Malcolm Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull writes that “The Coalition left Rudd with a national balance sheet free of debt and with cash at the bank, not to mention sustained economic growth.”

What rubbish. The Coalition delivered these things not because of particularly strong or visionary economic policies, but because it was lucky. Earlier deregulation reforms and the floating of the currency made Australia rather resilient to the Asian Financial Crisis and US tech-bubble recession. The industrialisation of China and India ensured that revenues from resources would keep piling in. Funds were in such over-supply that the treasurer had to create a “Future Fund” and cut taxes annually to stop the budget surplus getting too big. These are all cyclical events in which Australia was lucky. The previous Coalition government did not tackle the choking infrastructure and skills shortages we faced; it did not leave Australia immune to the global financial crisis. The Rudd government has taken a large and proactive policy stance to offset some of the worst effects of the crisis.

Could Malcolm Turnbull, if he was Prime Minster, really have done anything different without making more Australians jobless? What is his alternative vision for dealing with these events, and for the future? His essay is glaringly silent on these.