville Wran and me.

On this occasion, the party tore up the script that had given Labor these years of ascendancy and ritually humiliated Iemma and then replaced him, the first time in NSW Labor history a premier had been executed. Contemplating this turbulence, the electorate started deserting the party.

This moderate leadership meant Labor were in power from 1941 to 1965, 1976 to 1988 and 1995 to 2011. That was 52 out of 70 years.

What is interesting is one of the contenders for the NSW leadership is John Robertson – the former trade union leader who played a prominent role in causing the civil war in the party. I’m pretty sure new Premier Barry O’Farrell will be hoping they select him.

In Australia the Labor smear machine is working at full speed – targeting the Greens as well as the Coalition. The Age reports:

STATE Labor has stepped up its campaign against the surging Greens, targeting the party’s candidate for Melbourne, prominent barrister Brian Walters, and seeking to smear him as anti-Semitic and an unscrupulous lawyer.

Senior Labor figures including former Victorian secretary Stephen Newnham have contacted influential members of the Jewish community seeking to generate a political backlash against the Greens, and Mr Walters in particular.

The Age has obtained a dossier of documents used as part of the dirt campaign that focus on Mr Walters’s representation of alleged Nazi war criminal Konrads Kalejs in the early 2000s.

In a Sunday Herald Sun front page story yesterday the member for Melbourne and Education Minister, Bronwyn Pike, described Mr Walters as a ”hypocrite” for representing a brown-coal mining company while as a Green criticising coal-fired power.

ALP secretary Nick Reece also criticised Mr Walters for seeking ”profit” from a coalmining company.

Having a Nazi as a criminal client, does not make you a Nazi. It makes you a lawyer. Lawyers in criminal practice are obliged to represent clients who seek their services, as explained:

Robert Richter, both Jewish and a high-profile QC, defended Walters as an ”ethical barrister”. ”The attack on him is completely shameful or rather shameless, and discloses not just an ignorance of the working of our legal system but a betrayal of any sense of proper legal ethics.”

Prominent human rights activist Julian Burnside, QC, slammed Labor’s tactics as a ”disgrace”. ”I can only say that I am astonished at the ignorance (or hypocrisy) of the Herald Sun, Bronwyn Pike and Nick Reece.

”The cab-rank rule is fundamental to the independent bar. It exists to protect the community by ensuring that even unpopular clients can get representation in court.

Points well made.

Some criticism over representing a coal mining company could be legitimate, as that is nor criminal representation but again you do not have to approve of a client to do work for them – I do work for plenty of clients I disagree with!

What I found really interesting was this:

Last month The Age revealed that taxpayers are footing the bill for a secretive operation run out of Mr Brumby’s office aimed at discrediting Coalition MPs and Greens candidates in the lead-up to this month’s state election. An informal committee, referred to as ”the dirt unit” among senior Labor figures, has met weekly in the Premier’s private office over the past year, overseeing investigations of the political, business and sometimes personal histories of shadow ministers and, more recently, Greens MPs and candidates.

Maybe Mike Williams could do contract work for them, on the basis of his wonderful H Fee investigation.

But sadly it is Labor, not Labour that does. Just another example of how ideologically rigid and captured by the unions NZ Labour is.

In the excitement of the aussie campaign, I o overlooked this story:

JULIA Gillard yesterday promised parents and principals greater control over their schools as she turned to her policy strength of education.

In two major policy moves, as she attempts to regain political momentum, the Prime Minister yesterday outlined a $484 million plan over six years to give parents and principals greater autonomy from education bureaucracies and a $668m boost in family payments to 16 to 18-year-olds to keep them in school.

Under the schools plan, principals and school boards would be able to hire teachers and control their own school budget, directing resources to their students’ specific needs.

Superb. The NZ counterpart won’t even support better reporting of student achievement to parents, let alone bulk funding.

At the next election, National should campaign to implement Julia Gillard’s education reforms.

Gillard is in trouble. And it is not Tony Abbott doing the damage, but almost certainly Kevin Rudd.

A poll has the coalition ahead 52% to 48%, and on radio John Pagani said that he had heard that Labor’s polling was not looking good in the all important marginal seats. So how has it happened?

Well first there was the leak to Laurie Oakes about the deal with Rudd for him to stay on until October, which Gillard walked away from. As only three people witnessed it, not hard to guess who put that out there.

