The think tank culture is weird. Although there are certainly think tanks around that put some effort into commissioning and fostering quality research, the origin of the beast lay in the business of shaping and shifting public debate through the media and influencing pollies. There’s nothing wrong with that, as it were, provided that we understand that the research produced may not always be peer-reviewed (CPD, with whom I’m associated, does subject its policy papers to peer review) and in particular we understand not just the ideological commitments of individual think tanks but where their funding comes from. That’s why there are legitimate questions to be asked - including but not restricted to the propensity to push climate change denialism - about the reluctance of some organisations such as Gerard Henderson’s Sydney Institute to even admit that disclosure of funding sources is in the public interest.
Because one of the things think tanks do is provide a ready source of op/ed copy, so-called “public debate” can go down some quite odd paths. Most recently, in Australia, the bizarre theme about the Enlightenment (and apparently the “good” Scottish Enlightenment as opposed to the “bad” French Enlightenment) which was articulated to climate change denialism, and which also prompted some public weirdness from Craig Emerson. It’s noteworthy that just as the Rudd v. Hayek wars are really just proxies for a dispute about underlying policy orientations, that none of the gibberish that has come out of the new MSM meme of the month has anything much to do with scholarly study on the role of the actual Enlightenments in history or in philosophy. It’s not really a “battle of ideas” at all, just a convenient hook for some very tired positions to be hung on.
But everyone in this game - “progressive” or “liberal” or “conservative” - has a vested interest in pretending that what is being staged is some sort of “battle of ideas”. Hence we have Per Capita, a particularly neo-liberal bunch of progressives with strong connections to some of the Blairite Third Way orgs in London, holding a “Consilium”, whatever that may be, accepting most of the premises of the CIS’ Enlightenment-fest. And we get PC fellow Dennis Glover writing an op/ed for The Australian spruiking his mob’s definition of Kevin Rudd’s “reforming Centre”. The new ideas in question (and the PC’s website features slogans such as “Hard Decisions”, “Human Capital” and “Practical, Empirical, Fresh” demonstrating their desire to be the house intellectuals of the Rudd revolution) aren’t actually new. It’s all standard “social democracy = markets + human capital theory + communitarian welfare policy” Blairism. It’s just getting a run in Australia for the first time, and there’s no doubt that it is getting a run - with initiatives such as the marketisation of Victorian TAFE and Julia Gillard’s musings about vouchers being directly linked to this agenda. And the “truancy welfare quarantining” seems quite redolent of Blair’s first term - when backbenchers revolted over welfare cuts. And, as argued here recently, there’s evidence that this sort of thing misses the point in addressing the actual causes of poor school attendance.
Perhaps the modern day Enlightened ones might have spent some time with Jon Cruddas, a British MP and left candidate for the Labour Deputy Leadership last time around, while he’s been in Australia. Cruddas, who was in Australia at the invitation of yet another progressive think tank - Catalyst - has some cautionary things to say about the electoral virtues of the Third Way, and more tellingly, warns that social democracy lost its soul somewhere with its obsession with market me-too-ism and gave up on attempting to make any structural changes in the social landscape. If we were to debate that proposition, we might actually be having a battle of ideas.
Update: Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy on the truancy bill:
On the surface, then, this program looks one of those populist nonsense measures aimed more at appeasing the likes of Senators Fielding and Xenophon with an eye to future deals in the Senate than actually fulfilling the Rudd Government’s commitment to evidence-based policy.
Oh, and of course, the Coalition support it “in principle”.
You’re right that we’ve reached a political consensus on neoliberalism in public policy, Mark. There is no battle of ideas anymore, save the many little battles within broader long-term questions of ‘how do we convert this or that social democratic structure into a neoliberal one?’ (health and education come immediately to mind) and the occasional crisis-provoked bout of re-regulation. The marginalisation of the intellectuals of Teh Proper Left, many of whom had counted (incredibly) on the inside track following the election of a federal ALP government, will obviously be painful for some. But you can’t let your disappointment about that turn into an unedifying snark towards Per Capita. I don’t know what a consilium is either. And what the hell is a Larvatus Prodeo?
BBB
Something that set a trend for the revival of Lingua Latina in Australian progressive circles?
I’m not snarking about PC, really. Just that I think:
(a) they do themselves absolutely no favours by engaging on the same silly ground (Hayek! Scottish Enlightenment!) as the mad pundits of the right;
(b) Importing a load of bollocks from Blair’s Britain which has made bugger all of a difference is not rethinking social democracy.
