The Australian p12 When did raising taxes become courageous and exciting economic reform? When did smaller, more efficient and customer focused government go out of fashion? Talk about a world gone mad.

Middle Australia must be horrified at the takeover of our policy debate by an out-of-touch political class, seemingly blase about taking more money from hard-working Australians.

The country needs a genuine strategy to arrest profligate publicsector spending, and encourage a new wave of entrepreneurship and innovation across every part of our economy. Despite some good progress in recent times, last week we saw an assault on this idea at every turn.

First, we saw a group of premiers fighting over which tax should be higher. None said there should be lower taxes, and none acknowledged the monstrous problem we have in unchecked spending growth - especially their spending in health and education. None were concerned about the insidious impact of bracket creep. None proposed genuine tax reform.

Tony Abbott, quite rightly, is letting the debate run. He has to because the states need to take responsibility for their own budgetary problems.

But it is quite clear the states still believe there's a pot of money under the commonwealth rainbow - and they want it without political pain.

So can the states rein in massive spending growth, particularly in health and education? Too right they can.

The private sector has been containing spending growth for decades. Customers have demanded better-value goods and services, and businesses have delivered. Most businesses, small or large, have run successful programs - often continuously - to identify and implement efficiency and customer service initiatives.

Consumers are used to getting what they want at reasonable and often falling prices. Technology can play a big role.

Cost-cutting programs can be painful, and they always involve hard trade-offs, but many Australians who work in the private sector have been through this many times over. They are calling for it now because they know it works.

In health, new technology, new business models and smarter thinking are all combining to provide new opportunities to contain health spending growth and deliver better health outcomes. Yes, we are getting older. Yes, new drugs and practices cost money.

But this is a problem for the entire Western world, and so innovators are spending billions to solve the problem.

We are seeing restraint in health spending in other countries where there's simply no more taxation to be had. We have no choice but to do it too. The federal Health Minister is implementing initiatives to tackle these problems in primary care, but this work needs to extend across the entire health system.

As a member of parliament, I regularly witness unchecked government spending. In education, for example, the farcical spending under the so-called Building the Education Revolution continues.

Recently, I have seen a local P&C's sensible entreaty to engage a local contractor for a much-needed building rebuffed by a state department. Instead, the department chose to engage a preferred BER contractor at a cost three to four times the cost quoted (based on school building standards) by a local builder.

Alongside big-spending premiers, we saw the Labor Party hooting and cheering for a plan to raise another set of taxes, with a wacky thought bubble about reducing Australia's carbon emissions. Details were short ("we'll get round to the modelling"), but rest assured the costs will be huge. Supporting continued economic prosperity wasn't even on the agenda, with a broadside on free trade to boot. Why work hard to make people better off when the real task is to obtain power with populist claptrap? Using climate change as an excuse for higher taxing, biggerspending government is the new left agenda.

Meanwhile, the Abbott government is delivering on the Kyoto target at minimal costs. Cleverly designed schemes that look for the cheapest means of reducing emissions will always beat a scheme mandating a "revolution" in our electricity grid - remembering that electricity is only a third of our carbon emissions. Alternatives such as changes in land use, industrial energy efficiency and even transportation will always be far cheaper than the latest thought bubble originally conceived by GetUp.

Old Labor, dedicated to supporting working-class Australians to a better life, is utterly sidelined.

Instead, new Labor panders to the media, is concerned to impress the UN and obsessed by the Occupy crowd, which is "embarrassed to be Australian".

Shorten's one concession on boat turnbacks, while necessary, is half-hearted and has cost him enormous political capital.

Much of the media is barracking for new Labor, and it is winning. To many in the political class, delivering better, more efficient government services isn't sexy.

Genuine innovation and entrepreneurship in the delivery of public services isn't sexy. Meanwhile, bigger government with higher taxes oozes appeal, especially if you are publicly funded.

Middle Australia should be appalled by this crazy new world. It is time for all governments to focus on more efficient, more productive services. It is time to learn from the private sector, with taxes no higher than are absolutely necessary to deliver well-targeted, customerfocused public services. This must be the core policy and political agenda for the coming decades.

Angus Taylor is the member for Hume. He spent more than 20 years in the private sector reforming large and small organisations at consultants McKinsey & Co and Port Jackson Partners.