Then came the leak that in Cabinet Gillard fought against Labor’s paid parental leave scheme. This has damaged her amongst “babyland”. Gillard also tried to limit pension increases – hell I am liking her more and more. But the public are not. And again no prizes for guessing the likely leaker.

And the latest leak also has Rudd all over it – a revelation that Gillard sometimes sent her bodyguard to meetings of the Cabinet national security committee. That one may be especially damaging.

And in case there is much doubt it is Rudd, Alexander Downer reveals that the former Liberal Government used to feed info to Rudd when he was a junior Labor MP, knowing Rudd would use it to undermine the Labor Foreign Affairs Spokesperson, as Rudd wanted his job.

Is it just me, or do Rudd and Chris Carter seem somewhat alike – both try and rat-fuck their leaders, because they had their travel perks and status taken away?

What a day to be in Canberra. The coup against Rudd has taken place at record speed. The moment I heard the NSW Right had gone to Gilliard, I figured it was all over.

Rudd about to hold a press conference, so we will hear soon.

Rudd has confirmed Julia Gilliard has challenged him and he has called a vote for 9 am tomorrow.

Rudd is fighting to stay on, but I know from experience that once a leadership challenge goes to a vote, the leader almost always loses as they are judged so wounded they can not win a general election.

If Gillard wins, she would be wise to not try and govern for a few months as PM, but say she has asked the GG for an immediate election, and asked Rudd to carry on as caretaker PM until the election. She can look democratic by claiming she has been elected Labor leader, but now wants the Australian public to elect her Prime Minister.

There was a NSW state by-election in Penrith yesterday. This is one of the safest seats for Labor, in west Sydney.

In 2007 Labor’s primary vote was 49% and two party-preferred was 59%.

In the by-election Labor’s primary vote was 24% and two party-preferred 34%.

The next state election is March 2011, and federal election later this year.

Disgruntled Labor voters cited both state and federal issues as factors in their vote swing. There was also the local issue that the former MP resigned in disgrace for lying.

At a federal level the Labor MPs are getting very nervous and waiting for a Newspoll out later today, before deciding whether to try and roll Rudd.

A story today reports that the Greens Senate Leader, Bob Brown, has not been able to secure a meeting with Rudd for 15 months, unlike John Howard who often negotiated with minor parties to get bills passed in the Senate.

Labor’s string of victories in Queensland continues. Anna Bligh has won them a fifth consecutive term.

Despite polls showing Labor behind, they have lost only 6 seats so far with 70% of the vote counted. Their electoral system has helped them as they are only 1.6% ahead on the primary vote.

Labor look to have 53 out of 89 seats. They had a majority of 34 and it has dropped to 19 – still pretty comfortable.

Labour have ruled for all bar one period since Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s 19 year resign. The Nationals won all eleven election from 1957 to 1986. Sir Joh was then forced out of office and the recent elections have been:

1986 Nat/Lib 59 to Lab 30
1989 Lab 54 to Nat/Lib 35
1992 Lab 54 to Nat/Lib 35
1995 Lab 45 to Nat/Lib 43 + 1 Ind. A by-election saw power transfer to Nat/Lib
1998 Lab 44 to Nat/Lib 32 and One Nation 11 (plus 2 Inds)
2001 Lab 66 to Nat/Lib 15 (One Nation 3 and 5 Inds)
2004 Lab 63 to Nat/Lib 20 (One Nation 1 and 5 Inds)
2006 Lab 59 to Nat/Lib 25 (One Nation 1 and 4 Inds)
2009 Lab 53 to Nat/Lib 32 (4 Inds)

On the positive side, Pauline Hanson got only 22% of the vote, and has retired from politics.

I’ve said time and time again that NZ Labour was almost alone in the world with its hostility to personal tax cuts. We only got them after nine years of massive surpluses and massive spending increases, and Dr Cullen admitted that he would have made them smaller (if at all) if he had known about the extent of the credit crisis.

Even under Phil Goff, NZ Labour are geared up to attack National’s tax cuts.

So bearing that in mind, let us look at what UK Labour PM Gordon Brown is looking to announce tomorrow:

Gordon Brown has defended as “necessary and responsible” the massive package of tax cuts expected in tomorrow’s Pre-Budget Report.

Yes, UK Labour delivering a massive package of tax cuts.

Australian Labour also doing the same.

NZ Labour though are regretting their tax cuts and are opposing any further tax cuts.

A few days ago Peter Costello announced he will contnue with his plans to retire from politics, and not take up the Liberal Party leadership which would has been his for the taking.

