And politically all this Ayn Rand wishfull thinking a Kennett like figure will waltz in and wave his market forces wand is fairies in the garden stuff. Especially after the GFC. Kennett was out on his ear in 1999 and it was because he had the instincts of an obnoxious dictator. The clue is in Ridout calling to junk arbitration from IR, at least until Paul Bongiorno politely mentioned it’s only part of the Australian Constitution!

She’s good on ETS though - start in 2010 as rep for the Business Council of Australia. She knows it’s a global thing, only not as regards NSW economy. That’s a little inconsistent really.

What seems to be upsetting the political food chain as much as anything else is that Rees is nominal Left faction and is not ordained to have hands on levers. But this is the guy who delivered the $2B desal project and that’s one impacting lever. So the construction unions like that (even if I don’t). And he’s not a boomer, so the crusties in the Establishment don’t feel good about him. Too bad, boomers suck, they don’t trickle.

On the general tenor: The only thing that is certain in all this is that a GFC is real and the feds have lost $40 billion in budget projected surplus. Hence the stimulatory allocations such as $10 billion or half the real surplus, not simply projection.

Gittins as smh editor last Wednesday p1 said much of what you and Ridout on MTP 10 said (and she’s looking thinner and a bit hoarse I notice). That AAA rating is crap goal anyway, and state govt should be boosting including deficit in a sudden downturn if needed.

Trouble is Gittins and Ridout are probably wrong, and who do we have to rely on. Well Gittins nearly but not quite recants in his weekend column way back on p44 called “Why States should live with budget deficits”. But what is MOST revealing is the great and good brainy Gittins notes:

1. Wonky Ken Henry of fed treasury says AAA is still important for confidence in NSW at press club same day Gittins was in the lockup
2. NSW can’t play as national govt and splurge stimulatory billions because they don’t have the tax and revenue of the feds and NSW expenditure for such would just leak across border lines anyway
3. The fed govt does the national economy thing, the state does services.
4. The nsw can help with productive infrastructure including for jobs protection but the mini budget doesn’t change anything until 2011 so ‘its too far away to worry about’

And on it goes. It’s quite a climb down actually. And it shows Ridout didn’t read her business section of the weekend herald quite as close as ought to have before comparing all of NSW with the ALP Right grubs at Wollongong.

And then we have Sydney as finance sector dependent on the vagaries of the GFC. Well why aren’t we like Kennett’s Victoria, Ridout poses. …