THE prime minister has just been approached by a group of business leaders who have made proposals to help revive the economy. My advice to him is to keep them running. It is good that he has formed working groups among them, who will develop more detailed proposals. Once the proposals are developed, they should form a committee to review them. After that should come a consultative process to circulate the proposals for wider input from civil society, civil servants and the State Bank. Then he should do something truly unprecedented: submit them for parliamentary review.

Standing committees in the House and Senate should then call members of these working groups to come and brief them about the proposals. After that, the same committees should call for wider public input from analysts and commentators. Wise guys like yours truly here would be happy to oblige with detailed comment on the pros and cons of each proposal. And after that comes the implementation stage, for which there should be an interdepartmental task force drawn from retired civil servants, members of parliament, independent experts and business leaders. But before that, it will be important to draw up the terms of reference for this task force, for which there should be a separate committee.

Here is a bold statement, and in the spirit of Gen Z era engagements, please prove me wrong. Nothing good has ever come out of these proposals the business community has been bringing to the government over the past half century. Of all the lasting policy measures in place today, or any catalysing policy........

© Dawn