Well, maybe I am. But I get fairly passionate about this stuff.
…and quite angry about stuff like welfare quarantining and truancy - there’s evidence that parental attitudes are far from the most important variable in determining school attendance and no evidence that it will work. In this instance, I think Brendan Nelson is right - it’s a Hollowmen style stunt - but one which will have cruel consequences - does anyone stop and consider that some teenage kids will use this to actually punish and bargain with their supporting parent?
And the TAFE stuff is a sham. The big problem with VET policy is that since Howard fucked it up, there’s very little effort to either anticipate skills shortages or provide transferable skills and the capacity to engage in continuous learning. It’s all about private providers making a quick buck and the short term needs of industry. And wrapping it up in the rhetoric of “choice” is another sham - there’s precious little of that around in the VET market.
There was also an English Enlightenment, as well as the Scottish/French one. You know, Captain Cook,Joseph Banks, Arthur Phillip, Watkin Tench, etc. Which had far more influence on our origins than the others. Though some could, quite properly suggest John Hunter was a product if the Scottish Enlightenment. Gascoigne has written extensively on the Enlightenment in an Australian context, and the late Roy Porter has written at least one book on the Englsh Enlightenment, which, to say the least, is stimulating and intellectually challenging reading.
Funny how these RWDBs in the Australian think tanks don’t seem to be even remotely aware of those aspects of the Enlightenment that directly relate to Australia.Don’t you think?
You’re absolutely right about the truancy stuff. It’s the ALP jumping at shadows.
BBB
Te truancy/welfare reform. Yeah, I thought the PM’s name was Kevin Rudd, and his party was the ALP. Not John Howard, Liberal Party. Mark, I share your rage and disgust!
In a tragic way, BBB.
Paul, the only purpose invoking the Enlightenment in this op/ed drivel serves is to provide:
(a) cover for climate change denialism and the interests of big business polluters in avoiding any real consequences from emissions trading;
(b) a stick to beat Muslims with;
(c) generalised neo-liberal markets are fabulous in all things talk.
Its intellectual vacuity is plain.
Paul, it was always pretty evident that Rudd’s an authoritarian when it comes to social policy - of the same Christian communitarian stamp as Tony Blair. He doesn’t have many liberal bones in his body, and his understanding of social democracy is very thin.
I should add that I’m suspicious that the welfare quarantining thing is just taking out insurance against any claims that the left is influential in the Rudd government - it’s so far from “evidence based policy” that its cynicism is its distinguishing and repulsive feature.
It’s simple — Consilium: People acting silly together. Duuuh.
Don’t the more partisan think tanks (granted, many are not partisan) enable the party to outsource its policy development - and the risk - as well? It’s easier for them to jettison a failed or unpopular policy if it emerged from a think tank than from within the party itself.
There’s that too.
This one is pretty partisan though - it sprung from the Bracks government more or less.
Yes, icky stuff.
Getting closer to “policy-based evidence” approach of Howard.
Cue grainy video, pics of children in water.
I’m quite disgusted with Gillard over this proposal to quarantine welfare payments. She is proving herself to be little different from Howard. Why is she saying these things the day before parliament reconvenes? I can’t help but think there’s some kind of attempt to sway the Libs to let their budget through.
I’ve been reading the DOGS website over the last few days and they have been dirty on Gillard for quite a while. She has been making statements that appear to mean she is going to protect the Commonwealth funding of private schools.
It’s playing to the mortgage belt. A sort of inversion of Howard’s wedge politics played by out by Gillard and Macklin inthis case, to the mortgage belt with its Hansonist prejudices and carefully nurtured victimhood/entitlement mentality; the like of which is often revealed by a number of posters in these threads.
Also keeps orgs like the BCA happy. These “natives” are not required to get too restless, too quickly; what with a tricky senate and all. So stuff that a Labor opposition would fight out of government, is slid through with the change of government, in a way acceptable to a sedated public. Think of Abbott’s building industry commision Star Chamber now being upheld, as well. All straight out of Animal Farm.
Which bring me to an obnoxious proposal flown last week under cover of the Olympics that received virtually no comment from any source; the removal of less harsh unemployment stricures for over 55’s at a time of economic slowdown and therefore increasing pressure on the labour market.
Sado stuff in the best neoliberal tradition.
It hasn’t occured to anyone that there is no longer a battle of ideas, because neo-liberalism won the battle?
