How much is our disillusionment with politicians, governments and even democracy the result of our pollies’ 30-year love affair with that newly recognised mega-evil “neoliberalism”?
To a considerable extent, according to Dr Richard Denniss, of the Australia Institute, in the latest Quarterly Essay, Dead Right.
I’m not sure I’m fully convinced by his argument, but it’s a thought-provoking thesis that’s worth exploring.
Like “globalisation” in the 1990s, neoliberalism has become the all-purpose political swearword of the 2010s. Anything economic that you don’t approve of can be condemned as neoliberalism.
But Denniss provides some more specific attributes. “The intellectual core of neoliberalism is the idea that the profit motive of companies, combined with consumers’ ability to choose the product that suits them best, will result in the best possible social and economic outcomes,” he says.
Implicit in this is the belief that government intervention in markets is always suspect and should be reduced to a minimum, just as taxation is an onerous “burden” which must be reduced if we are to prosper.
Dennis argues that neoliberalism hasn’t just involved much deregulation, privatisation, outsourcing of government services and cuts in government spending, it’s also changed our culture – the way we think about politics and political issues.
Its focus on the individual has sanctified selfishness, releasing people from the restraints of solidarity with the rest of the community and legitimating the lobbying mentality. We’re all free to press our own interests on the government, and if that means I extract more than you do, that just proves I worked harder than you.
But the greatest cultural change, according to Denniss, is the belief that economic issues outweigh all other considerations. “The trick of neoliberalism was to convince the public that it is the economic dimension of big issues that we must focus on,” he says.
“Past generations . . . did not see the need to delay all significant debates about the shape and direction of their society until tax and industrial relations policies were optimised according to specific principles understood by a tiny proportion of the population.”
Denniss says we no longer talk about the inherent value of educating our children, but of the increase in skills and productivity that their education will bring to the economy.
A big part of this is the obsession with maximising the growth of the economy – or, in Malcolm Turnbull’s more enticing packaging, Jobs and Growth.
“After 27 years of continuous economic growth, it is inconceivable that the thing Australia needs most is to ‘grow our economy’ some more.
“What we really need is to rebuild trust in our institutions and confidence in our country. We need to debate far more specific and important national goals, and then show ourselves that when we work together we can make things better. We have done it before and other countries are doing it right now.”
What if Australian parliaments stopped trying to fix the industrial relations system or the tax system for a few years, and focused instead on things that Australians really care about?
“For 30 years Australians have been told that what is good for gross domestic product is good for the economy, and hence for the country. But that is like saying that the more money a family earns, the happier the children will be.
“It is the shape of our economy that determines our wellbeing, not its size. Spending $1 billion subsidising the Adani coalmine will create economic activity [and jobs], but so will spending that money promoting Australian tourism or improving Sydney’s pubic transport.
“The important question isn’t whether a project will ‘create activity’, but whether a project will make Australia a better place or not.”
Like waiters in a restaurant, says Denniss, politicians and bureaucrats are not there to tell us what we must order, but to show us the menu and explain the specials.
So one of his proposals is to replace the Productivity Commission with a national interest commission, to provide both governments and the public with broad advice on the advantages (as opposed to benefits) and disadvantages (as opposed to costs) that, say, a major project or a universal basic income, might entail.
The opposite of the narrow economic agenda of neoliberalism isn’t a progressive economic reform agenda, Denniss says, it’s the re-establishment of a broad debate about the national interest.
“After 30 years of hearing that politicians, government and taxes are the things that ruin the economy, it is time for the public to hear and see that politicians, government and taxes are the foundations on which prosperous democratic nations are built.”
There are dozens of popular things that state and federal governments could get on with that would make Australians happy, make Australia a nicer place to live and, most importantly, show the Australian public that the decisions made by parliament do make a difference.
Such as? “Bans on political donations, the establishment of strong anti-corruption watchdogs, reform to parliamentary entitlements, higher taxes on annual incomes over $1 million, closing loopholes that allow companies to pay billions in dividends and nothing in tax, legalising marijuana, banning poker machines, and preserving all existing parks from property development.”
