Now that it is dawning on the mainstream media that competition is the crucial issue in the Australian economy — something we’ve been banging on about for years now, and figures like Labor’s Andrew Leigh have been saying for a decade — the right is looking to fix the debate in its interests.
First item on the agenda is to use the support of the gouging monopolist Qantas for the Yes campaign to delegitimise the latter.
“While the public were complaining about late flights, high airfares and poor service, Qantas decided to invest in the Voice Yes case,” trilled buffoon Alex Downer.
“Not only does Qantas instruct the public what to think on same-sex marriage, Israel Folau and the Voice referendum but on every Qantas flight there is a Welcome to Country and/or an acknowledgment of Aboriginal Elders,” whined Greg Sheridan.
“What will be remembered about Joyce is him standing next to the prime minister in front of a Qantas plane with ‘Yes’ written on it,” observed John Roskam.
Confounding this criticism is that the preferred narrative in the US (on which the Australian right so obsessively depends for its content that the conspiracy theories come with left-hand drive) is that woke capitalism doesn’t make money. “Go woke, go broke,” they like to say, when in Qantas’ case it’s very much go woke, make an absolute motza.
Thus the confusion in a bad-even-by-their standards piece in the local version of the Spectator, which argued about Qantas “the central conundrum of Woke Capitalism is its unprofitability. Consumers often hate it. Heavily politicised, it can alienate half a company’s potential customer base — which is a bad move.”
But the bigger issue for the right isn’t this particular front of the endless culture wars, but preventing the diagnosis of the problem posed by Qantas — and, as Crikey alone has pointed out, the big banks, the big audit firms, the casinos, Rio Tinto, fossil fuels, arms manufacturers etc — from leading to a genuinely critical discussion of how Australian capitalism fails to work.
The emerging diagnosis from the right is that Qantas represents “crony capitalism”, and specifically not how the free market economics of the past 30 years is supposed to work. That was the thrust of Roskam’s piece, and one on the weekend by the poor man’s Albrechtsen, Parnell McGuinness.
Admittedly, this is a mistake I myself made in my journey out of neoliberalism, so I can’t be too harsh. But arguing that the problem is crony capitalism and not neoliberalism is the path to arguing — exactly as former Institute of Public Affairs savant Sinclair Davidson did for McGuinness — that the problem is we’re not neoliberal enough.
(A sidenote: that Liberals and IPA alumni like Downer, Roskam and Davidson and their supporters like Sheridan are suddenly complaining about business being too close to government, when that is precisely the management model at the heart of the modern Liberal Party — exchanging political donations and post-public life positions for policy favours — is a lovely irony).
Arguing that we wouldn’t be in this trouble if we had more neoliberalism is the exact right-wing analog of those dead-ender communists who insist communism has never been properly tried — with “state capitalism” playing the role for them that “crony capitalism” is playing now for the right.
What is being ignored in the argument, perhaps wilfully, perhaps in good faith, is that the rise and rise of powerful corporations in concentrated markets exploiting political influence and deliberately weakened regulators to immiserate workers, consumers and the community isn’t a debauchery of neoliberalism, it is an inevitable result of how neoliberalism operates.
As I argued at length in my book The Mess We’re In years ago, the neoliberal project shifts power to corporations away from governments and workers, under the belief that an untrammelled market delivers the best economic outcomes. But in the real world, individual corporations aren’t interested in the best economic outcomes, only the best outcomes for their managers and shareholders.
The result is increasingly concentrated markets (the consequence of the watering down of competition laws, because corporations argue that economies of scale will deliver for consumers, so all mergers and acquisitions should be allowed), governments selling or outsourcing core public policy functions and thus disempowering themselves, allowing corporations to dictate and even implement policy themselves, weakening and curbing regulators, trade unions and other institutions that might hamper corporations’ quest for profits, aided by a media apparatus (itself controlled by large dominant corporations) designed to act as propagandists for corporations.
Qantas, or the Commonwealth Bank exposed by the Hayne royal commission, are the perfect forms of neoliberalism — privatised public corporations providing core services that turned into greedy oligopolists wielding too much political influence and so obsessed with profits they were willing to break the law and treat their customers and workers with contempt. They’re not crony capitalism, they’re neoliberalism in action.
Capitalism tends to oligopoly because investors love companies that are protected from competition. Neoliberalism removes the checks and balances from that tendency. The results are inevitable. And we know market concentration and the dominance of big corporations leads to less investment, less innovation, lower productivity, lower wages and higher inflation.
Not enough neoliberalism? The answer, instead, is a radical agenda of breaking up large corporations, re-regulating them and shifting power back to governments, regulators, workers and consumers.
“…the US (on which the Australian right so obsessively depends for its content that the conspiracy theories come with left-hand drive)… “.
Love this!
Hell yeah! Nailed it like a champ.
It has wheels and could blow a small hole in the good ship uss neoliberalism.
Another interesting link offshore to the two political activists cited, one masquerading as a journalist for guess whom, and another as an immigration expert for the UK government & former Foreign Affairs Ministers; both presented in London at an event sponsored by the government of PM ‘mini Putin’ Orban i.e. MCC, not cricket club, but Mathias Corvinus Collegium.
According to Mandiner (25 June ’19) ‘MCC round table in London: The hotbed of democracy is the nation state, green madness is the new religion’; even better, in the background lurks the shadow of Russian influence or common interests.
I always have trouble parsing your comments; a few more words per sentence would be helpful IMO
You can always ask a question for clarification, but that’s not the point is it?
Two threads present but not necessarily conjoined by this article should be.
