In ‘The next great reform will be of politics itself’, Jonathan Green (19.3.15) argues for ‘The next reform will be of this stagnant polity itself’ ‘hopefully delivering politics that frees ideas from the camouflage of endless deflecting rhetoric’. …
‘It will be reform that recognises that the current practice of politics is as relevant to the challenges of our moment as the Menzian conservative orthodoxy was in 1983.
‘It will deliver a new politics that will have the audacity to argue for deficit in times like these, of need and low interest.
‘A politics that might at last free ideas from the camouflage of endless deflecting rhetoric. One that might concede that the Australian public will give points for broad, meaningful and sometimes uncomfortable objectives that lie outside the narrow realm of political self interest … apparently the exclusive concern of our new Frasers.
‘We need some kind of Hawke. Or even a Menzies. Some new set of ideas.’