If it’s no longer clear to anyone — perhaps not even himself — what Malcolm Turnbull stands for, it’s not his problem alone any more. His party’s ready acceptance of yesterday’s package of interventionist measures aimed at power companies shatters what’s left of the Liberal Party’s credentials as the champion of free markets in Australia. What do the Liberals now stand for, if anything? Breaking up companies, price controls, the re-entry of government into the electricity generation sector.
Business is aghast — and all the more so because of the looming abandonment of company tax cuts following their defeat in the Senate. Business groups emerged yesterday to slam the policy chaos (carefully leaving the impression that Labor was to blame as much as the Coalition) and lament the proposed new competition regulator powers. The Financial Review and veteran pundits like Matthew Stevens and Tony Boyd are dismayed, as is John Durie at The Oz. How could it have gone so wrong in just three years since Turnbull took over promising a new era of economic reform, liberal policymaking and smart politics?
Much of the blame lies, yes, with Tony Abbott and his tiny band of malcontents who, like Kevin Rudd was, are prepared to rip their own party apart and set back the cause of good policy for the sake of their own egos. As Abbott correctly notes, though, at least he does his destruction in full public view, unlike the gutless Rudd. And yes much of the blame also lies with old white male climate denialists in the Coalition who won’t accept any climate action of any kind.
But any proper assessment of this period marked by the death of neoliberalism in Australia needs to take into account how business itself was crucial in creating the conditions for the kind of backlash we saw yesterday. Between the major energy companies and the big banks and retail super fund owners — less than ten companies — big business has demonstrated how it accumulates and then abuses power to exploit customers, damage the economy and undermine community trust. These are companies that had it all — market share, size, investor support, political influence, economists and pundits queued up to justify everything they did and unchallengeable positions at the heart of the economy. And they blew it by pushing for ever higher profits no matter what the damage to public perceptions of them, while their lobbyists at the Business Council pushed for billions in tax windfalls for them and demonised their competitors.
In the end, the very party they’d funded to protect them turned on them, delivering blows far more savage than their progressive opponents would ever have delivered.
That it happened on energy is all the more apt given business sat by and said nothing while their side of politics tore apart a carbon pricing model that was delivering emissions reductions at a low cost and with little disruption. The lamentations of the Business Council and their like about the lack of an energy policy after yesterday’s debacle are rich coming from the people who were content to demand, over and over and over, in 2014 that Labor’s carbon pricing scheme be repealed. “We call on all political parties to work together to deliver a workable and durable energy and climate change policy that will drive investment and improve certainty,” the Business Council wailed yesterday. Give us a break.
Will the penny drop within big business about the role they have played in all this? As we ponder the sixth period of prime ministerial leadership chaos since John Howard came to the brink during the 2007 APEC meeting, it seems no one is learning anything.
The term neo-liberalism has been so distorted and blurred as to be almost useless. It not about use of the market anymore because the developments of the last decade have been about the unfettered growth of monopolies (Facebook, google etc) and a reduction in competition.
Conservative politics in Australia has never been pro-market. The Nationals are unrelenting agrarian socialists and the Liberal Party has been at the beck and call of big business in their pursuit of competition-free profit.
The carbon tax was a sensible market mechanism to achieve both a social and economic outcome – we would have lower electricity prices now if we had kept it. The mining tax was a sound mechanism to allow all Australians to share in the monopoly profits (rent) of mostly foreign multi-nationals – we would have a smaller deficit and more money for public education and health if we had kept it.
All of this is not about government, business or media – it is about the population being conned.
“All of this is not about government, business or media – it is about the population being conned.”
So now we have come to a place where the following is the case:
– Politicians have neither the courage nor the intellect to lead on social policy.
– The Hayne RC has starkly illuminated that big business is greedy, incompetent and fundamentally dishonest (it is not just the banks).
– Small and medium business commonly steals wages as a business model.
– The churches and many ‘charitable’ institutions have abused children for centuries and have actively covered that up.
– The idiocy of neo-liberalism has been exposed as a lie, but we have a LNP government that thinks it can save itself with a bigger dose of neo-liberalism.
What hope do we have?
The big emitters of today do need to be able to look deep into the future if they are to convert to noncarbon energy. Even state-owned electricity generators need to plan the future lives of their big equipment. They don’t want to be forced suddenly, on a change of government, to scrap some multi-million-dollar piece of equipment that they have just refurbished for another 20 years.
Of course we can agree that a steadily rising carbon price is necessary to motivate the change. However big consumers of energy need to have an equally steadily rising supply of noncarbon power for them to change to. It is foolish for the Left to pretend that windmills and flower power can provide a need that the Right is denying.
Very close to the mark, as usual, Bernard. But you can’t quite bring yourself to use the ‘C’ word – capitalism. We have no hope of controlling the beast until we can recognise it.
Not only recognize but call it out.
” the Liberal Party’s credentials as the champion of free markets in Australia”
Seriously BK, that was only ever a fig leaf they used to cover their essential purpose, to promote big business at the expense of any true market mechanism.
“And they blew it by pushing for ever higher profits no matter what the damage to public perceptions of them”
Perceptions! Perceptions? You’ve got to be kidding me. These weren’t perceptions, this was grand larceny.
Otherwise, yes, they do have themselves to blame, and it is largely down to about 20 companies or more, all the banks, insurance companies (oh when do we get a Royal Commission into that sector), energy companies – electricity and gas, telecommunications although the NBN has bust that but not well, all the big natural resources companies – that’s 3 or more, and pretty much all the retail superannuation funds. My count is up to about 20 without trying. 10 is a bit short of the mark.
Grand larceny on a grand scale