Having a hopeless government is bad at the best of times. But having a hopeless government at potentially the worst of times could be very bad indeed.
The markets are not the economy. The markets represent investors' opinions about the economy. Right now those opinions are not optimistic.
It's time for Australian business leaders to bell the cat on the Gillard government.
The reason they won't is because they fear retribution. Retribution is bad, but businesses going to the wall as a result of government policy is worse.
With a recession possibly around the corner, now is the time for business leaders to stop being cheerleaders for the government and show some leadership.
Some business leaders might even need to be a bit brave.
As the fable goes, a mouse suggested a bell be placed around a cat's neck to alert the mice when the cat approached. In response to the suggestion, another mouse replied: ''Excellent, but who is to undertake the job?''
The chances are that one way or the other, with or without Julia Gillard as prime minister, Labor will be in power in Canberra for the next two years.
Australia simply can't afford the next two years of Labor's second term to be as bad as its first year.
At the very least, an honest assessment of what's gone wrong might strengthen the hand of those ministers in cabinet and those backbenchers in caucus who don't believe the path to prosperity rests with the Greens.
A government that is increasingly regarded at home and overseas as arbitrary, capricious and lacking any policy direction is not good for business.
It should be inconceivable for the words ''Australia'' and ''sovereign risk'' to appear together in the same sentence. Yet that's exactly what's happening.
There are some very capable ministers in the Gillard government, but the current ministry as a collective is far less than the sum of its parts.
Every minister has to take some responsibility for a series of decisions that can only be described as diabolically bad. For example, the ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia will stand as a victory for short-term political opportunism.
The Labor Party made a great fuss about the damage Pauline Hanson caused to the relationships with our Asian neighbours. But Pauline Hanson didn't cut off food supplies to Indonesia.
Even if the Labor Party could convince itself that the livelihood of hundreds of families and businesses in northern Australia was less important than placating the concerns of urban elites, there's no excuse for such treatment of the Indonesian people.
The decision to halt live cattle exports, taken as it was without any warning or notice, was noted in every Asian capital.
There's no commodity more important in Asia than food. The question being asked in Asia is if the Australian government stopped the export of meat because of a television program, will the government, next time, stop the export of wheat or milk because of a newspaper article?
Australian companies are banking on selling billions of dollars of mineral and energy resources to Asia in the coming decades. Those companies have to be able to guarantee security of supply, in the same way cattle exporters had to guarantee supply.
At the moment, the suggestion that energy exports from Australia could be at risk sounds preposterous. Except for the fact that the leader of the political party on which Labor relies to stay in power has said that Australia should stop exporting coal.
What criticism there has been of the government by company executives has been mild. The only reason those criticisms have received any prominence over the past few weeks is because since the election of Kevin Rudd in 2007, business has largely backed the government.
A few company executives have been willing to speak up about individual issues. For example, on Wednesday BHP Billiton chairman Jac Nasser questioned the carbon tax. But even so, his concern was only about the timetable for the introduction of the carbon tax. He didn't challenge the question of why Australia should have such a tax in the first place.
Or why, in the midst of a possible global recession, any government would introduce a tax that would, on the government's own calculations, reduce economic growth and lower Australians' standard of living.
If business leaders had the guts to bell the cat on the Gillard government they'd be doing something positive for themselves, for their businesses and for the government.
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