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May 17, 2013
Both Tony Abbott and Matthias Gorman on Radio National Breakfast espoused austerity economics, which, they claimed , would lead to a anew age of prosperity. These claims (bombast and humbug were not contested by the journalists even though the flaws of this pre-Keynesian economics were covered over by the rhetoric of reaction that was full of bombast and humbug.
David Pope
The ABC journalists didn't recognize the morality play on offer---a Labor Government had spent too much on frivolous policies, and it had taken on too much debt. It must cut spending and reduce the deficit. The lurid excesses of the past will stop under the responsible Coalition, whilst the pain of the austerity to purge the ghastly excesses of a bad and rotten government is necessary to ensure the return of prosperity. A golden age beckons.
I cannot see the return of the Howard golden age of prosperity, given the condition of the global economy. Australia's slow economic growth means that government revenue won't be rolling in as it did for Costello during the mining boom. So the Coalition will have to keep cutting into, and rolling back, the welfare state. The Coalition keeps saying that a Coalition government would have to take ''unpopular'' decisions that would ''hurt'' people.
So we can expect more bombast and humbug from a Coalition that reacts against Gillard Labor's reforms, and uses pre-Keynsian economics to support and legitimate its politics of austerity that will impact heavily on the working poor. You can here the traditional talking points of the rhetoric of reaction already: “perversity” (the reform will make the problem even worse), “futility” (the reform will do nothing to solve the problem), and “jeopardy” (the reform will endanger some hard-won social gain).
These are the major polemical postures and maneuvers likely to be engaged in by the Coalition and its corporate allies who are setting out to debunk and roll back “progressive” policies and movements of ideas.
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Because of the stubbornly progressive temper of the modern era, “reactionaries” live in a hostile world. They are up against an intellectual climate that attaches a positive value to the lofty objective proclaimed and actively pursued by their adversaries.
You can hear the rhetoric of reaction around carbon pricing---the actions undertaken by the Gillard Government to achieve a certain purpose miserably fail to do so: either no change occurs at all or the action yields an outcome that is the opposite of the one intended.