• Nicholas Gruen

20 December 2007 A new report fails to demonstrate why Australia is doing better, writes NICHOLAS GRUEN, who has a few ideas of his own...

LIKE barrackers watching the Wallabies play the All Blacks, since each became pioneers of economic reform in the mid 1980s Australians and New Zealanders have found something new to barrack for - the fortunes of their respective economies.

Ideological as well as national pride is involved. New Zealand moved further and faster from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. Australia’s failure to measure up to New Zealand’s example became a right-of-centre talking point on both sides of the Tasman. But New Zealand’s poorer performance became progressively less easy to disguise by judicious selecting from the basket of economic indicators. And though it continues to be offered, the excuse that Muldoon made more of a mess than Whitlam and Fraser is surely wearing thin. Muldoon’s reign ended 25 years ago.

As someone with an interest in the question, I’ve never read anything that convinced me that the author had really got to the bottom of the mystery of why the two countries’ economic performance has been so starkly different given the broad similarity of their policy trajectories...

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