A while back I wrote an email to Leigh Sales when she was ‘bleating’ about how the ABC audience had lost respect for the ABC and that commentary from the ‘masses’ was vitriolic and heated. I suggested to Leigh that the era of ABC listeners, readers and viewers ‘shouting at the TV’ was over and that all journalists must face their audience and justify their statements. Since that email I have steadily reminded ABC journalists of their obligation, not just because I am a ‘difficult’ person, but because I really do believe that a national broadcaster is vital to our formation as a nation.
I will gratuitously offer feedback, whether I am heard or heeded. That’s the manner of public discourse. When my ABC ‘gods’ like Laura Tingle slump into stenography or Linton Besser gets lazy, despite my adulation, I give them a ‘right hammering’. We, the people, are responsible for making the ABC the bulwark against the rank and rampant influence of the rich and powerful, the Hansens and the Murdochs. It’s not a picnic.
I’m not sure if I find ‘Gerry’ or Hamish to be the pillars of journalistic greatness. To me, they both lack ‘mongrel’ characteristics that are vital to journalism. If your guest says something stupid or unsubstantiated, don’t let them leave the platform until they beg forgiveness for misleading the audience.
Medhi Hasan is an example of real journalism, although, at times, his pursuit of the facts turns to constant interruption of the guest. Hasan’s best attribute is not his relentless pursuit of a point poorly made, but the fact that he prepares. His mantra is ‘prepare, prepare, prepare’.
For all journalists, coming to an interview without extensive preparation is akin to flying an aircraft without training. You have a high chance of catastrophic failure. A broken aircraft might be saved by an expert pilot but not by an amateur plane watcher. To coin a cliché, “You have to do the hard yards before the encounter.”
The new ABC Listen program Global Roaming takes on some of the ‘big’ issues of the world and tries to educate the audience on these issues. I admire the mission but deplore the execution. Over the summer break, the program decided to platform various high profile ‘thinkers’ and allow them an uninterrupted monologue, mostly of tedious cliches. I forced myself to listen to them all, if only to emulate Medhi by being properly prepared.
I had to laugh when I came to the Stutchbury “Economic Wake Up Call”. I mean, who even uses that kind of language any more? Just put your arguments and I will decide whether you are the one dozing or whether I have missed something. Don’t tell me I’m asleep and then put me to sleep with one overworked conservative hackneyed motherhood statement after another.
This is the danger, of course. Platform whoever you want, but in the first instance consider whether your audience will just switch off and in the second consider whether your guest has anything to say.
In Stuchbury’s case I have only this advice to offer. He’s a journalist on the right who, like so many journalists chasing rapidly dwindling job opportunities, turns to a think tank for employment. Don’t bother, Stuch. Just retire gracefully and go live somewhere where your fantasy world satisfies you.
In the style of think tank parlance, Stuchbury offers ordinary easily accessible simple facts and dresses them up in burdensome conservative commentary. This gives plausible deniability. If I comment that “It’s all bullshit”, he can point to those ‘motherhood’ facts to say that I don’t know what I am talking about; that I lack the facts.
My analysis of his call to wakefulness will both acknowledge the facts and then debunk the conservative clichés that they are wrapped in.
Back in 2003, Australian labour productivity was averaging growth at about 1.8% a year and remained that way until about 2015. But since the peak of that mining boom, we have been treading water. We’ve been caught in a productivity trap.
You see it. The facts are secure. That is actually what has been occurring. But let’s wrap that in two neo-liberal concepts. First is that productivity rises and falls by leveraging some kind of ‘natural advantage’ (you know, digging up stuff) that should be unimpeded. The second is that productivity reflects labour relations and foreign investment.
We can simply ‘do some homework’ to find that the decline in productivity right across the western world comes from the Thatcherian doctrine that the market and its benevolent adherents will save us all from socialism because, obviously, it is more effective at generating wealth and bringing prosperity to all. We’ll all ‘get some pie’.
Sadly, by following the Thatcherian mantra of “no society” most Western economies have been brought to the point of almost total de-industrialisation. In the US, this brings such devastation to communities that they elect the unelectable Trump. An idiot is allowed to flounce about begging others to give him toys. In a sensible world, he’d be long gone.