Yes Stephen, the neocons have won. We are no longer allowed to say the word POVERTY. That’s not politically correct. We must now talk about “working harder and smarter”, while young truants are pushed into homelessness and starvation where they belong, and our commonwealth is stolen from under us by greedy rent-seekers, who pay think-tanks to publicly justify and excuse their theft.
Way to go.
Seems to me with even Labor instituting horrendous right wing welfare crack-downs, there’s at least one advantage to being so permanently incapacited : the bastards can’t get at you. But you never know - a few more critical letters to the local press and insulting e-mails to Rudd may take me off the ptotected species list.
“..it was always pretty evident that Rudd’s an authoritarian when it comes to social policy - of the same Christian communitarian stamp as Tony Blair. He doesn’t have many liberal bones in his body, and his understanding of social democracy is very thin.
I should add that I’m suspicious that the welfare quarantining thing is just taking out insurance against any claims that the left is influential in the Rudd government - it’s so far from “evidence based policy” that its cynicism is its distinguishing and repulsive feature.”
You have nailed Rudd in one, Mark.
This is scary, scary stuff.
What happens in a poor family with one chronic truant, but four dependent children?
Does every child have to suffer the effects of loss of family income because of the dysfunctional behaviour of one sibling?
Bet that Centrelink will think that they should!
The removal of welfare payments to punish truancy is all backwards, from a social democratic point of view. Brazil has a similar problem with kids from poor households not going to school. But instead of using a stick approach, it has had quite a bit of success in hitting several birds with one carrot - the Bolsa Familia.
“The program has clearly contributed to Brazil’s recent improvements in its fight against poverty, according research promoted by some universities and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE). An ex ante econometric evaluation of Bolsa Escola did find significant effects on both school attendance rates and the number of children involved in child labor [17] [18].
The World Bank, which created on June 2005 a Bolsa Família Project [19] to assist the Brazilian government in managing the Bolsa Família Program, declares that “Although the program is relatively young, some results are already apparent, including: (…) contributions to improved education outcomes, and impacts on children’s growth, food consumption, and diet quality” [20].”
It really is a bizarre approach - “your kid didn’t attend school so we’ll starve you, him and all your other kids. That’ll teach the little bugger”. I can’t see many welfare officers or teachers dobbing people into Centrelink on this, so the law has the happy feature of being unlikely to be enforced in practice.
.
And yeah, communitarianism has won. One reason for that is that those who should have been fighting for individual liberty were more concerned with either liberating their business funders from the horrors of taxation on the one hand, or trying to drag the economy back to the late 1940s on the other.
.
But the underlying reason is much more sad - it seems that lots of people get a real kick out of dictating to others how they should live their lives.
“…hitting several birds with one carrot”
Mixed metaphor of the day!
Think tanks. Christ. Another party dress for lobbyists to wear so people can’t look up their petticoats and see the festering sores.
They should just call them ‘lobby groups’; far more accurate.
BBB and Stephen Lloyd. This whole “Neo-liberals won!” schtick. It’s wrong on so many levels.
Firstly: a little thing called history - heard of it? I’m sure people like you were saying the liberals won in the 1890s, 1790’s etc. Surprisingly, history hasn’t ended. This should be especially obvious given Fukuyama’s own recent recantation.
Secondly: Geography. Neoliberals won - where? Not everywhere, and certainly not in places like Australia, where most people don’t even know what the word means, and wouldn’t give a stuff if they did.
Furthermore: What the hell is neoliberalism anyway? When you’re scraping together the most far-flung causes and issues - the Iraq War, soooooooo neo-liberal; a trillion dollar budget deficit in the US; sprouting cctv’s in Britain like cornstalks in Iowa (massively subsidised I might add). Somehow, however, the definition retains some kind of core integrity that gives it an edge over the inarticulate and poorly defined left. Please, we’re both as bad as each other.
Finally, the fact you can only think about these things in a war-like, battle context is really sad, and I think highlights a tragic tendency.
The war is all in your head dudes - you think most people give a shit about this (even the informed ones)? What about - I don’t know, it’s so wacky - the policy solution that will engender the best solution? What about getting departments to actually do the research to find out what the best way forward is, rather than rooting about like truffle pigs trying to find the rare treasure that jusitifies the already taken intellectual position?
Or, and perhaps most accurately, what about the policy position that resembles a hopeless accord with 101 conflicting priorities, constituencies, needs and wishes? Looking at the Rorschach of practised government policy and trying to fit it snugly into one hegemony or another is a parlous and futile occupation. These ideologies barely cover the big picture trend stuff - zoom in for the close up and it’s like poking holes in tissue paper with a cigarette lighter.