Now Liberal Leader Brendan Nelson has called for a leadership ballot, to force Malcolm Turnbull to challenge or pledge loyalty. Turnbull has confirmed he will challenge. Nelson beat Turnbull in an upset victory last year.

In theory Nelson should be toast as he has massively low approval ratings, and his colleagues have little confidence in him.

But Turnbull, while talented, is very unpopular with many of his colleagues. It is likely Nelson will retain the leadership. A pity to some degree, as I think Turnbull has many good ideas and policies in terms of economic reform.

Also Labor’s one year reign of total government is over. Since they won the federal election they were uniqely in government in all eight states and territories as well as federally. That has ended in Western Australia though.

The Liberal Party got 38.5% and Labor 35.8%, plus Nationals 4.9% (and Greens 11.9%). The Nationals only contested a few seats and won four seats giving the balance of power.

Now you might think this means an automatic victory for the Libs, but WA is the one state where the Libs and Nats are not formally aligned, so just like in NZ in 1996 the major parties bidded for the Nats affection and they negotiated deals with each party. They finally opted to go with the Liberal Party.

UPDATE: Turnbull won 45-41. This is good.

I have had a fairly benign to positive view of Kevin Rudd as Australian Labour under his leadership seem so much more moderate than NZ Labour. And he cut taxes in his first budget – unlike Helen who raised them, and didn’t cut them until budget No 9.

I was intrigued to listen to Andrew Bolt, talk at length on Kevin Rudd a few months ago, Bolt, was dismissed by a few people here as ill informed because he is a conservative commentator. But what I found interesting is that his criticisms were not that Rudd is left wing, but that Rudd is inclined to ill thought out populist ideas which annoy his colleagues and that he is ill disciplined.

I have to say the more time goes on, the more I regard Mr Bolt as having been very insightful with regards to Rudd. I’m not saying the Rudd Government is pursuing bad policies (overall quite good), and the Liberal Party leadership is near unelectable, so I still regard Rudd as the best choice (until Turnbull steps up anyway). But Rudd’s proposed EU style Asia-Pacific Union seems to be exactly what Bolt was speaking about.

There has been considerable comment in NZ that Rudd didn’t even consult New Zealand over his proposal, which is just plain stupid. Helen Clark has fairly astutely fired a subtle barb back without it coming directly from her lips, as Fran O’Sullivan notes.

Audrey Young also blogs on the issue, and quotes Greg Sheridan:

Sheridan has written an excoriating column this week against Kevin Rudd’s recent forays into foreign policy – after just six months in office. Rudd is just completing a visit to Japan.
It is a column with which Clark may have some sympathy.

”KEVIN Rudd is in danger of turning what should be his greatest strength into a serious weakness,” writes Sheridan.

”I refer to his weird and increasingly ratty habit of announcing foreign policy initiatives of soaring ambition and utterly amorphous content on the run, half baked, with no detail and no credible prospect of success.

”In the past week alone we’ve had Rudd threaten to “take the blowtorch” to the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to produce more oil and lower prices, nominate [former diplomat] Dick Woolcott to reform Asian security and trade structures, and now appoint Gareth Evans to head a commission to end nuclear proliferation and secure nuclear disarmament.

”If you announce twice a week that you’re going to save the world and you manifestly lack the means to give the slightest effect to your pronouncements, the world soon loses interest. The chief casualty is your credibility.”

The test for Rudd will be how well he learns from his mistakes.

One of Rudd’s Ministers is Craig Emerson, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last year at CIS’s Consilium conference. He is now the Small Business Minister (a portfolio we could do with here).

He gave an excellent speech to the Sydney Institute two days ago. Some extracts:

… the role of policy makers is to allow the market to create prosperity and out of that prosperity to expand opportunity, not the welfare state. In the market democracy so fashioned, citizens enjoy freedom, self-fulfilment and sovereignty over the state, not subjugation to the state through financial and regulatory welfare.

This is the philosophy of like-minded people whom I call market democrats – the modern Labor champions of the traditional Labor values of prosperity, fairness and compassion. Market democrats harness the power of the market for the public good.

Not a bad term – market democrats.

But as a new recruit to the ALP I again began to ask: is there truly a conflict between self-interest and moral behaviour and is there a conflict between morality and markets? …

But self-interest is not synonymous with selfishness. An athlete is not selfish for wanting to win a tournament, but is self-interested. A singer is not selfish for wanting to win Australian Idol. An artist is not selfish for wanting to win the Archibald Prize, nor is an author for wanting to win the Booker Prize. A scientist is not selfish for wanting to achieve a breakthrough ahead of other scientists.

