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September 11, 2010
We know that the agreement struck between the Gillard Government and the regional Independents (Oakeshott and Windsor) focused on parliamentary reforms and a new deal for regional Australia. The principles invoked were that regions "have not been given their fair share" and that "equity principles" must prevail.
A new deal for regional Australia means regional development in a globalized world based on state intervention into the open market so as to advantage the people the Independents represent. What does regional development mean? How are we to understand that? How is it a break from the past attempts at regional development under the Howard Government.
I haven't seen the agreement, but Paul Kelly has. His position on minority government, if you recall, is that we have a weak minority national government, a parliament where reform will be more difficult and a group of "special interest" politicians controlling the cross-benches.
He says in The Australian that at the level of Government it involves a new cabinet-level minister for regional Australia and a new department:
There will be a regional Australia cabinet committee, a regional Australia co-ordinating unit in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, an office of northern Australia, a new House of Representatives committee for regional Australia chaired by an independent, a new government-funded regional Australia think tank, methodology to enable the Finance Department to better analyse spending by location, and a review of all rural and regional funding.
About time is my response. This has to be done properly given the complexity of economic and environmental problems in regional Australia. Done properly means economic growth and supporting regional communities whilst shifting to a sustainable Australia
Kelly's interpretation of this approach to regional development is that:
The name of the game is redistribution. With invocations of that ageless Australian narrative of the bush in its fight against "drought, floods, fires and cyclones" the document endorses notions such as "place-based thinking" and "localism". It is notably weak on the economic adjustments and productivity challenges facing the regions....This resurrects an old Australian instinct described in the immortal words of historian W.K. Hancock of the state as "a vast public utility whose duty it is to provide the greatest happiness for the greatest number" (along with winning votes for several political generations).
I have little problem with "place-based thinking" and "localism", and I accept that Australia's public philosophy has been utilitarianism, and that this moral philosophy underpins neo-classical economics' conception of cost benefit analysis. Good public policy is that which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
Now there was a substantial shift in the economic policy regime in Australia in the 1980s as market liberalization (open to foreign competition, and largely de-regulated and privatized) was deemed to be a desirable response to the changed external economic environment (a global economy). Kelly's interpretation links regional development within those political traditions that have never accepted the post-1983 pro-market reform era of Hawke and Keating ---and we should add the neo-liberal mode of governance.
Kelly says regional development represents a return to the Australian Settlement that was set out in his book The End of Certainty (1992, 1994).
There have been two influential political traditions that never accepted the post-1983 pro-market reform era that delivered Australia recession-free from the recent global financial crisis. They are the unreconstructed rural interventionists that often mock the Nationals as sellouts and the ideological Left, once strong in the ALP but now at home in the Greens and sections of the education establishment where the Greens draw much support.It is tempting to see the current crossbenchers as embodying these two throwback movements, but dressed up in the fashion of caring environmentalism.That raises the heresy that the coming parliament, far from constituting an exciting new politics, is actually a reversion to the discredited past.
Why cannot there be regional development and an open economy? Why isn't this a possibility? If state developmentalism, a central plank in Australian Settlement, refers to the state playing a substantial role in promoting and regulating economic development, then there can be diverse threads in this weave.
For instance, Geoffrey Stokes points out that Kelly reduces state developmentalism to protection and tariffs. Referring to Marian Sawer's The Ethical State? Social Liberalism in Australia, Stokes says Kelly overlooks another dimension and rationale for state developmentalism that extends beyond the economic:
the tradition of social liberalism evident in Australian parties of both the Left and Right encouraged them to adopt an interventionist state ideology for reasons associated with giving citizens a ‘fair go’. Through implementing a wide range of social and economic policies, the role of the state was to ensure that all citizens were given the opportunity to develop their potential fully. The intersection between the economic and the social is especially evident in the requirement for equal opportunity in education policy, but it is also apparent in other policy areas.
Instead of Kelly's interpretation of a throwback dressed up in the fashion of caring environmentalism, we have the possibility of regional development as the intersection between the economic and the social and the environmental.
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Paul Kelly's ideological discourse--- ie., a form of illusion, or ideology that imposes a closure on political interpretation--- becomes quite open in the last paragraphs of his article. This is where he drops in The Australian's agenda of the Gillard government as illegitimate.
He says that:
Do we not have fixed terms of parliament for some states in Australia, eg., New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory governments operate with fixed terms.
Ignoring this Kelly continues:
Kelly ignores the two key benefits of fixed terms:, first, that they remove the opportunity for a sitting government to gain political advantage from the timing of an election and, second, that there is certainty about electoral terms for the government, other political parties, the private sector and the community.
Kelly's become a Murdoch hack. he should retire before he loses even more intellectual credibility.