The fact that lobby groups pretend to don these intellectual fripperies whilst pushing specific, funded viewpoints is laughable, dishonest and more than a little pathetic.
The fact that anyone takes it seriously is scary.
apologies for the triviality of this, but Clarencegirl’s “Does every child have to suffer the effects of loss of family income because of the dysfunctional behaviour of one sibling?” - really reminded me of Lydia Bennet in Pride & Prejudice…
I don’t understand Rudd. Why does he want to copy Blair? In the UK, he’s about as popular as syphilis.
It was a grated carrot?
Maybe, but how is grated carrot meant to keep kids in school?
Metaphors eh? The do me ‘ed in.
‘y’
Insert where appropriate. I will show my real face only when taking responsibility for poor editing, that I might see myself disapproving like so many rabbits. One, I suppose.
Thanks, FDB. I try my best.
Mark @ 3 said:
Do you know what the most important variables affecting school attendance are?
It is kind of wierd that Rudd is implementing policies that Howard would never have got away with without much more criticism.
Paul Burns wrote: “There was also an English Enlightenment, as well as the Scottish/French one.”
No PB, There is English Enlightenment. France and Scotland also contributed to it. There is also English Romanticism, a movement to which others, Germans and French - especially a Republican Swiss francophone - contributed … Until post-1871 France (beaten yet again by the Prussians) created the Great Myth of French Cultural Supremacy that survives to this day. Baah! What the French were good at was decoration. A few great achievements, sure; but nothing like the English’s.
Restoration England, the Royal Society, Newton, Chris Wren and others whose Brief Lives Aubery celebrated. Philosophers Locke and Berkeley would create the Social Contract and Man of Feeling many decades before anyone heard of that Republican Swiss Rousseau. There was yet another English literary revolution, pioneered by the likes of Donne and Milton, Dryden and Pope, playwrights like Sheridan, the great literary journals, the essayists, the “Birth of the Novel” … Greenwich, its astronomers (inc Geroge III), clock & chronometer makers; the entrepreneural Glassmakers Company and its star, George Ravenscroft (his lead crystal could be engraved and faceted) who pioneered penetration of European markets that Aaron Wedgwood (1666-17430) and his potter mates would storm after 1720, creating trading fleets that would herald the second English Seafaring Age and venture capital to underwrite the Industrial Revolution … Iron masters, inventors of spinning and weaving machines, stem engines, new types of roads and bridges …
So how do we today, stack up against the English Enlightenment?
1. We have no equivalent of the Royal Society as it was in those formative years - Societies based on interest and expertise, not class, formal education and money. The old “Workers Clubs” & “Schools of Arts” played similar roles, especially in self education in such a variety of fields, as their surviving libraries and museums show.
2. Today’s Museums & Galleries are more focused on “Interpreting the xxxxx to the clients” & money spinning exhibitions than the great and varied repositories of specimens and examples that thrilled me and so many of my (& my grand/parents’) generation. Qld Museum 1950 was THE most exciting place for kids to visit, giving them the raw mterial to make their own “interpretation”, usually helped by parents etc; 2008 - it’s full of cases window-dressed with a few chosen objects and explanations, and lots of “activities”. In short; they’ve shifted from “evidence from which one can be guided to make ones own interpretation” (not to mention start one’s own collections of grubby rock, insects, smelly specimens in formalin) to “We’ve done your interpreting for you”, artistically “window-dresed” exhibits with “activities for kids”. … (Yep, more than a hint of soap-box here. I HATE what’s been done by “nanny society” curators.)
BTW: To prove a point: The British Library celebrated its move to the BM’s internal courtyard by publishing a book of illustrated essays on the English Enlightenment. For those who wallow in the EE (as I do) it provides many a truly hilarious moment, brought to us by Civil Servants whose degrees are often in areas such as French language & Lit; ie they know how to gather & “write up” research on any given topic; but lack the rigorous mastery of the topic necessary to avoid the errors which send chortling readers to their email.
3. Internet blogs, rather than “think tanks” have the potential to provide the “coffee house” culture that contributed so much to the Enlightenment. But improving technology (inc tags for search engines) and enormous numbers is to “pigeonholing” into categorised blogs. The “unlimited” wide-ranging “coffee club” atmosphere of early groups seems to have gone; although I assume faster BB will create Virtual Synchron Conferences that an recreate “coffee houses”.
