The right wing think-tanks make great play with ‘mistakes’ made by governments, not excluding corruption, but ignore the fact that a large proportion of private companies fail, creating havoc for their shareholders and communities when they do. Statements such as ‘8 out of 10 entrepreneurs who start businesses fail within the first 18 months’ and ’50% of businesses fail within five years of inception’ are easy to find on the net (even if rather contradictory). Then there are the spectacular failures of older and large companies either through fraud or incompetence. Recently, there has been a flurry of suggestions that our infrastructure decisions should be made by some ‘group for building stuff’ (The Economist) or Paul Keating’s suggestion of a Reserve Bank for Infrastructure). What is the rationale for thinking that either would be superior? Comments?
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