While Liberals shoot their messenger, Labor squanders its chance for brave reform

August 16, 2026 — 4:00pm

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It was predictable that Andrew Bragg’s freewheeling speech to the National Press Club last Wednesday would annoy some of his colleagues. Ranging far beyond his portfolio, Bragg opined on a range of important issues, expressing personal views that had not been adopted by shadow cabinet.

His critics lamented his lack of message discipline – although nothing he said was nearly so off-message as Tony Abbott’s recent attacks on multiculturalism and his romanticisation of the primacy of “Australia’s Anglo-Celtic core culture”. (Tell that to the one in four Australians who have no British or Irish antecedents, or the millions more of Anglo-Celtic ancestry – like me – who see ourselves simply as Australians.)

More importantly, Bragg said nothing that should not be part of a serious discussion about policy options for the years ahead, at a time when the public has seldom been more pessimistic about the future, and Australia’s economic performance – most alarmingly reflected by the accelerating decline in productivity – has seen us fall from high on the OECD league table to towards the bottom. If now isn’t the time to challenge status-quo thinking, it’s hard to think when is.

More revealing than the discomfort of some of Bragg’s colleagues was the reaction of ministers. Rather than engage with his arguments, or respond to his criticisms of the government’s economic performance, they simply dismissed them with fear-mongering and hyperbole. Responding to........

© The Age