At the same time as we’ve been blithely sleepwalking into this neoliberal dreamscape, the concentration of media power has also approached oligopolistic (dis-)proportions almost simultaneously.
So where you have less and less diversity of viewpoints expressed within the few media outlets capable of actually opening any sort of policy window wide enough to demand the issue be addressed, you also have a media sector dominated by owners whose self-interests are directly at odds with the goal of shining any systemic light on these sorts of behaviours anyway.
We DO need “a radical agenda of breaking up large corporations, re-regulating them and shifting power back to governments, regulators, workers and consumers.” And the best, easiest and most obvious place to start is by aggressively re-instating cross-media ownership laws, and indeed modernising them and strengthening them – and ensuring they’re drafted in a way that forces the break-up of both Nine and News Corp into constituent units capable of serving and advancing the interests of the public sphere at scale.
And once you’ve solved that problem, I find it hard not to believe you wouldn’t have gone a long way towards solving the bigger issues in the broader economy.
Well put, the media industry regulator is in an extremely pivotal position in terms of diversity of views and opinion and output in general. It’s run by the same clowns running the media. Expecting business that earns its money through relationships with oligopolies to have the public’s interest at heart is high farce.
Then there is how that relates to neoliberal ideology which news corpse has been the star boy for decades, with the rest of mainstream media following suit with less frightening of the horses but the same goal.
Agree, but there is clear global context, especially within the ‘Anglosphere’ of US, UK and little Australia; one only needs to see Koch’s global Atlas Network and local franchises or members, quelle surprise.
According to US writers Jane Mayer, Nancy MacLean et al. it’s not just about influence over policy for ‘free market’ and ‘libertarian’ policies, but more about fossil fueled investors in their US Donor Network (inc. nativist Tanton) promoting the socioeconomics of ‘segregation economist’ James Buchanan, was also linked to the Chicago School’s Chilean experiment, and making any gains permanent e.g. SCOTUS appointments for their Christian ‘investors’.
According to DeSmog ‘The Atlas Network is a Washington, DC-based non-profit organization that describes itself as working to support a growing network of more than 500 “free market” organizations in nearly 100 countries promoting free market ideas.’
See https://www.desmog.com/atlas-economic-research-foundation/
While re-instating and modernising the cross media ownership laws, it may be a great idea to mandate Australian ownership of the nations media.
why oh why do the current labour sew the seeds to their own destruction media eise by maintaining a Netflix / digitization( cheap) sell off of its past capital ie live studios and infrastructure for short term gain ?! No now there is zero live content – just simplistic commercial sell offs to offshore pirates
sic :” voice”
We had the perfect example over the weekend from that part of Australia to the West of the 129 degrees East meridian, W.A.
That no longer stands for West Australia…………..
…………..rather Woodside’s Australia.
The local IPA, who for some reason (my guess is Climate Change) had come out with some regulations limiting pollution…………..
…………………which went down like a lead brick with the actual government of W.A., Woodside.
Naturally enough, they turned to their top stooge, the recently (and inexplicably) departed Premier, who obligingly phoned up the (legislatively independent, but apparently, malleable IPA) and told them outright to kill their new requirements.
It seems the call lasted for only a few minutes, and brooked no argument.
Following the recent fiasco where the State government provided an armed contingent of the Terrorism Squad as a personal Praetorian Guard for the ACTUAL Premier of W.A., the CEO of Woodside, it is blindingly obvious that W.A. is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Woodside.
It is well past time that the whole structure of the W.A. “Democracy” was referred to an anti-corruption commission…………
……….although probably not the CCC, as by now that may also be a subsidiary of Woodside.
You mean EPA.
Ooooops!
That’s why we have an edit button.
Oh wait, no we don’t
Dead right. The true power structure in WA has Big Mining (not just Woodside) as the actual government, with a shopfront called the WA Government to deal with all the trivial non-mining issues, a security service called the WA Police and a propaganda outlet in the State’s only daily newspaper owned by … a Big Mining tycoon. Politics is a matter of either aligning with the true government, or being shut out altogether. The State and executive government, as such, is merely a division of Big Mining.
its pathetic and https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcqsKvTSPw
BK, we are all very grateful that you made your own personal transition away from Neoliberalism, and Crikey is far better for it.
As for the Spectator, I suppose someone has to study and report the drivel they produce, but if you must do it please look after your mental health..!!
the bloody waste of our emotional brain band width – not to mention our creative agency – all agesist drivel platitudes to shape a crap narrative ; misrepresenting concepts of efficiency and productivity
dont shoot the messenger boys https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qlcqsKvTSPw
fairmind please watch 2 hours of commercial tv if you can lower your self and count the amount of women over 45 or 50 – then count the men and others ..,.
Not one representation of an older woman unless shes portrayed as a needy vulnerable or a candidate for doddering volunteer – talk about blind bias
you do not listen you assume just like the lazy ageist sexist moniker” karen from Bunnings” … bully boys playing semantics – and now you give us the same business model as tge neoliberal old boys club buy out or young boys club – you shut wonen down with trivia unless it fits into a narrow agenda which reflects you
I’m enjoying the Libs twisting themselves into knots decrying Labor for doing exactly what they would have done if they were in power. Much like their whining about “cost of living” their lack of meaningful policy makes it even more stark.
Yeah, but since when have the masses ever noticed their glaring hypocrisy?
Hypocrisy is not a character flaw for Conservatives. It is simply the normal exercising of rank and privilege.
Hence ye olde Emperor’s Clothes bit. Ever thus.