The government’s commitment to locking Australia in place has led to a low-growth, low-productivity economy dependent on public spending and commodity price spikes to prop it up. But beyond the economy, the government’s goal has been to prevent Australia from going anywhere across a number of major policy areas.
Run by climate denialists and the representatives of fossil fuel interests, the government, apart from a brief effort by Malcolm Turnbull, has worked to prevent any action that might reduce Australia’s carbon emissions. No matter how hard the government tries to hide the data, emissions have risen steadily since Tony Abbott removed the effective, efficient carbon pricing scheme the Coalition inherited from the previous government. Even now, with some of its own most conservative elements lamenting the impact of climate change on agriculture, and talk of northern Australia becoming “uninsurable” as the climate emergency starts to bite, the government refuses to contemplate any action beyond regularly lying about meeting our international commitments and devising ways to vilify climate protesters.
The relentless focus on the status quo is also the basis for what is now a point blank refusal to progress any constitutional recognition of Australia’s first people, let alone agree to a treaty with them — the most recent recognition effort, led by Ken Wyatt, was derailed within days, humiliating the nation’s most senior Indigenous politician. As a result, Australia remains the only colonial settler society other than Israel that refuses to formally acknowledge that it was founded on dispossession. This is despite elements within its own ranks, often in the unlikeliest of places, calling for real recognition and an Indigenous voice to government, of the kind dismissed out of hand and maliciously mischaracterised as “a third chamber”.
The same template applies to energy policy, more egregiously even than other areas. The government’s only policy is a determination to protect a dinosaur coal sector at all costs, freezing Australia in amber rather than accept the need for decarbonisation. The result — also partly blameable on the states, especially those that delayed privatisation of their generators — has driven up prices for businesses and consumers, deterred much-needed investment, and left the east coast energy network at risk of failure.
While this wilful stagnation panders to special interests, it also reflects a profound laziness. This is a government that routinely runs out of things to do in parliament when it sits (and it will sit just 13 weeks this year), that devotes as much time to devising policies to wedge its opponents as it does to addressing issues of substance, that insists all is well with the economy even as the central bank pleads for assistance, and that asked its leading economic think tank to advise on productivity reforms only to entirely ignore the resulting advice.
This is a government that has learnt the wrong lesson of conservatism. Its policies suggest it believes that conservatism is about doing nothing; that conservatism is an end, not a means, not a philosophy of considering change guided by what has worked in the past and by the institutions that have served the community and the polity over generations.
Australia thus stagnates along with its lazy government. Its workers and households face a decade without income growth and a low-productivity future. Its children face a poorer, more chaotic life on a cooking planet, and are vilified when they protest. Its expensive energy sector teeters on the brink of failure every summer. Its Indigenous peoples face years — decades — without the most basic recognition of their existence and history, while continuing to endure a vast gap in life outcomes and opportunities with non-Indigenous Australians.
By 2022, when the next election is due, a lost decade will be in sight, in which Australia as an economy and as a nation has marked time. With a shell-shocked and timid opposition, further lost years beckon beyond that, deep into the next decade, a country doing nothing, going nowhere.
This is the second part of Bernard Keane’s analysis of a stagnating Australia. Read his first story here.
Governments often beg out of making the tough or right decisions by claiming that their policy options are limited in an increasingly globalized world. In an ironic manner this is consistent with both Dumb Trump (that is, Donald) and Dumber Trump (that is, Morrison) railing against globalization in favour of polices that suit the ‘national interest’. In other words stuff everyone else what’s in it for me – which is basically what Morrison’s ‘aspirational voter’ is all about. So what are the two talking about? Morrison the hypocrite wants greater freedom of action and less call to accountability on issues such as climate change and asylum seekers because international scrutiny of these matters embarrasses Morrison and his fellow zombies.
Yet at every turn Morrison seeks to extend the power of his government into the lives of ordinary Australian citizens, and lately the media, increasingly restricting their freedoms and rights. At the same time Morrison has sought to reduce accountability by simply refusing to answer the ‘hard’ questions when they are put to him and went so far as to threaten imprisonment to anyone daring to expose the true condition of the Asylum seekers in our ‘care’ to the public. Not that the pubic particularly want to know –ignorance is bliss as they say. The old out of sight out of mind works a treat.