BTW, I enjoyed Craig’s essay, and the comments before the usual OO “dis anybody ALP no matter what or why” morons moved in.
“There is English Enlightenment. France and Scotland also contributed to it.”
hm, I’m not sure how the
filthy jacobinsFrench would like that idea.Follow the link in the post and read the paper linked in the link!
Blair did win a lot of elections and was a lot more popular than his successor. Maybe what we need is a fourth way, an alternative to two groups: 1) would be third wayers following Z-grade Labor hacks the sort of people who have brought down the NSW Labor govt and possibly that in WA; 2) an alternative to self-defined leftists whining on about ‘neo-liberalism’, are people seriously arguing we should have early 1980s tariff levels, a govt phone monopoly etc? Ban the use of the phrase ‘neo-liberalism’ along with ‘economic rationalism’ ‘political correctness’ ‘war on terror’ etc. etc.
That’s a false dichotomy, Geoff. Dissatisfaction with the current policy orientation does not imply “a govt phone monopoly etc” etc. Surely you can see that’s just indulging in the same sort of “there is no alternative” thinking that produces this junk policy in the first place? What - we can’t argue for policy that might actually produce better social outcomes for kids because it’s equivalent to “early 1980s tariff levels”?
DeeCee, Quite agree. But if Porter is right, there has been no full length study of the English Enlightenment until his “Enlightenment. Britain and the Creation of the Modern World.”(2000). Which you’ve got to admit, is pretty recent. And it was the historiography I had in mind. Though cheerfully accept correction if I’m wrong.
We are pleased that our protege has rejected the road to serfdom. Pretty soon, y’all wil be saying, “we are all Gillardites now.”
Mark my words, Luvvies, The Lady will not be for turning!
Update: Tim Dunlop at Blogocracy on the truancy bill:
Geoff, the only thing worse than those two would be the current English strain of fourth-wayism; the contrarian, quasi-Enlightenment pro-war semi-Leftism of the old Euston crowd, fetishists of Orwell’s corpse like Hitchens and the bizarre contortionists of the Spiked! clique.
Having said that, they do produce a few decent reads, like this one on the Incorruptible.
Here’s to prompt, severe, inflexible justice.
You want liberalism? I’ll give you liberalism
Gillard and Rudd haven’t taken this far enough.
These deadbeat parents should be locked up in a workhouse and compelled to perform morally improving labour to defray their costs to the community and to demonstrate that they are capable of performing the socially vital duties of parenthood.
Those who prove themselves impervious to improvement should be put on exhibition for the education of respectable personages and their potentially wayward offspring, and further to defray charges incurred upon the community.
Gillard and Rudd were always going to take a blowtorch to the rancid deadbeats in the AEU. Let’s pray they have the stomach to go for deregistration!
I like it, Katz.
Big Brother with floggings.
patrickg,
“BBB and Stephen Lloyd. This whole “Neo-liberals won!” schtick. It’s wrong on so many levels.”
When you’ve got state ALP government introducing education vouchers, selling concessions for toll roads and liquidating utility assets, it shouldn’t be controversial to say that neoliberalism has the upper hand in public policy. But don’t take my word for it. Go read Green Left Weekly or something.
“Firstly: a little thing called history - heard of it? I’m sure people like you were saying the liberals won in the 1890s, 1790’s etc. Surprisingly, history hasn’t ended. This should be especially obvious given Fukuyama’s own recent recantation.”
Well sure, in the future it might be different. I never said neoliberalism had “won”, I said the political class had reached a neoliberal consensus. You’re right that this consensus could collapse. My own suspicion is that it will be strengthen as time goes on.
“Secondly: Geography. Neoliberals won - where? Not everywhere, and certainly not in places like Australia, where most people don’t even know what the word means, and wouldn’t give a stuff if they did.”
Mark’s post is about Australia, so I was talking about Australia. The fact that ordinary people in Australia don’t know what neoliberalism means has no bearing on whether public policy is being largely dictated by its principles. This is because ordinary people do not make public policy.
“Furthermore: What the hell is neoliberalism anyway?”
Look it up. It’s got quite a bit of coverage in recent times. Wikipedia’s probably a good start.
“…the Iraq War”
Not neoliberalism.
“a trillion dollar budget deficit in the US”
About as far from neoliberalism as you can get.
“sprouting cctv’s in Britain like cornstalks in Iowa (massively subsidised I might add)”
Not neoliberalism.
