Tom James Conley

Whatever Happened to Industry Policy in Australia

Since the 1980s and early 1990s, there have been few constructive developments towards a comprehensive and coherent productivity-enhancing agenda. Labor governments have often provided rhetorical support but have fought over whether industry policy represents a new protectionism or market-enhancing development policy. The Coalition in opposition and in office has generally opposed the idea of industry policy, but has continued to support ad hoc and costly policy interventions. Australias 20 years without a recession has disguised the need to reconsider industry policy and questions of economic diversity. This article argues that dealing with problems of economic structure – particularly resource dependence and climate change adaptation – requires a revitalisation of the industry policy debate. It tracks the theory and practice of industry policy in Australia and concludes that advocates for industry policy must formulate new policy ideas outside the framework of the traditional divide between intervention and free markets.

The state of globalisation and the globalisation of the state

This article examines how to evaluate claims about the extent and impact of globalisation. A focus on the significance of earlier phases of globalisation is essential, but underestimating the importance and scope of recent developments is the wrong lesson to learn from a more historically informed analysis. While it is necessary to maintain a healthy scepticism towards endings, inevitability and irreversibility, it is important to remain open to the possibility that the world political economy has indeed undergone substantial transformation. This article argues that quantitative measures of globalisation need to be supplemented with an analysis of the pivotal role of the state in spurring and sponsoring the process of global economic interaction. State constructions of the imperatives of globalisation have aimed to bolster the acceptance of policy changes that support globalisation and transform domestic political economies. There is continuing potential for state activity to have effects--both positive and negative--on the progress of economic globalisation.

The stretched rubber band: banks, houses, debt and vulnerability in Australia

ABSTRACT This article analyses the development of residential capitalism and financialisation in Australia. It outlines the series of economic vulnerabilities developing in the financial system, centred on household debt and inflated property markets. It then analyses why policy-makers have done so little to restrict the growth of household debt and house prices. I argue that financial policy-makers have underestimated the financial vulnerabilities building up in Australia – as evidenced by the slow take-up of macroprudential policies. I outline four reasons: first, the excellent profit performance of the major banks; second, the policy predilection for idealised economic liberal regulation; third, the development of a politico-housing complex; and, finally, the growing role of household debt in ameliorating distributional conflict by underpinning growth.

Review of Ronald Findlay and Kevin O’Rourke, Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy inthe Second Millennium

This is the third recent biography of Andrew Fisher. It joins David Day’s Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia and Edward W. Humphrey’s Andrew Fisher: The Forgotten Man, both published in 2008. Clearly, years of neglect have now been addressed. In terms of achievement, Fisher should never have been overlooked. He was a minister in the world’s first Labor government in Queensland, served in Chris Watson’s Labor ministry, and became Prime Minister three times. He and his governments were instrumental in the introduction of the old age and invalid pensions, workers’ compensation and maternity allowances. His government established the first Prime Minister’s Department, substantially upgraded the nation’s defence forces; commenced construction of the east–west railway; established an Australian currency; created the Commonwealth Bank; introduced the first genuinely Australian stamp; selected the site for the national capital, which was given an Aboriginal name in preference to ‘a vast number of possible imperial, nationalist or abstract concoctions’ (p. 228); and designated Saturdays as voting days so as not to disadvantage working people. Fisher is also remembered for two declarations. At the 1908 federal conference of the Labor party, he told those assembled, ‘We are all socialists now’ (p. 133) and in 1914, he promised ‘the last man and the last shilling’ (p. 185) in support of Great Britain if war should eventuate. Despite these achievements, it is easy to see why, until recently, authors have focused on more colourful prime ministerial characters. The portrait painted in this book is of a dull but amiable striver. Fisher was born in Ayrshire in 1862 and received a solid. although rudimentary, education in the village school, which he later supplemented with night school and a program of self-improvement. Bastian tells us that ‘he was uneasy with too much intellectual speculation and tended to read works that confirmed, rather than challenged, his views’ (p. 10). His family were Presbyterian abstainers and Fisher remained a member of the Temperance society all his life. He began working in the Crosshouse coal-mines as a 9-year-old and it is likely that he joined the union at this point, although the first record of his membership is his election as district secretary of the miners union in 1879. Desirous of a secure future, he migrated to Queensland in 1885, where he replicated elements of his Scottish life: work in the mines, temperance, the Presbyterian Church and unionism. He married at age 39 and although his marriage was ‘solid and enduring’ (p. 93), it was devoid of outward displays of affection when family members or others were present. No whiff of scandal was ever attached to him. As a parliamentarian, he was not an inspired speaker. Like John Howard, he was hard of hearing, and his Scottish brogue added to his audience’s difficulty. As a politician, he was frequently underestimated. This was undoubtedly compounded by the fact that the great bulk of his last years were spent in London – first as Australian High Commissioner and then as a retiree. Bastion makes a convincing case that Fisher’s career, with its demonstration that a man of humble background and ordinary mien could become Prime Minister, ‘changed forever the way Australians would think about the social aspirations of their democracy’ (p. 157). He also makes a solid case for a re-evaluation of Fisher and his numerous achievements.

