Two areas of economic risk for Bill Shorten's Australia

Balanced budgets will not happen unless a Treasurer can impose discipline, and it would seem that no matter Labor shadow treasurer Chris Bowen's stated commitment to fiscal responsibility, he will be at the mercy of a resurgent left with a very wide array of spending demands.

The second area of high economic risk is Labor's approach to industrial relations.

Labor wants to reverse the Hawke-Keating enterprise bargaining reforms and move back to a more centralised wage fixing model. A return to industry-wide wage setting would present a major setback to the flexibility and efficiency of our modern economy. Labor's promise to introduce a "living wage" rather than a minimum wage risks making some businesses uncompetitive and pricing some labour out of the market. And Labor's promise to abolish the construction industry watchdog would undoubtedly see an escalation in lawlessness on building sites.

As we can see, Labor's broad approach to economic and industrial relations policies has a distinct whiff of the 1970s about it. If Labor does form government this agenda would represent a distinct reversal of the economic liberalisation paradigm that has reigned for decades, and it would be naïve to think that there wouldn't be new risks opening up.