It has taken the greatest threat to our health and economic wellbeing to make it happen, but Friday’s choice to make the National Cabinet a long-term feature of the way Australia is governed is potentially among the most considerable results of the crisis.
Of course, that national leaders talking sensibly to each other about concerns in which they have a mutual interest was ever a problem appears quite bizarre in these current times.
But it has been, and was progressively ending up being, the greatest obstruction to anything sensible happening by way of innovation in the way federal government operates in Australia.
The non-functional nature of federal-state relations was often mentioned as standing in the course of “reform” by business groups.
But it has been more than that. It’s not just things like tax reform that have been hampered by federal-state frictions: almost anything you care to think of– schools and health funding, facilities are just a few of the obvious ones.
Whether the excellent feeling continues naturally, well who knows, however we just have to hope that a grouping of political leaders, who have all had a favorable re-enforcement loop informing them that doing excellent policy and acting like matured is a political winner, will get rather a lot done before things inevitably turn a little bit more sour.
The Prime Minister stated on Friday that the National Cabinet “will be driven by a singula