Economic credibility key to social democratic success

THE gap between policy intention and execution is usually far wider than anticipated.

IT'S in the nature of politics to generate friends and enemies by drawing borders and declaring hostilities.

Of all the many criss-crossed trench lines traversing our contemporary political battlescape, none is more enduring or more deeply dug than the one than defines Right and Left according to calculations of the size and ambition of government. For many commentators the global financial crisis proves the point.

Now, on the face of it you might think that the percentage of gross domestic product allocated to public as opposed to private expenditure might give only a limited perspective on the general health, happiness and wellbeing of citizens.

After all, many conservative governments spend more and save less well than their social-democratic rivals, if only because their favoured constituencies are sometimes more expensive to woo.


read the whole article in Today's Australian.

Edited extract from All That's Left: What Labor Should Stand For, edited by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane (New South Books, $29.95).