Review of Gregory Clark, A Return to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World

Academic and policy-maker interest in social capital in Australia rose to dizzy heights following Eva Cox’s 1995 Boyer Lectures, reflecting growing international interest in the topic. It reached a crescendo with the visit to Australia of US social capital doyen Robert Putnam in 2001. In two new Australian books dealing with the concept we are able to see how much the debate has matured in Australia since then. Having gained a level of uncritical acceptance social capital is now attracting a healthy level of critical scrutiny. In ‘Connecting and Cooperating: Social Capital and Public Policy’, Jenny Lewis takes on the ambitious project of seeking to demonstrate how a social capital framework might help us to understand the public policy process as well as how public policy interventions can build social capital. This is a bold and difficult objective that will attract the attention of plenty of readers searching for public policy utility in the concept – particularly those seeking guidance on social capital development and measurement. Lewis advocates the use of network and complexity theory and applies mainly the former in a series of case studies that seek to examine the public policy utility of social capital. The first case study begins with an overview of surveys undertaken by the author on the relative influence of different actors on decision-making in a health setting. The chapter illustrates the utility of social capital as a concept for understanding the relative influence of different actors within a particular context. While this is an interesting academic question it is not made clear whether this is of more than passing interest to policy-makers. Drawing out the implications of social capital research for policy-makers is not easy I hasten to add. If it provides insights into the distribution and exercise of power and influence then it is playing both a useful analytical role and window into the reality of policy-making that reveals an inconvenient truth for some – that divisions based on class, gender, race and status continue to play out every day in the decision making processes of our institutions. The rise of social capital to prominence might have reasserted the importance of the social in a world where neoliberalism sought to focus attention on the individual but it is rarely discussed in the wider political and economic context in which its utility might be fully realised. This is the shortcoming of this book and many others in that they seek to measure and quantify social capital in isolation from the wider political, cultural and economic context in which actors and institutions operate. In the process important analytical constructs such as class, gender and ethnicity are largely ignored, reflecting a growing tendency within academia to adopt benign analytical constructs. The lesson from Jenny Lewis’ important contribution to the social capital debate in Australia is that social capital can help us to understand how relationships of influence and mutual support operate. It would be an advance in our thinking about social capital if there were explicit recognition of how helpful this might be in understanding how existing patterns of inequality are reinforced and sometimes challenged. This would require a recognition of class, ethnicity and Australian Journal of Political Science, Vol. 45, No. 4, December 2010, pp. 719–742

Understanding the Asia-Pacific

Both of these books make a valuable contribution to understanding the Asia-Pacific, albeit from different perspectives. The first is a multi-authored textbook-style treatment of the international politics of the Asia-Pacific region, and would provide an excellent resource for undergraduates, perhaps at upper-year level. It will also be invaluable for higher-level students wanting some background on the region and for those just generally interested in current affairs. The second book under review here is a less-structured effort and the quality of the offerings is more uneven, which is understandable for an edited volume. No doubt, however, teachers will be able to utilise various chapters for teaching courses on East Asia.