Australia has largely been insulated from this by having mining. Our industrial sector is in terminal decline, but, while we have an extractive umbilical cord, we are OK. Until commodities go to shit. Which tells you that neglected research, science and education so that you have the capacity form new industries is the road to productivity. Our dream run on minerals has an end point. When we can no longer sell coal and eating coal seems like the lowest point of depravity, we will need more than tired market doctrines from last century (or, more correctly, the century before).
If our ABC hosts had bothered to do some reading, they might have encountered those who have studied China’s rise and can articulate the difference between lazy post-colonial mindsets and productivity planning. You see, if you were really ‘awake’ you might have noticed how Chinese industries cluster around a city. This city makes all the world’s socks, this one its fridges, this one its electric vehicles. What’s going on here?
Simply, provincial governments in China have planned and established tight supply chains. BYD sources 90% of its parts from factories within 100km. Suppliers and manufacturers are rewarded for bringing their factories close to the final manufacturer. This cuts logistics to a minimum and thus cuts costs. As these manufacturers out-compete their international competitors, the relative productivity of the population surges. So, central and sensible planning beats markets in creating productivity.
Add to that the collectivist notion that government businesses are not the abode of Satan. Why should the nation not invest in a great company and reap the harvest? For the average Chinese netizen, the laissez faire doctrine is just stupidity. Of course you plan. Of course you bring together the enterprises needed for a product.
But, of course, the Thatcherian cult that CIS subscribes to determines that Stuchbury must march out all kinds of debunked nonsense. Take this gem, that follows the neo-liberal pattern:
but largely to bid up the price of our existing houses. We have traded a productive future for a property bubble
This is “look out the window and tell me the weather today”. Yes. As an observation just fine. Pity about the analysis.
The Centre for Independent Studies has changed the housing debate in Australia, and it’s now accepted that zoning and planning restrictions—rather than tax breaks for investors—are the main cause of excessive house prices and rents. But the regulations that make housing so unaffordable are just an example of the supply-side restrictions across the economy, from opening a coffee shop to building renewable energy transmission lines to opening a new mine. Today, governments impose all sorts of new burdens on businesses, such as requiring them to figure out and disclose the carbon emissions of their customers in another country, to ensure that none of their customers seek to launder ill-gotten gains, to engineer gender equality, and to maintain the mental health of their employees. This is the modern regulatory state.
This is an awful lot of words that actually just bleat “red tape”. Does the Right never bother to renew its mantras?
it’s now accepted that zoning and planning restrictions—rather than tax breaks for investors - are the main cause of excessive house prices and rents.
I guess a pig with lipstick is still a pig and a lie dressed up as a fact is still a lie. Yes, we know that middle density housing is short on supply. I guess you can just say “modern regulatory state” and hope nobody notices all the real factors that have taken us on a journey to our current crisis. Like housing been commodified (capitalism 101 – find something everybody needs, control the market and gouge) through to the relatively recent and sudden transformation of demand.
You see, we used to think that the suburbs were the dream. Dream it was, for no amount of spending could build the infrastructure to keep pace with urban sprawl. The urban fringe became the urban nightmare of driving for hours in almost stationary traffic to get to work and back. For families, this was considered worthwhile to get the 3 bedrooms and the front lawn. But now that our aging population yearns for a unit in an attractive medium density area, combined with these units being more attractive to a generation of DINKS because it’s close to the city centre, high rise and urban sprawl have lost their attraction and the demand for medium density is rising and, naturally, supply is short.
But, why ruin a good nec-con CIS narrative with facts about rising demand when you can just blame a government of some kind? Ironically, if we look at Brisbane, one of the fastest growing cities in Australia, we find that regulation is highly sensitive to changing desires, with micro-lots (catering to multi-age housing), 2 storeys to 3 storeys in LMR zones (to allow builders to build more cheaply) and a the 300m Rule, allowing low-density lots within 300m of shopping centres to be subdivided, recognizing that "amenity" is what people are actually buying (catering to those who never even wanted the lawn).
