Lots of Monkeys Running Around in Cirles as Fast as They Can

Paddy Manning

"Turnbull wants to run Australia Inc, with all the risk and opportunity that entails, just as another former NSW Premier, Nick Greiner (with whom he has much in common), ran "NSW Inc" - privatising assets, corporatising agencies and outsourcing government services wherever possible."

"Turnbull is the richest Prime Minister we have ever seen, with the closest connections to the business community. If anyone has the credentials, he does. Hopefully he will avoid the pitfalls of WA Inc in the eighties, where state politicians did questionable deals with entrepreneurs like Alan Bond and Laurie Connell, blowing up hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars and triggering a Royal Commission. Turnbull knows the dangers well, having advised WA's State Government Insurance Commission in the aftermath, as a young merchant banker."

Thus does history repeat itself. The lessons taught by the first attempt have generated tinkering around the edges, so the devil is in the detail, and the details mask this policy direction for what it is (with reference to this post's title). It will be better this time, they say. Behold the ICAC-ACCC Leviathan we have created in order to ensure such an outcome. As if the 'better angels of our character' can be inspired by the machinations of such a behemoth.

So the lesson learned was not the lesson taught. The problem was not with our concept of what will work, but with the way it was implemented.

The mere fact that a monstrous new bureaucracy needed to be created in order to control the side effects of what we were doing didn't ring a few bells to say that maybe our whole concept was misguided rather than only the details.

The sagas of WA Inc and NSW Inc, along with the hardships of Britain have totally discredited this way of governing a country. Yet The LNP still believes in the neoliberal ideology.

Let's just all go and get thatchered and be done with it.