Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country
    Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country
    Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country
    Ebook171 pages1 hour

    Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country

    By John Watson and Amanda Dunn

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Politics in Australia is in a dire state. The Coalition government is led by its third prime minister in four years, two of whom were toppled by their own party. Before that, the Labor government ousted two prime ministers. Voters’ trust in politicians is at an all-time low, there is policy inertia on key issues, and ideology and internal politics too often trump good government.


    We have the diagnosis, but what’s the cure? In this collection of essays, the country’s best academic minds look at the key issues and chart a way forward. They examine how Australia’s taxation system could be fairer; the priorities in progressing Indigenous Australians’ rights; the absurdity of the constant ‘left versus right’ debate; how to fix private health insurance; and how to settle the conflict between population and migration policies.


    Here are innovative and bold ideas to advance Australia.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMelbourne University Publishing Ltd
    Release dateMar 29, 2019
    ISBN9780522875942
    Advancing Australia: Ideas for a Better Country
    Author

    John Watson

    John Watson is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Optical Engineering at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, UK.

    Read more from John Watson

    Related to Advancing Australia

    Related ebooks

    World Politics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Caroline Lucas

      Dec 5, 2020

      Caroline Lucas
      7 min read

    • Article

      Labour: A New Hope?

      Sep 29, 2022

      Labour: A New Hope?
      6 min read

    • Article

      How Can British Conservatives Get On The Same Page With The Public?

      Nov 2, 2022

      Peter has been a Conservative Party supporter for his entire adult life and is currently a party member. As an officer with the Metropolitan Police in London, he sees the impact of government policies up close every day. But when the Conservative gov

      5 min read

    • Article

      Brass Tax

      Sep 17, 2021

      Brass Tax
      6 min read

    • Article

      Off The Menu

      Feb 19, 2023

      Politicians call it swallowing dead rats. When their policies are beloved by the party and its supporters, but disliked by the wider public, the leadership will usually ditch the policies. It’s no use having a bold and transformational manifesto if y

      4 min read

    • Article

      Straight And Narrow

      Feb 26, 2024

      The new prime minister has a complicated relationship with the nation he governs. Like most leaders, Christopher Luxon finds that the country that voted him into power happens to be the best in the world: he celebrates us for the glint in our eye and

      4 min read

    • Article

      Labor Wins The Next Election And Delivers Its Promises

      Mar 31, 2022

      Unlike former Labor leader Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese is largely running a small-target strategy with no big controversial tax reforms. Instead, he is emphasising Labor’s traditional edge in areas like health and education. Labor formally dumped

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Missed Opportunity

      Nov 15, 2023

      THE man who puts politics first is not fit to be called a civilised being.’ Those words of Quintin Hogg, Lord Hailsham, sum up a proper British attitude. We rightly suspect those who lust after political power. Fascism, Communism and utopian politics

      2 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Oct 31, 2022

      The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK @bigissueuk @thebigissue Those who identify as journalists within the mainstream media are jubilant at yet another prime ministerial res

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Changing Of The Guard

      Mar 4, 2024

      Grant Robertson is only 21⁄2 years older than Efeso Collins, the Green Party list MP who died after collapsing at a charity event. Collins had just begun his parliamentary career. After serving in local government in South Auckland and unsuccessfully

      4 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Jacinda

      Jan 10, 2021

      Beyond Jacinda
      17 min read

    • Article

      Tell Us The Terms

      Oct 4, 2020

      New Zealanders are weathering with a great deal of patience the protracted uncertainties of a pandemic – but they shouldn’t have to endure uncertainty from political candidates. Being in uncharted territory with Covid-19 doesn’t excuse our politician

      3 min read

    • Article

      Mods And Rockers

      Mar 19, 2023

      Mods And Rockers
      4 min read

    • Article

      Where To Start?

