Gillard's hard choices
June 30th 2010 01:37
The ALP will be breathing easier with the polls shifting back their way and the media fawning over the new PM, as they always do. The Labor backroom boys will be congratulating themselves and saying, 'yes, we acted in the Party's best interests, and we should be ready to act this way again'. They will have that sly grin of men who bet long and won. The miners will be pretty satisfied too.
And Gillard is doing her thing by dumping Rudd's most controversial policies and saying she will listen and negotiate. Never mind that as part of Rudd's kitchen cabinet she supported those same policies. She suddenly knows better.
But after all the warm and fuzzy stuff, she has some hard decisions to make. Oz needs tax reform, and so the miners are still in the sites of the Treasury. Similarly, she can't hedge forever on asylum seekers and immigration more broadly, although the end of 'big Oz' and a new focus on sustainable development are promising.
Most importantly, she has to come up with a genuine climate change policy and acknowledge the threat of peak oil. Both these challenges demand a complete rethinking of our national economic framework as energy costs will go through the roof. It will be the biggest transformation of the economy since World War Two, and really hard calls need to be made ASAP as we make up for lost time.
And Gillard is doing her thing by dumping Rudd's most controversial policies and saying she will listen and negotiate. Never mind that as part of Rudd's kitchen cabinet she supported those same policies. She suddenly knows better.
Most importantly, she has to come up with a genuine climate change policy and acknowledge the threat of peak oil. Both these challenges demand a complete rethinking of our national economic framework as energy costs will go through the roof. It will be the biggest transformation of the economy since World War Two, and really hard calls need to be made ASAP as we make up for lost time.
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