Gruen worked as adviser to Senator and Federal Industry MinisterJohn Button from the early 1980s and was regarded as the architect of the Button car plan, which freed up automotive trade, eliminated quotas, reduced tariffs and assisted exports during the transition. From 1990 to 1993 he was economic adviser to TreasurerJohn Dawkins. He was appointed to the Productivity Commission on which he served until the late 1990s when he joined the Business Council of Australia directing its New Directions project. In 2000 he founded economic consultancy Lateral Economics and a discount finance broker that rebates commission to borrowers . In this period he has advised Federal and State Governments both as a consultant and when appointed as member or chair of various official committees. He is a member of the Council of the National Library of Australia. In 2011 he was appointed to the board of Innovation Australia and was subsequently appointed as its chair. Gruen has become prominent in public economic discussion. He had a regular economic column for the Courier Mail and later wrote regularly for the Australian Financial Review. He contributes regularly to the popular blog . He built the Herald/Age Lateral Economics Index of Wellbeing which augments official national income measures to take account of the implications of changes in inequality, human capital, natural capital, and major health issues such as life expectancy, mental illness and obesity. He has mounted the public case for various reforms including
refashioning government fiscal institutions in the image of monetary policy to inject greater independence and flexibility into government capital expenditure and fiscal policy as a macro-economic instrument.
allowing people to access their superannuation savings to help raise a house deposit.
building digital public private partnerships to enable services such as 23andMe to be provided as free public goods rather than private goods by subscription and for the resulting data to be maximally open.
giving citizens and business presumptive access to government provided services on competitive neutrality grounds. This would apply to the wealth management governments provide for their public servants and citizens would be able to bank with the central bank to level the playing field between them and commercial banks and to capture substantial seigniorage revenue for government. This policy was taken to the 2019 election by the Greens.
building evidence-based policy and programs with an Evaluator General providing independent evaluation of government programs.
He was a member of the Federal Government's Review of the Australian Innovation System in 2008 and chaired the Government 2.0 Taskforce for the Australian Government which was widely praised internationally. The Government subsequently accepted all of the major recommendations of the Taskforce. Gruen was also the first investor in Kaggle serving as its first chairman. He was an early investor in HealthKit and its first chairman and has invested in a range of other Australian and international start-ups.
Position
In 2014 Gruen suggested a radical bank reform that would solve a range of problems. According to Gruen ordinary people should be able to use central banks' services as commercial banks can. For big commercial banks get high margins or fees but don't add much value to those services. Due to the internet the Bank of England for instance could easily extend its services to everyone in the UK. For one thing it should offer deposit and savings account to all.
