The AFR View
Chalmers’ new manifesto ignores all the lessons of Hawke and Keating
In the 1980s and early ’90s, a reforming Labor government revived Australian prosperity. The enduring principles of incentive, enterprise, entrepreneurship and reward are lost in the Treasurer’s model of ‘values-based capitalism’.
Jim Chalmers’ 6000-word manifesto for a new form of “values-based capitalism” vows to jettison the “neoliberalism” supposedly responsible for a wasted decade of conservative government that left Australia ill-equipped for the post-pandemic world.
But the Treasurer’s basic purpose is to discredit the modern relevance of the previous Hawke-Keating Labor reform era that liberalised Australia’s protected and over-regulated economy and built today’s national prosperity.
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