It is interesting that Morrison acts in the above manner. Are there other policies he may fruitfully follow in the national interest? How about a poverty level of 5.8% compared to 13.2% or a child poverty rate of 3.3% compared to 13% or where 14% of the workforce is part-time compared to 26% or where 7.5% of all students who sat the PISA international education tests for Maths, Science and Literacy failed all three tests compared to 11.1%.
Damm, those Finns and other Nordics are really strange ones preferring to advance the good of all rather than simply write off whole sections of the population as collateral damage so that the interests of the few may be advanced. And as you may have guessed Australia is the proud comparison nation to the Finns in the above example. Mr Morrison take a bow for your steadfast support of egalitarianism and humanity and stagnation
It’s kind of you to put it down to laziness. The smug smiles of the dominant right seem to me to reveal a gleeful enjoyment of grinding the boot into the face of the poor, the disenfranchised and anybody else they can scapegoat for the consequences of their own policies.
I wish I could disagree with you Reverend but I think gleeful application of the jack boot is exactly what it is, and gleeful revenge is what it screams out for….
I agree completely. I am returning from a tour to Canada where one can’t help but be impressed with its massive infrastructure investment & increasing care for wildlife & the environment. Every so often, other Australians on the tour would attempt to break into a verse of “Waltzing Matilda” & I kept wondering what they believed they could be proud of in the Canadian context: Australia’s record on human rights, treatment of indigenous Australians, treatment of asylum seekers? Australia’s mining that trashes the environment, even threatening the Great Barrier Reef, its cruelty to & devaluing of native animals; the destruction of industries, the car industry in particular, apparently because Tony Abbott had a dislike of Holden; the poor quality of public schooling, which of course serves the purposefully of keeping the average Australian free of skills of analysis & maintains the elite through private schooling? The LNP government maintains the lie that Australia is a wealthy country – it is for a few – but for the majority it’s a failing state governed by extreme right wing politicians who want to further constrain freedoms.
“The result — also partly blameable on the states, especially those that delayed privatisation of their generators — has driven up prices for businesses and consumers, deterred much-needed investment, and left the east coast energy network at risk of failure.”
May I suggest that the privatisation of electricity generators and transmission systems is what has driven prices up and prevented the orderly and coordinated adoption of alternative generation?
Yes, sad that Bernard continues to perpetuate the myths about privatisation. I’ve yet to see a single example of where privatisation of public infrastructure/services has led to anything but more money for the already uber-rich.
In Western Australia successive state governments have supported a policy of reserving a proportion of gas production for local use, keeping gas prices reasonable, and retaining state ownership of the electricity generator so that, in the words of the current minister, “We can tell them what to do.” There’s no public pressure to hand over the electricity network to the Government’s mates as was done in some states.
Tasmania has also resisted the calls for privatisation, and the public don’t want it.
But when John Howard was PM he wanted the state government to privatise the Hydro, promising extra state funding if it did so.
In the end the Hydro was split up into generation, transmission and retail so we now have 3 bureaucracies. Which does wonders to reduce costs!
Wayne, I would also ask Bernard: Exactly what has been the advantage to society of privatising electricity assets?
Had the same thought Wayne. Privatisation was all about local members being able to blame gouging corporates, whereas they used to have to respond to the electorate.
Now they get to field the phone calls of aggravation while also being impotent. You have to live a long life to acquire this level of stupidity. Apparently Bernard is yet to work out some pretty basic analysis. Classical economic training has a lot to answer for. That Bernard still hasn’t seen through it is all Bernard’s though.
I work at a university. It appalls me that academia spend their life studying trees and have no idea what a forest is.
Tony Abbott has to be the most malignant cancer that ever occupied Canberra. He not only has cost us a decade in lost opportunities to fight climate change, he screwed up arguably the most important infrastructure project of the century, the NBN, and closed the car industry to save money when there are several less deserving and more costly subsidised industries still alive (mining, banking, private hospitals, private schools). The loss of $1 billion plus of capital investment a year and upwards of 200,000 jobs caused by the elimination of the car industry is still being felt now in lower wages, rampant unemployment and underemployment and loss of access to up-to-date manufacturing technology. Thanks, Tony. Good riddance.
Well said Ian. Couldn’t agree more.