You see, you ask for a definition, and then you go and list a few random bad things and act as if you’re describing what you can’t define. That speaks volumes. You’re really going to be shocked when you start reading about it and realise it isn’t “What Wingnuts Think!”.
“Somehow, however, the definition retains some kind of core integrity that gives it an edge over the inarticulate and poorly defined left. Please, we’re both as bad as each other.”
It retains integrity for those who understand what it is, in contrast to those who, say, ask for a definition in comments threads and who don’t seem to understand the difference between liberalism and conservatism.
“Finally, the fact you can only think about these things in a war-like, battle context is really sad, and I think highlights a tragic tendency.”
Only? I can think if many ways to conceptualise the tension between neoliberalism and other philosophical foundations of public policy. As it happens, Mark used the phrase ‘battle of ideas’, which has broad currency. I reproduced it in agreeing with him. Next you’ll be charging people, like unionists, with violent tendencies for using phrases like “Fight for your rights!”. This is all a massive stretch, even for you.
“The war is all in your head dudes - you think most people give a shit about this (even the informed ones)? What about - I don’t know, it’s so wacky - the policy solution that will engender the best solution? What about getting departments to actually do the research to find out what the best way forward is, rather than rooting about like truffle pigs trying to find the rare treasure that jusitifies the already taken intellectual position?”
Oh, great idea! All this time we’ve been seeking the worst solution! Best solution, you say? Ok, I’m on board. For fuck’s sake. Way to wig out. Is this still about neoliberalism? Or has it morphed into ‘evidence-based policy’, which is fully consistent with neoliberalism?
BBB
Mark @ 31 - thanks missed it. especially the link to a link
What they suggest is rather hand-wavy though:
Are those “bridges” and the opportunities for parental involvement that different between areas of low school attendance and high school attendance? The state schools are all run by the same organisation so it seems a bit odd. That the community involvement is higher in areas of high school attendance would I think more obviously be due to parental enthusiasm rather than causing it in the first place.
Children of immigrants are a prime example of children coming from a disadvantaged background but due to strong parental encouragement taking their education very seriously. And often those parents are not well educated themselves.
I’ll admit I’m rather skeptical that withholding benefits will work, but given they’re doing small scale trials I think its worth seeing if it will work. You can debate theory forever and at the very least we’ll have some data specific to Australia at the end of the trial.
“Gillard and Rudd haven’t taken this far enough.”
Indeed. Stick it Granny. We have your number.
http://www.news24.com/News24/Sport/Olympics2008/0,,2-9-2370_2380704,00.html
Big Brother with floggings.
And uncomfortable, ill-fitting, calico underwear.
I agree with much of what is said in the post. I think most of them are becoming neo-conservatives (socially conservative and authoritarian with some economic liberalism). Thanks to Labor for giving us real choice in the type of government we can elect. Labor moving further and further right is doing more damage than the Liberals did, as those moves are supported by the Liberals and allows the Liberals to go even further right. Stand up for our society true liberals! (the ones that are still there)
The point is ….
I have just phoned my local member to let him know this truancy law stuff is complete crap. And a vote for Labor was not an endorsement for further Howard policy on making life more difficult for our aboriginal community or the other poor
in our community.
Let the buggers know at their office.
It is a critical time in MHO.
Fukuyama? End of History? Bollocks! - http://www.borev.net/2008/08/francis_fukuyama_and_the_end_o.html
Totalising theory? Here it is, replete with public-friendly karaoke singalong on-screen lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monyiOsoKxg
[WARNING: excessive, gratuitous, repetitive and entirely necessary use of expletives]
I’d like to add - is anyone really surprised by the actions of this government? They gave off so many warning signals before the last election that they were going to be conservative in many aspects.
EG. The Truancy plan
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/rudds-trump-card-on-welfare-penalties/2007/07/13/1183833772698.html
Were people just ignoring those warnings and hoping that they’d change for the better once they got into government? I guess those in that boat have received the wake up call now. Rudd was fair dinkum and has stuck to his word - a conservative through and through.
Nah, I knew there’d be plenty of space to criticise Rudd from the Left (which is why I voted Green, then directed preferences to Labor), but (and this is important) he isn’t Howard.
BBB,
I used those examples knowing full well they aren’t neoliberal by your definition - and yet these examples come from governments lauded as having a neoliberal focus, with the Bush government in particular often cited for its high proportion of neoliberals.
Now, when a bastion such as the current US republican govt is not considered neoliberal, where does the idea that neoliberalism has triumphed/won/most prevalent come from?