The world is full of alternatives and choices, Denniss concludes. “Neoliberalism’s real power came from convincing us that we had none. We do, and making them is the democratic role of citizens – not the technocratic role of economists, nor that of any self-serving elite.”
Ross Gittins is economics editor of the SMH and an economic columnist for The Age. His books include Gittins’ Guide to Economics, Gittinomics and The Happy Economist.
Ross Gittins is the Economics Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
Comments
7 responses to “ROSS GITTINS. How we could revive faith in democracy (SMH 6 June 2018)”
“The Economy” is the deity to which we must all be subservient. Bollocks, I say!
We live in a society which should be supported by “the economy” not the other way round, as it is today.
For me, the big con has been to convince the people that the govt budget is the same as a household budget so there is the national obsession over debts and deficits (remember the debt truck).
It’s time to change the narrative and recognise that the Aust Govt is NOT constrained by $A – it is the sole issuer of our currency for goodness sake! The Govt is only constrained by a shortage of real resources.
Ditto the madness that taxes pay for govt spending – they don’t. Govt spends first and uses taxes to:
a) legitimse the currency (you can only pay your taxes in $A)
b) control inflation and
c) encourage desired behaviours eg. high taxes on cigarettes to reduce smoking.
It’s past time to educate the public on how our monetary system REALLY works – #LearnMMT.
The first political party to take on this challenge will be able to bring REAL change and benefits to Australian society. It will be a challenge, certainly, but nothing truly worthwhile ever comes easily.
We have 2 Aussie world leaders in MMT, Prof Bill Mitchell and Prof Steve Keen. If I was a leader of a political party I would be inviting these gentlemen into my party room to educate my members and begin constructing a plan to educate the populace.
Sadly, we don’t have any political leaders of sufficient courage.
“Denniss provides some more specific attributes. “The intellectual core of neoliberalism is the idea that the profit motive of companies, combined with consumers’ ability to choose the product that suits them best, will result in the best possible social and economic outcomes,” he says.”
Here’s a sterling example of where that notion actually leads:
“A pharmaceutical company executive defended his decision to raise the price of an essential drug by 400 percent, proclaiming the price hike “a moral requirement to make money.”
Nirmal Mulye, founder and president of Nostrum Laboratories in Missouri, spoke on the decision to raise the price of a bottle of antibiotic nitrofurantoin from $474.75 to $2,932, in an interview with the Financial Times released Tuesday. The drug treats bladder infections and is considered by the World Health Organization to be an “essential medicine” for a basic health-care system.
“I think it is a moral requirement to make money when you can … to sell the product for the highest price,” Mulye told the Financial Times.”
May I, respectfully, recommend a different ‘read’?
David Runciman (of Cambridge, UK) has published The Confidence Trap. I can’t recommend it highly-enough.
Neoliberalism is just another label, no more useful than all the other labels that are so easily thrown around in public debate, their main purpose typically to obfuscate rather than inform. That said, Dennis is no doubt correct in saying that what we need is a much broader set of goals and objectives than mere deferral to economic growth. But another government body is only a small part of the solution. The reality is that we cannot find solutions at all until we start electing leaders that are able to see beyond the next election and whose only vested interest is in their constituents – not beholden to political parties or donors.
too bloody late. the horse has bolted and with everything it wanted.given away by those in power to further their own greedy ambitions.started in earnest by that clever fool keating.poor fella my country
yes, Hawke/Keating started the neo liberal putsch that did away with sound post WW2 policies of full employment and put the public service out to tender on contract. They were reading the same tea leaves all over the western world more or less contemporaneously. Labour thus betrayed their base. They don’t deserve the reins of government until they apologise for the wrongs they started, no matter how bad the conservative side is.
Allied to this is the utterly unproven notion that someone who has worked in the private sector or a “businessMAN” is inherently more knowledgable about the management of anything than anyone who has worked in the public sector. As someone who has worked at CEO/Chairman levels in both the public and private sectors, I can attest that this fallacy is as pervasive as the Chris Corrigan fallacy that you have to be a MAN to be a good director of a company! Good people of any gender are hard to come by and I mean “good” in that they do pay attention to what their clients, the environment (both social and physical) as well as their staff require to fully function is paramount.