Public policy in the Asian Century - Ken Henry

This is an edited version of a speech Ken Henry AC gave to the Crawford School of Public Policy on 18 July as part of the week-long policy futures and innovation event, Policy public: ideas, insights and initiatives until 2020 . In December 1983 the $A was floated. On 1 July 2000 a broad-based goods and services tax replaced a plethora of highly inefficient, inequitable and unintelligible indirect taxes. These events 'bookended' an extraordinary period of policy reform that 'opened up' the Australian economy, transforming just about every aspect of microeconomic and macroeconomic policy and institutions. We are now twelve years on from the end of that particular reform period. And I'm wondering how much of what was achieved then could be achieved today. The Australia that was capable of delivering that policy transformation seems like a very different place from the Australia of today.