Switched-on competition and microeconomic reforms ready to pay off in spades

The celebration of the now three-decade-old Hilmer reforms that spurred a surge of microeconomic reforms in Australia by assistant minister for competition, charities and treasury Dr Andrew Leigh are on time and still on-spec, but it’s time to get real about what isn’t working and what has.

Despite, or perhaps because of, his training as a professional economic observer, Leigh is a lot closer to the everyday aspirations of the bulk of Australians who earn a living outside the public sector than are many of his partisan peers, who have forged their careers with the support of organised labour.