Menzies House

Rudd's Health Promises

Let's hold Rudd to account on his terrible record, writes Richard Wilson.

Since my previous piece for Menzies House, Kevin Rudd has made a series of promises on health.  To get an idea of how seriously we should take his 2010 election pledges, let’s look at how he is going on delivering his 2007 election promises.

Take the education revolution, the delivery of which has so far consisted of a national curriculum, the construction of school halls, and a website (MySchool). Setting aside whether or not these are good policies, the reality is that Rudd hasn’t delivered on these promises.

It's the delivery, stupid

An education policy that can't be delivered isn't worth the paper it's written on, argues Richard Wilson.

The best unit I ever completed at university was called 'Social Policy Implementation'. The lecturer had been a Deputy Secretary of various Australian Government departments and had received his PhD from the LSE. He had seen every approach to public administration since Whitlam. He knew his stuff.