How did it come to this? Just two years ago everything seemed so different: The GFC was crashing across the planet, provoking the largest internationally coordinated program of state intervention in human history. Prime Ministers were writing quasi-erudite essays damning “market fundamentalism” while disinterring Keynesianism and social democracy. Progressive thinkers spoke hopefully of Green New […]
12 Jun
Comments Off on liz_beths interviewed on ‘The Third Degree’
Given our article on The Drum this week, about the carbon tax debate, it seems timely to post a link to a recent episode of The Third Degree: Environment and Social Justice Radio on 2SER in Sydney. The program was the first in a series of discussions under the theme ‘The Carbon Kerfuffle: Critical Discussions in Climate Change […]
22 May
Comments Off on ‘Revolutions arrive too late or too early, but always when they’re not expected’
> Here’s my rough translation of a thoughtful analysis of the Spanish revolt, which was written for the Viento Sur website a few days ago. It locates the movement’s origins not just in the economic crisis and austerity measures of the Zapatero government, but the impasse created by the trade union leaders’ decision to back […]
14 Apr
Comments Off on The ETS and CPRS: Neoliberalism by any other name
A most curious thing happened that continues to shape mainstream political debate in this country. In the lead-up to the 2007 election Kevin Rudd campaigned strongly on winning a mandate for taking real action on climate change, skewering the inaction of the Howard Government as proof that it had failed on the “greatest moral challenge” […]
27 Mar
Comments Off on Rock-bottom redux: Last drinks rites for the Labor Party? Part One
As a party able to offer itself as a viable government, Labor is not just under existential threat. It is finished. Unless, of course, it can engineer an extraordinary resurgence. Labor’s looming death as a stand-alone political entity is the biggest story in contemporary Australian politics. —Peter Hartcher, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2011 How […]
20 Feb
Comments Off on Have the Australian Greens become Julia Gillard’s ‘useful idiots’?
Since the dust from the August election settled, something strange has been going on in the Australian Greens camp. I think it’s probably a conscious “strategy,” but I’m not privy to the discussions in the party room, so I can’t be sure. But here is my stab at it, and why it worries me deeply. […]
16 Jan
Comments Off on The curious marriage of neoliberalism and nationalism
One of the main arguments of the neoliberal era has been centred on the decline of nation states and governments as actors in the economic sphere, replaced by decentralised market networks, multinational corporations and a new class of transnational capitalists. In her article in the Atlantic Monthly that I quoted in my last post, “The Rise of […]
07 Dec
Comments Off on Michael Costa, George Megalogenis & the strange death of ‘reform’ politics
Now also cross-posted to ABC’s The Drum website. The last fortnight saw the release of two significant contributions to the post federal election debate on the state of official politics, and more specifically its intimate connection with the fortunes of the Australian Labor Party. The first, the new Quarterly Essay by George Megalogenis of The Australian, is a detailed attempt […]
01 Nov
In my review of John Quiggin’s Zombie Economics I started to develop a theme about the nature of neoliberalism that goes beyond his focus on a set of flawed economic ideas and their application: So why do market liberal ideas persist despite being disproved in practice? Quiggin suggests a mixture of the influence of vested interests and […]
08 Oct
Comments Off on Neoliberal financialisation: State intervention against the public interest
From John Quiggin’s just-released new book, Zombie Economics, this on “financial deregulation”: The term deregulation is something of a misnomer, since no system in which the public is the ultimate guarantor can be regarded as unregulated.
16 Jun
Comments Off on Explaining the age of austerity: Beyond the conjunctural, the organic crisis re-emerges