A reforming PM

Kevin Rudd said this a few weeks ago:

Well, I mean that the best functioning governments are where you have the two central agencies, Prime Ministries and Treasury working together and that means taking all the best advice out of the Treasury and mixing it with the Prime Minister’s Department to frame the best agenda for the future. I think Treasury by instinct, this goes back to the earlier Labor period, is a reforming department. It actually has a whole bunch of people within it who want to advance the cause of micro-economic reform. I think that reform agenda has not had any political impetus for a long, long time during the latter period of the Howard government and I think there is a lot of enthusiasm there for us embracing a reform agenda because if you cease reforming this economy, you start to strangle long-term productivity growth. We don’t intend to do that.

My God, could you imagine Cullen ever saying such stuff? This is why Rudd may be a very good PM – he is very very serious about lifting Australia’s productivity and growth.

This is one of the reasons why Australia is much richer than NZ, as detailed in NBR by Phil Rennie.