Stuch is wrong both for housing and businesses. Probably because he has never owned or run a business, he trots out the tired doctrine that ‘labour costs, regulation, taxes’ are the enemies of businesses. It’s simply rubbish. Ask any business anywhere what ‘makes’ their business. There are three elements – number of customers coming through the door, how much they spend and whether they left satisfied because we had what they wanted. That’s it. The neo-con chorus is totally irrelevant.
Even if you had zero taxes, zero regulation and zero labour costs, no customers simply means no business. If they just look, it’s over. If you haven’t got it, you’ve lost them forever. Business rely on return customers who spend money on products they have. That’s it, Stuch. No need to froth at the mouth about labour, regulation and taxes.
Stuchbury is in full voice as he sings the neo-con anthem.
This started with a productivity bonus from the bipartisan policy decisions to open up the economy to market forces and global competition: floating the Aussie dollar, deregulating the financial system, lowering the import tariff, and privatizing government enterprises such as the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra; ending centralised wage fixing, injecting competition into government monopolies such as for electricity, reducing income tax rates by introducing the GST, and by giving an independent Reserve Bank the responsibility to tackle inflation.
Let’s break down this fantasy.
“floating the Aussie dollar” actually meant selling our souls to the US dollar and subscribing to the US project of servicing its national debt. Now we are so securely trapped in the dollar world, the necessary de-dollarisation that most countries are now embarking upon, whether by stealth like Japan and clear competition, like China, will not be available and we will be left playing in the band as the Titanic sinks. Bit of a dumb move, I should think.
“lowering the import tariff”. Economists, especially those at the CIS end of politics, think tariff meddling is a real thing. It’s not. If the country is deindustrialising as the West was hell-bent doing a couple of decades ago, tariffs are meaningless. But the notion that removing tariffs so the well-heeled can buy their Mercedes is a good thing is equally as fanciful. And, in crisis economics, like a GFC or COVID, tariffs are just fluff gathering in the clothes dryer – a bit annoying if you don’t clean them out occasionally. And, if I desperately need something, like oil, scarcity will drive prices and inflation, not tariffs.
"privatizing government enterprises such as the Commonwealth Bank and Telstra"
Such a golden oldy. Sure, take the dividends away from the unwashed massed and give them to the wealthy investors who can buy shares. Here, I have some family silver. Any takers? I can’t believe there’s even a subset of neo-liberal apologists that even think this anymore. A bank that rips you off, a failed telco and a scandal ridden airline. Just get over the nonsense that privatisation improves anything. If I say PwC, this should be enough to shut down all debate, forever.
“ending centralised wage fixing”. Ah, I do so love a neo-con euphemism as I sip my scotch. Usher in a monumental period of wage decline. Usher in a populace unable to spend in their local because paying the rent has absorbed any discretion. Usher in the worst standard of living since WW2. All courtesy of making wages a spray can effort that would overshadow Blue Poles. What? It’s a good thing for someone in Perth to be paid more for the same labour as someone in Brisbane.
We are ever so grateful to Keating et al for allowing the mining sector to steal labour by paying exorbitant wages while agriculture slumps. After all, we don't need farming. And who wants to ride the sheep's back anymore? Just import all food and textile from Argentina.
“reducing income tax rates”. Because we all know that from those extra dollars in my pocket, I would never simply bury them in my housing debt, producing nothing, nor would I support China’s industrial might by buying a bigger TV. I really don’t know what universe CIS lives in, but we may be fortunate that the speed of light is fixed, so they never come here and preach nonsense. Too late, the virus has already arrived.
“giving an independent Reserve Bank the responsibility to tackle inflation”. You know. That glorious institution that has managed to never, ever, got a prediction right. That institution that still believes that interest rates are the lever for inflation, despite all the world’s economists realising otherwise after COVID. And robs the government of a lever to actually change the settings. All hail the governor.
I don’t mean to mock, but mock I must. Stuchbury, platforming Stuchbury and the subsequent biting questioning are just laughable. That’s it. Laughable.
Sadly, time and audience attention does not give me the latitude to eviscerate the other guests on the Lucky Ducky series.
Let me suggest, Tom and Jerry, that you interview someone about the impending crisis of de-dollarisation. That you actually find someone who knows something about China and prosperity. That you platform people who understand global strategies. That may, just may, lure me back to listen to another.