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July 16, 2010
Julia Gillard's speech to the National Press Club was designed to show Gillard's record as a reformer in education and industrial relations and to point to the future reforms. I found it disappointing in understanding what "moving forward" slogan stands for policy wise. Moving forward to where?
Most of the Canberra Press Gallery commentary is about the Laurie Oaks bomb (based on a leak from Rudd) that reminds us of the nature of Australian politics.
In her speech Gillard says that the upcoming campaign will have strong elements of ‘clean' and ‘green' but above all else it will be very lean. So how will moving forward to clean and green be delivered, given that Gillard says that the context of heightened global uncertainty caused by the global financial crisis time for prudent and careful economic management. She adds:
In the 1980s and 1990s, Labor Governments led economic reform by recognising that in changing global conditions, only an open, market-driven economy could prosper. That meant floating the dollar, reducing tariffs, ensuring wage restraint and implementing sweeping competition policy reforms. But as conditions change again, we need more than economic stability to ensure future prosperity. We need active reforms to improve Australia's ability to compete, to make sure that all our assets are utilised productively, and to make the most of our value-adding capacity.
She adds that the sectors which may need renewal and reform are often those that were relatively untouched by the Hawke-Keating reforms - sectors like health and education that meet essential public needs, delivered largely within the domestic economy. There was no mention of energy at all.
The strategy is this:
As far as I am concerned, there is no inherent superiority in a public sector or a private sector provider – certainly not on ideological grounds. The challenge is not whether to combine public and private resources in these essential sectors, but how best to do it.Simply applying the extreme free-market medicine of liberalisation and privatisation without thought or care is not a solution. Maintaining an instinctive hostility towards the public sector and all it provides is equally wrong...the microeconomic challenges of the future are not a simplistic choice between the market and the state, but the more sophisticated challenges of market design so that we bring public and private resources together to deliver better services and increased productivity.
Despite the mention of strong elements of lean and green nothing was said about addressing climate change. The goal of public policy is increased prosperity and fairness.There was one mention of a sustainable economy being a goal:
Economic reform should benefit families, boost national prosperity, enable more Australians to enjoy the dignity of work and deliver a more competitive and sustainable economy. Over time, there should be a virtuous cycle between investment in human capital and resilient communities and economic growth.
The emphasis in the speech was on prosperity---advancing an agenda that moves Australia forward to a more productive, modern Australian economy; one whose dividend to Australians is better quality services, better quality jobs, more competitive firms, a better quality of life and greater financial security for the future. This is old Labor. It has little interest in making the shift to a low carbon economy. It is conservative Labor --- exemplified by Gillard's educational reforms which were about testing students not fostering critical thinking.
Labor has retreated from using the market as a mechanism to address greenhouse gas emissions. Gillard says that what matters is:
methodically working to create the conditions in which markets serve the public interest through vigorous competition, transparent information, the freedom to make choices and a responsiveness to the needs of service users.
Using markets to serve the public interest has been rejected in terms of climate change and making the polluters pay for their greenhouse emissions.
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'lean' implies fiscal conservatism and bringing the budget back to surplus. It is becoming clear that the Gillard Government , like the Howard one before it, is riding the same commodities boom to riches - only it is using the proceeds to paper over a hole in revenues created by its miners tax backdown.