      Nov 29, 2020

      The National Party has announced a full review of what went wrong at the last disastrous election. It has to ask? The 413,800 former National voters who fled to Labour or Act know the answer, so it should be readily apparent to every MP, party appara

      4 min read

    • Article

      John Harris

      Feb 2, 2024

      John Harris
      3 min read

    • Article

      Running Down The UK’s Services Was A Political Choice. But Our Leaders Don’t Seem To Grasp Basic Cause And Effect

      Mar 18, 2024

      One of the central failings of the post-2010 Conservative governments is their inability to grasp the interconnectedness of public services, public health and the welfare state. If people fall below the poverty line, their health worsens. Stress and

      3 min read

    • Article

      For Whom The Bell Tolls

      Oct 30, 2022

      For Whom The Bell Tolls
      2 min read

    • Article

      Stroke Of Misfortune

      Nov 8, 2020

      Stroke Of Misfortune
      6 min read

    • Article

      Life And Soul Of The Party

      Mar 21, 2021

      Life And Soul Of The Party
      2 min read

    • Article

      Getting What We Ask For

      Sep 25, 2023

      Getting What We Ask For
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tipping Point

      Nov 21, 2021

      Tipping Point
      2 min read

    • Article

      Australian PM Scott Morrison Calls Federal Election For May 21

      Apr 10, 2022

      Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Sunday called for a federal election for May 21, amid opinion polls showing his Liberal National party lagging behind the opposition despite efforts to impress voters. The Morrison government last week wooe

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Advancing Australia

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Advancing Australia - John Watson

      Lockie

      CHAPTER ONE

      Thinking big: What the major parties should do if they win government (and even if they don’t)

      Win or lose the next election, it may be time for the Liberals to rethink their economic narrative

      Carol Johnson

      In the heady political days of late 2018, former federal treasurer Peter Costello argued that the Liberals need to unite behind a clear economic narrative. He claimed that this would avoid Liberal politicians defining themselves on the ‘social issues’ that have divided the government.

      However, the ideological problems in the Liberal government go beyond the evident, and electorally damaging, differences over social issues. The Liberals’ economic ideology, which often cuts across their internal division between conservatives and moderates, may also be contributing to their difficulties.

      Is it now time for the Liberals to reconsider their free market, neoliberal economic policy narrative? It emphasises lower taxes combined with radical deregulation, privatisation, corporatisation, major cuts to government spending on services and the dismantling of Australia’s century-old industrial arbitration system.

      But it is a narrative that contributed to the 2014 budget cuts that helped undermine the Abbott government. It gave rise to the proposed tax cuts for big business that con tributed to the poor results in the 2016 election and 2018 byelections. It also made it harder for the Liberals to accept a range of regulatory policy issues, including the need for a banking royal commission.

      Costello’s critics claim that his own tax cuts significantly reduced government revenue. This made it much more difficult for future governments to return the budget to surplus.

      Has neoliberalism’s time passed?

      The Liberals have always argued that they would be better economic managers than Labor; that they supported individual rights and free enterprise and opposed Labor’s so-called ‘socialism’. Nonetheless, their economic narrative has not always been the neoliberal, free market one that Costello and others have espoused from the Howard government on. The Liberals originally believed in a more substantial role for government.

      Labor has been quietly moving away from some neoliberal positions that it embraced during the Hawke and Keating years. For example, it is now more supportive of government regulation and has re-embraced Keynesian perspectives that see a major role for the state in managing capitalist economic cycles.

      It has also questioned some neoliberal aspects of past Labor government industrial relations policy, such as an over-reliance on enterprise bargaining, acknowledging that this has contributed to reduced wages and conditions.

      The Liberals have introduced some electorally opportunistic economic measures. These include funding for industries in sensitive electorates, energy price measures and backing down on tax cuts to big business that they couldn’t get through the Senate. But they have not undertaken a major reconsideration of their economic ideology despite the related policy problems, from unpopular budget and tax cuts to originally opposing a banking royal commission.

      Yet Robert Menzies, the founder of the party, decried laissez-faire economics and argued for more controls, not fewer. He boasted of reading Keynes, given that politicians need to know ‘a great deal about applied economics’.

      Menzies championed the role of Liberal administrations in establishing an industrial relations arbitration and conciliation system that gave ‘to organised labour the basic wage, the standard working week, the protection of employees and the enforcement of their legally established rights’. Nonetheless, the Howard government largely abolished such a system in its neoliberal- influenced (and electorally unpopular) WorkChoices legislation.

      In short, the Liberals were originally more influenced by social liberalism, rather than neoliberalism, in that they were more willing to endorse state intervention to protect the welfare of citizens and the smooth functioning of markets.

      So why might it be important for the Liberals to reconsider some of their economic policy narrative now?

      Time for a rethink

      Social democrats are fond of claiming that it has been their historical role to save capitalism from its own excesses, including during the global financial crisis. However, social liberals can argue that they have also aimed to do

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1