peteg's blog - noise - books - 2018 09 16 RichardDenniss QuarterlyEssay70 DeadRight

Quarterly Essay #70, Richard Denniss: Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next.

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More dead tree from the Randwick City Library. Denniss pushes a simple argument: the right's decades-long pitch that politicians are untrustworthy and government is the problem, not the solution, or is anyway ineffective, has come home to roost in the form of the fragmentation of their parties; for what does it matter who you vote for if these assertions hold? Adding in a war on expertise, waged on the public service in particular, has made for some dire political times.

The title is a bit confused as the neoliberal/economic rationalist project is still broadly supported across the political spectrum, having been started by Hawke and Keating, furthered by Howard and Costello. These days it zombie-shuffles along as even Keating now accepts (and rants about; Ken Henry was there a lot earlier). Denniss wants the parliament to respond to popular ideas (i.e., to destigmatise populism to some extent) and makes a few suggestions along lines he thinks are non-partisan. However it's clear from other polities that even civics education (p68) is contentious; one route forward for parties with demographically declining support is to doctor the electoral process with gerrymandering and voter suppression, as the Republicans are apparently doing in the U.S., and to generally discourage citizens from engaging in politics. Perhaps his best argument is that economics be put in a proper perspective; that Australia is richer than ever but can't afford the services of previous years is absurd.

Ross Grittins is a bit skeptical, and he's right this is a book more for the heart than the head. Many other responses were predictably reactionary.