Australia’s future to be made under Treasury’s watchful eye

The Albanese government’s Future Made in Australia has had a rapturous reception from some, but a suspicious reception from others (including me). In a little-noticed speech last week, however, one of our former top econocrats gave the plan a tick.

Rod Sims, former chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, and now chair of Professor Ross Garnaut’s brainchild, the Superpower Institute, has been reassured by the plan’s “national interest framework”, prepared by Treasury and issued with the budget.

Credit: Matt Davidson

But first, the budget announced that the government would “invest” – largely by way of tax concessions – $22.7 billion in the plan over the next decade.

Treasury’s framework will be included in the planned Future Made in Australia Act. It will “clearly articulate” how the government will identify those industries that will get help under the act, to “impose rigour on government’s decision-making on significant public investments, particularly those used to incentivise private investment at scale,” according to Treasury.

So, Sims is reassured by the knowledge that the framework – and Treasury – will ensure that “sound economics has been applied”. “In my view, [the plan] represents a growth and productivity opportunity every bit as bold as seen under previous governments,” he says.

Some of those giving the plan a rapturous reception believed it was “a welcome return to activist industry policy and making more things and value-adding in Australia,” Sims says. But “despite what has been said for political reasons, this is not the logic driving [the plan] as described by Treasury”.

Sims says we don’t need to revisit old and tired debates about protectionism. But as it happens, he notes, making more things in Australia will be an outcome of the plan.

Some said the plan represented the end of “neoliberalism” and a return to interventionist thinking. “It is not that either,” he says. “[The plan] relies on sound economics, and any change in economic thinking is a return to the application of sound economics.”

The way I’d put it is that to intervene or not to intervene is not the question. A moment’s thought reveals that governments have always intervened in the economy. (One of the most incorrigible interveners is a crowd called the Reserve Bank, which keeps fiddling with the interest rates paid and received in the private sector.)

No, as we’ll see, the right question is usually whether the intervention is adequately justified by “market failure” – whether, left to its own devices, the market will deliver the ideal outcomes that economic theory promises.

Others have approved of the plan because it’s about encouraging some local production in necessary supply chains. Sims admits there’s an element of this, as local battery and solar panel manufacture are mentioned, but they are a small part of the program.

Similarly, some move to make supply chains less at risk of disruption may be involved, but it’s not the driving logic of the plan.

Yet others have said the plan is copying the United States and its (misleadingly named) Inflation Reduction Act. “This is incorrect,” Sims says. The Americans’ act “spreads money widely, whereas [the plan] is targeted to Australia’s circumstances”.

The US act “also has many destructive features that we will not copy, such as its protectionist approach.”

But, to be fair to the sceptics, he adds, “the policy’s introduction was poorly handled. It was linked to making solar panel modules, when they can be purchased much more cheaply from China, and then there was the announcement of $1 billion for quantum computing.”

“It helps neither global mitigation [of climate change] nor Australian development to force manufacture here, if the final products are produced most cost-effectively elsewhere.”

So, if the plan isn’t mainly about protectionism, what’s its main purpose? Achieving the net zero transition and turning Australia into a renewable energy superpower.

Treasury’s national interest framework says the net zero transition and “heightened geostrategic competition” (code for the rivalry between the US and China) are transforming the global economy.

“These factors are changing the value of countries’ natural endowments, disrupting trade patterns, creating new markets, requiring heightened adaptability and rewarding innovation,” the framework says.

“Australia’s comparative advantages, capabilities and trade partnerships mean that these global shifts present profound opportunity for Australian workers and businesses.” We can foster new, globally competitive industries that will boost our economic prosperity and resilience, while supporting decarbonisation.

In considering the prudent basis for government investment in new industries, the framework will consider the following factors: Australia’s grounds for expecting lasting competitiveness in the global market; the role the new industry will play in securing an orderly path to net zero and building our economic resilience and security; whether the industry will build key capabilities; and whether the barriers to private investment can be resolved through public investment in a way that delivers “compelling public value”.

So, that’s quite a few hurdles you have to jump before the government starts giving you tax breaks. And proposals will be divided between two streams: the net zero transformation stream and the economic resilience and security stream. We can only hope that a lot more of the money goes to the former stream than the latter.

To justify government intervention, the framework requires evidence of “market failure” such as “negative externalities” that arise because the new clean industry is competing against fossil fuel-powered industries which, in the absence of a price on carbon, haven’t been required to bear the cost to the community of the greenhouse gases they emit.

Another case of market failure are the “positive externalities” that arise when the first firms in a new industry aren’t rewarded for the losses they incur while learning how the new technology works, to the benefit of all the firms that follow them.

Politicians being politicians, I doubt whether Treasury’s policing of its national interest framework will ensure none of the $22.7 billion is wasted. But we now have stronger grounds for hoping that Treasury’s oversight will keep the crazy decisions to a minimum.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.

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