Your dig about looking up neoliberalism could well be directed at some of the movement’s supporters. It ain’t all catallaxy out there, BBB. And this is my point.
These pure intellectual positions my be all very good and dandy in the rarefied atmosphere of blogs, but in the somewhat dirty world of political realities, they simply don’t exist in the clean modernist lines you seem to be positing.
By playing this “it’s only neoliberalism when I say it is” game, you lose out by shaping a definition so narrow it could not possibly be dominant in a real world political context - I’ll see your education vouchers and raise you a computer in every school and an alcopops tax - or so muddy as to be completely arbitrary.
This is what I’m driving at. Evidence-based policy is neither fully consistent or inconsistent with neoliberalism. But if you’re seriously asserting that Neoliberalist solutions will always be the empirically best ones, that’s crazy talk. Despite my pinko credentials, i would never argue that govt intervention will always be the best solution to a situation.
patrickg, you’re right that the world, and more particularly Australia, isn’t run exclusively along neoliberal lines, hence my remark: “There is no battle of ideas anymore, save the many little battles within broader long-term questions of ‘how do we convert this or that social democratic structure into a neoliberal one?’ (health and education come immediately to mind)…” It’s the back and forth and it’s impact on public policy. It’s the long-term trajectory that I’m talking about. Let’s take some examples in the Australian context. There is no chance that private health insurance will be abolished and healthcare nationalised. There is a chance, even in the medium-term, that private provision of healthcare will become the dominant vehicle. There is no chance that private schooling will be outlawed. There is a chance, even in the medium-term, that state and federal governments will move towards vouchers or tax credits to facilitate privately-delivered education. The expansion of Teh Market, as a series of formalised transactions is, of course, a key objective of the neoliberal project.
“Now, when a bastion such as the current US republican govt is not considered neoliberal, where does the idea that neoliberalism has triumphed/won/most prevalent come from?”
Because not even the evil nasty Republicans or the evil nasty Liberals can undo in the short-term a fairly solid thirty years of neoliberal reforms?
BBB
But I see that as a false dichotomy, BBB. There’s no chance in OZ that private healthcare will dominate. Heck, the govt just eliminated the need for private healthcare for about 70% of the public w/ the new cap rise.
Education _may_ (big may) move towards vouchers, but the majority of Aust students are still in public education, and probably always will be (also, w/ rgards to education it is always much easier to point out the move to private education in economic good times).
Re: the move to neoliberalism over the last thirty years, well again I’m like yes and no. Yes, if you mean that dismantling anything = neoliberal, but a) that ignores all the stuff that doesn’t get dismantled, and b) it ignores all the new funding, etc. that regularly happens.
I would be extremely reluctant to say that things are moving one way and will continue to do so in the future, that certain modes of thought etc are losing out.
This comes back to my other point: even if all the reforms you point to our happening, tying them to neoliberal aims, goals, or reasoning may be too much of a long bow to draw; the reasoning could be very different.
This might start to get interesting.
Since LP is hardly a gathering of swinging voters in marginal electorates, it is very likely that the Labor government is going to start introducing policies that don’t appeal to its readership. Bill Henson’s photos were the first salvo here. Whether these policies will harm Labor electorally is quite a different matter.
Aside from his new found interest in the Scottish Enlightenment, I didn’t see anything in Craig Emerson’s feature about the virtues of markets and competition that he hasn’t been saying for some time. Lindsay Tanner has been saying a lot of very similar things.
I think their real target is The Greens, not Fielding and Xenophon. Having looked at what would be involved in trying to get legislation through with Greens support (e.g on carbon trading), I think Labor are tacking towards getting compromises with the Liberals.
Given Labor’s history since about 1980, this is a lot less surprising than it might first look. It will, however, start to make life tougher for the LP-left, who have been able to rely on having a common foe (the evil Howard) to maintain the fiction that Labor and the Greens have common interests.
Ha ha, yes I may be a little optimistic patrickg.
Cheers
BBB
Stick around, Terry. I know I love involved Labor-Greens blueing, it’s like State of Origin for the broader left. Everyone leaves their club colours at home and punches on in the cause of advancing internecine hostility.
Bring on the NSW local government elections, and let’s have at it.
Third Way, and more tellingly, warns that social democracy lost its soul somewhere with its obsession with market me-too-ism and gave up on attempting to make any structural changes in the social landscape.
