Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Richard Denniss, Quarterly Essay/Black Inc., $22.99.
“Neoliberalism, the catch-all term for all things small government, has been the ideal cloak behind which to conceal enormous shifts in Australia’s wealth and culture . . . Over the past thirty years, the language, ideas and policies of neoliberalism have transformed our economy and, more importantly, our culture.”
In this fervent essay, Denniss argues for a more realistic, advisory politics. He asks whether the major parties can find a fresh, and convincing way to talk about the national interest.
Some questions being asked include how did the banks run wild for so long? How is it that arms manufacturers sponsor the Australian War Memorial?
Denniss explores what neoliberalism has done to Australian society. ‘For decades, we have been told that the private sector does everything better, that governments can’t afford to deliver the services they once could, but that security and prosperity for all are just around the corner. In fact, Australians are less equal, and more of us are economically vulnerable. But now that a royal commission has lifted the rug on the reality of corporate regulation, it seems the era of blind faith in free markets is well and truly over.’
QE70 looks at ways to renew our democracy.
“Growth is a beautiful word, but neoliberalism has defined it in the ugliest of ways. The historian Manning Clark described modern Australia as born of a battle between the ‘enlargers’, who sought to make the most of their freedom from Mother England on what they saw as their empty continent full of opportunities, and the ‘punishers and straighteners’, who were reluctant to give away the power of the prison guards and governors who defined so much of the early culture of the great big penal colony they had set up”.
