Dialling triple zero on our economy

The Rudd Government should seize the moment to improve transport infrastructure to improve GDP growth and reduce pollution.

The current economic downturn provides an opportunity for governments at all levels to make investments that can enable the Australian economy to take a higher, sustainable, growth path.

There are a number of assumptions that the following article makes; the first is that most innovative government policy making should be at the state level, not the federal one. Our federal system is designed to encourage policy competition between jurisdictions, the federal government should foster this as the Keating government did. The vast majority of economic levers that will determine future prosperity lie with the states, whether it be education, health, urban planning, land use, environment, transport and so on. It is the states, not the federal government.