Did you enjoy the media coverage of the Business Council’s economic reform discussion paper “Living on borrowed time” this week?
“Business Council boss Jennifer Westacott wants to ignite a national conversation and convince everyday Australians of the merits of big economic reform,” wrote an Australian Financial Review journalist. “Everyone would be $10,000 better off over the decade if measures were introduced to boost productivity and stop it from ‘acting as a handbrake on the economy’.”
“The Business Council of Australia has launched a new campaign with a long ‘to-do’ list,” said a report in The Australian. “BCA chief executive Jennifer Westacott said the plan aimed for better and more jobs, higher wages, lower taxes, improved living standards, and lower energy prices.”
“The BCA are putting forward a plan essentially for wages growth today … So will this work?” Westacott was asked on Sky News. “We’ve got a very narrow economy where too many eggs in one basket,” she replied. “By way of example, 10 companies pay 30% of all of the corporate tax. We’re very reliant on a few industries. We’ve got wages growth, to your point, stagnating and I think that creates a lot of stagnation in the community. What’s driving that is low productivity and low business investment.”
“The Business Council of Australia has warned if the economy is allowed to just ‘muddle along’, the nation will be laden with an extra $50 billion of debt every year, ran an AAP report. “In a new report released ahead of next Tuesday’s federal budget, it says without stronger growth Australia will sleepwalk into a state of widening deficits, lower living standards and a heightened vulnerability to economic shocks.”
“The Business Council on Wednesday released a discussion paper entitled ‘Living on borrowed time’ in a bid to start a national debate about ways to lift economic and productivity growth over coming years,” wrote a Nine journalist…
Oh, wait, hang on. I got muddled. None of these are from this week. They’re from the coverage of the BCA’s last two “economic reform” ukases in 2019 and 2021. Sorry.
Sadly, despite the BCA featuring a number of Australia’s worst profiteers and price gougers in its membership ranks, there’s no evidence of inflation in the BCA’s rhetoric: a couple of years ago we were all going to be $10,000 better off if we did what the BCA wanted, but it’s now just $7000 each.
That none of the journalists involved appears to have noticed this shrinking of benefits, or remembered that the BCA produced exactly the same demand for reforms a couple of years ago — even when they themselves covered it — illustrates how absurd this endless cycle of “economic reform” debate is.
This week, Westacott appeared on ABC’s 7.30 to be interviewed by Sarah Ferguson, who appeared oblivious to the endlessly reheated nature of what the BCA is demanding. “This report, called ‘Seizing the moment’, so full of life and drama,” Ferguson — usually known as a ferocious interviewer — gushed to Westacott, who was allowed to repeat, unchallenged, the BCA’s easily disproved claims that company tax cuts would increase investment, productivity and wages.
But this media failure goes further. Rather than do their jobs and sceptically assess the claims of the BCA, journalists then added it to the political agenda of the day.
“Following the BCA’s report published this morning, do you accept a reformed blueprint to overhaul the industrial relations and tax system?” one witless journalist asked the prime minister on Monday. Treasurer Jim Chalmers took questions on it on Monday as well, and then was asked by Ferguson about it on 7.30 last night. Chalmers rightly rejected the idea of company tax cuts. This then spurred further analysis and comment from the press gallery about the government’s lack of appetite for big reform — with no journalist involved bothering to even factcheck the BCA’s lies about company tax cuts.
This is theatre of the absurd stuff. A pack of profiteers and gougers simply repeats the same drivel it has been uttering for at least a decade, slaps a different name on it, has it covered straight-faced by journalists who pretend they’ve never heard it before, leading to other journalists to quiz politicians about it as though it’s a legitimate matter of public debate, prompting chin-stroking commentary about the terrible state of politics.
It’s entirely vapid at best and deeply disingenuous at worst, a reflection of how shallow, amnesiac and incapable of original thought and scepticism mainstream media journalism is that this circle-jerk constitutes economic debate in Australia.
The only meaningful part of any of this occurred yesterday, when Chalmers and Assistant Competition Minister Andrew Leigh announced they were establishing a taskforce within treasury to consider upgrading Australia’s competition policy framework, with an advisory committee including the Grattan Institute’s Danielle Wood and former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission head Rod Sims.