Athletes, singers, artists, dancers, authors and scientists are self-interested but this does not make them selfish. Some may be arrogant and rude, some selfish, others humble and altruistic, but all are self-interested. Without self-interest, economic and social progress is impossible.

A very useful differentiation between self-interest and selfishness.

Labor was making itself the party of competition and compassion. Out of the proceeds of growth, the Hawke government was lifting school completion rates, supporting the parents of poor children to keep them at school. My moral questions were being answered through the competitive yet compassionate philosophy of the Hawke and Keating Labor governments – a philosophy that sat easily with Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations. There was, I concluded, no inherent conflict between markets and morality.

How nice to have a reference to markets without a sneer, as one would get in NZ.

Competitive markets reward effort, risk-taking and entrepreneurship and they encourage innovation essential to the growth of a market economy. The forces of competition create pressure on businesses to be efficient and to come up with and apply new ideas for application in producing goods and services valued by consumers.

Yet markets are chaotic and wasteful. Predicting the prices produced by markets is always hazardous. Markets force businesses to close, wasting the building renovations and obliging employees to seek work elsewhere. But far more wasteful and chaotic are central planning and governments pretending to be good at running businesses in so-called mixed economies.

In other words markets are not perfect, but they are generally a lot better than the alternatives.

If poverty in Australia is no longer primarily a poverty of incomes but a poverty of opportunity, the goal of a fairer society is best pursued through a more equal distribution of opportunity than through a more equal distribution of income. A nation’s people are not better off if all live on equally low incomes. Of course it is unfair if the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. But why should governments seek to prevent the rich from getting richer if the poor also get richer as a consequence of the wealth creation process?

And he shoots bullets through the arguments of the poverty industry who use a definition which means poverty will never be solved.

Many Australians earning below-average incomes choose to forego higher pay in favour of spending more time with their families and friends or just relaxing or playing sport. By doing so they are making measured income inequality worse but, through free choice, they are making their own lives better.

Indeed. And incomes are also very tied to age and experience. Demanding that an unskilled 19 year old should be earning 60% of the average wage of 40 and 50 year olds with 20 – 30 years experience is madness. It is about opportunity.

The goal of market democrats is prosperity and fairness through opportunity for all in a market economy. Market democrats strive for a more equal distribution of opportunity. If opportunity is equally distributed, incomes in the future will be distributed more equally. Prosperity and fairness become partners not rivals.

I like how Emerson can say what I think, but state it so well.

But for those out of the workforce who have income-earning prospects, perpetual income support payments without any effort to remedy the causes of disadvantage are not the pathway to a prosperous, fair society; they are a perilous road to welfare dependency, low self-esteem and servitude to the state.

When was the last time a NZ Labour Minister spoke about welfare dependency?

Seeking to use industrial muscle to gain pay rises in excess of productivity growth is inflationary and ultimately self-defeating. Modern unionism can involve offering a bundle of services that are attractive to members. These services can extend beyond representation in workplace bargaining to support for lifelong learning, financial, tax and legal advice and advice on superannuation, private health insurance and even personal counselling services.

A wonderfully clear statement that The Standard will hate. Pay rises without productivity growth lead nowhere.

In a market democracy governments should serve the people instead of seeking to subjugate the people to the will of government through high taxes and heavy regulation. By allowing markets to reward hard work, risk-taking and entrepreneurship without unnecessary interference, market democrats advance
freedom and self-fulfilment.

Serve not subjugate.

Market democrats think of markets first and, only where necessary, strengthen or complement markets with efficient regulation. In a market democracy, regulation is justifiable in strengthening markets and remedying market failure.

Exactly, regulation is basically a last resort. Which is why I supported it in telecommunications. There was massive and clear market failure after 15 years of waiting. But it should always remain the last tool, not the first tool, that Governments reach for.

But the previous conservative government thought of regulation first, presiding over what the Business Council of Australia describes as the creeping re-regulation of business. This is why, in a process initiated by Kevin Rudd, Lindsay Tanner and I are so vigorously working with the States and Territories in cutting back overbearing, inconsistent and overlapping Commonwealth and State business regulation.

While in NZ we get review after review of the need to reduce regulations ignored by the Government

Now not everyone in Australian Labor shares his viewpoint. But my God wouldn’t it be nice to even have a single NZ Labour MP who gave speeches like that.