Michael Mrdak, the head of the Department of Infrastructure & Regional Development, delivered a speech at a forum organised by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA) whereby he lamented that public appetite for economic reform is at the lowest point he has seen for at least three decades. From The Australian:
“I have not known a time in my 30-odd years in public policy when the authority of government, both at the federal and state level, to even raise a reform agenda is so cynically attacked,’’ Michael Mrdak, secretary of the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, said, adding that the current environment had made any discussion of reform almost impossible.
He told a forum convened by Infrastructure Partnerships Australia that such an environment made it “very hard as a nation to take hard decisions on the way forward’’.