The structural changes that are now happening in the social landscape are instead driven by abstract market interests rather than real, pondered, rational, human descisions. Example:
“Last year, net overseas migration was 178,000, almost 30 per cent higher than the natural increase of the population (birth rate over death rate), thanks to a policy put in place by the Howard government. Total population growth was 315,000. Under the Rudd Government, it appears set to be higher this year. Then add the growing guest-worker program for people on temporary work visas” <a href=”http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/a-reality-check-on-rudds-rhetoric/2008/07/27/1217097054279.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
The structural changes will be in the from of increased atomisation and of ’society’, and the increasingly toll on our environment.
Well if the green left are anti-immigration, then I’d be with Rudd.
The idea that rich countries should shut the door on the people of the developing world is something I find morally abhorrent and economically indefensible.
Also, Australia is a much better country for being culturally diverse. I always thought that it was a complaint against Howard that he was for an Anglo monoculture.
‘Neo-liberal’ seems to be a pretty wishy-washy target to me - how about the actual infrastructure of the Military-entertainment complex? Or embodiments of God and the State like Blair and Rudd declared as enemies-of-the-people, hunted down and fucking ****ed?
We need some locked-on hard targets with benchmarks set for progressive destruction of said high-up targets, including monarchists. Not to totally eliminate all of them - just to minimize and manage them far away from power.
We can’t fight spooks and abstractions without hard edged weapons either and here’s where libertarian socialists can help save democratic socialism.
Weapons forged in the struggle of the greatest revolutions in all history, in the Ukraine and Spain are still there and available and may be leveraged world wide by the web. Works by great thinkers like Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin will save social-democracy - make no mistake - but nothing else will barring a miracle.
People are quick to pile on with their attacks on the ‘Third Way’, but at least it has some sort of ideological footing — some sort of theory behind it — whatever you may think of it. Ditto for free-market liberals and ‘neo-liberals’.
But where do we stand with the non-Third Way left? Most have (thankfully) abandoned the notion of the monolithic, omnipresent state, but they don’t seem to have found anything to replace the huge hole where their ideology once used to be.
Ask what we might do about, say, improving secondary education. The left’s answer will be, I guarantee it, “more resources”. What about health? “More resources.” Crime, the environment, child care, aged care, indigenous issues, universities, vocational training — pick any problem you like, the answer is always the same.
The modern left are just a bunch of mendicants, queueing in front of the government to have their begging bowls filled with tax dollars. I hope the ALP will generally have the good sense to ignore them.
Geez, Paulus, lots of nuance there. Next you’ll be calling us TAXEATERS!
Nuance is for sissies, TAXEATER!
I ate your taxes with some lima beans and a nice chianti!
Planet Janet is over the moon at Rudd’s “tough love”:
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/tough_love_is_now_bipartisan/
re 63, Pity what she thinks fit for others wasn’t applied to her once in a while.
Then we’d hear a change in tune.
I’m disgusted by this. I didn’t vote for the ALP to get a more extreme version of Howard! If Rudd hasn’t done a complete 180 on this come next election I won’t be voting for Labor again despite the fact none of this even affects me. Like I said at the time I thought Rudd would be a wolf in sheeps clothing, I wish I had have been wrong.
No, Rudd isn’t Howard. The btrouble is the more right wing the Rudd Government goes, the more far right wing the next conservative government will go. One would have thought the ALP would have learnt the dangers of swinging to the right by now, when one consoders the horrors Howard built on the Hawke-Keating reforms. University fees, Workchoices, savage welfare reforms, detention centre, etc. etc.
My conscience is clear. I didn’t vote for either of the bastards.
In a preferential voting system you don’t really have any choice though. In the end you either vote for one of them or you don’t vote. You can only not vote for one person
I’ve just read Janet. IU’m still wiping the spew off my keyboard. Where the hell do these people get off? They seem to have no idea of the emotional pain and mental anguish these proposed schemes cause those people who are affected by such heartless welfare reform. I well recall the worry and anxiety I went through when the Howard Government, which Rudd, to his great shame sewems determined to clone, was considering kicking people on disability pensions in the head. Despite the fact I knew I was so bloody sick there was noe way O would be affected by any of Howard’s heartless changes.
Perhaps Rudd should think carefully about those blocks who voted against Howard because of his welfare reforms and helped lose him the election - single parents, Aborigines, disabled pensioners.
It is at least heartening to see thsat at least the entire ALP have not turned into Howardistas.
Its well and truly time for a night of the long knoves on the CPS. Get rid of all those arse-licking Howard loving bastards if you want to stay in power.