The involvement of Wood and Sims augurs well that this won’t be an idle exercise: Sims has been a strong advocate for significantly strengthening competition laws to address the high levels of concentration in the Australian economy. And in her wonderful speech at the jobs summit last year, Wood spoke about the need for competition laws that were fit for purpose. The issue of competition is also one that is dear to the heart of Leigh.
Real competition laws in Australia would deliver the power to regulators to break up — or heavily regulate the pricing power of — our biggest companies and worst profiteers.
Curbing market concentration is crucial to lifting investment, reducing inflation, increasing wages and boosting productivity — the links between large, dominant companies and underinvestment, profiteering, poor productivity and low wages growth are all well-established. It’s one of the biggest issues facing Australia. Chalmers was barely asked about competition at the media conference announcing the taskforce, and not at all by Ferguson.
The BCA doesn’t like the idea of strengthening competition laws. “We are cautious about the risks to the economy if merger activity is stifled by overzealous and uncertain regulation at a time where Australian industry needs to scale to compete globally,” Westacott said in response to Chalmers.
That fear in the eyes of big business should be a big hint to the media about what’s really important in the economy. Instead, they’re too busy capering and gambolling in a policy pantomime driven by greed and amnesia.
Speaking of competition, how can we function as a healthy democracy when our most powerful media outlets all come from the conservatives side of politics?
*The reactionary side of politics.
True enough the media falls over itself to adore the BCA and promulgate its message, but let’s not omit another significant source of gullible uncritical adulation for its prognostications. Minister for Finance, Katy Gallagher, was on ABC RN Breakfast just this morning to add her contribution to worshiping the wisdom of Jennifer Westacott and praise without restraint her wonderful leadership of the BCA over the years. So let’s include our Labor government on board the ship of fools.
Last morning the Shadow Treasurer, Anus something or other, had uninterrupted airtime to dribble on their ABC.
Andrew Leigh should have a greater role in government, if merit counted.
Andrew Leigh has more integrity in his little finger than the entire LNP.
His staff do loyally back up the Party line. He’s my local member, and I’ve never had a response from his office that didn’t boil down to “don’t worry your little head about it”.
At least you get a response. My local member, Tanya Plibersek doesn’t deign to reply to my criticisms.
Another softball interview from Ferguson. She is in semi- retirement And 7.30 is a waste of space
Watching Jennifer on 7 30 it’s clear that she can BS with the best and Ferguson was at her timid worst.
Westacott is as false as her hair colour.
Ferguson can be a very good, hard, interviewer. The fact that she gave Westacott a cloying, marshmallow session is all the more shameful. Ferguson is in a position to know both sides, and it’s yet another cringeworthy capitulation by the ABC. What is going on?
By the way, is anyone else getting a yellow info bar from Crikey about the mod-bot, or is it just me?
Yes, yellow bar at the top of the comments. At least they’ve read the criticism.
Indeed, someone at Crikey has apparently decided to do something. But neither the Yellow Bar nor the moderation guidelines it points to contain anything new. The whims that trigger the interventions of the ModBot are as mysterious, unknowable and unpredictable as ever, so I cannot regard the advent of the Yellow Bar as any sort of advance.
Sadly it seems you may be correct, Rat. I’ve just had six attempts at a comment on Jason Ward’s piece today before finding that the offending word was ‘c-r-i-m-i-n-a-l-s’. Unbelievable.
Maybe the ‘something’ they’ve decided to do is just the pathetic hand-washing statement in yellow.
Tackling the bullshit spouted by business bozo types can be hazardous to an ABC journalist’s career trajectory. Calling bullshit on Talcum’s trickle down economics garbage led to an almost instant exit for Emma Alberici. We are getting an ABC that is too scared to speak truth to power and that is just how power likes it.
Some of her interviews are dreadful. But she was not like that before she got the gig at 7:30.
7:30 should be hosted by one of the best, if not the best interviewer in the country. Sadly the job seems to come with a caveat not to upset government sponsors.
She was like a fawning schoolgirl when she interviewed Hillary Clinton.
It might be a bit much to accuse someone of outright lying, serial fibbing, relentless repetitive non-truth, but, as Westacott is the apparent head of speaking for Australian business, one might point out the ridiculous old rubbish we’ve had from her and her colleagues for years. She speaks for wage thieves, gougers, profiteeers, riggers and rorters as much as she speaks for bettering business theory. It is a consuption and waste economy, so good wages are essential. profits should go, first, back into bettering and expanding business. Fantasy and propaganda do not help…