Larvatus Prodeo

End of year reflection on the state of politics and the nation type articles can be interesting. They can be tedious rehashes of trivia and reinventions of an already distorted reality to prove punditarian narratives r us and are ace (read any column in the Opposition Organ for an example). They can be quite thoughtful and rise above the usual trivia and actually say something. Or they can be quite weird.

John Hewson’s contribution in today’s Fin falls into the latter category. I strongly suspect his article is the first time evah a columnist in the venerable biz organ has written the sentence: “Whatever!” – indeed, Dr JoHew has been rather exuberant with his punctuation for emphasis in what is a sustained attack on the Reserve Bank. He may have a point that Glenn Stevens indicating that he’ll be taking a rest over January isn’t the best idea – as he points out, the Fed has rates heading down to a range between 0% and 0.25% and UK rates are at 2%. Perhaps Stevens thinks that in the month or so of the Great Australian Stupor, we’ll all spend the economy back to health by splurging on alcopops and sunscreen. On the other hand, Hewson is probably right that Aussie parochialism can’t be afforded anymore – the rest of the world may not understand that we’re all at the beach.

But Hewson’s paradox is that his solution is typical of what got us here in the first place – better “governance” and a more “independent” board – which sits uneasily with his own complaint that no one is allowed to complain about the independent Bank. This is the sort of neoliberal managerialist fantasy that landed us in this mess (in part) and the proscription is even more technocratic wonkery!

Speaking of which, that takes me to my segue about Kevin Rudd, political reality, climate change and technocratic wonkery.

Continue reading ‘John Hewson discovers excitable punctuation, anti-political fantasies and other stuff to do with the end of political year 2008′