More is more: The big idea that’s inspired Jim Chalmers (huzzah!)

Canberra has been taken by storm by an idea. The idea is abundance – the notion that scarcity is artificially created. It is described in a book which Treasurer Jim Chalmers referred to at the National Press Club last week. I rather thought that the treasurer might have given up on ideas after the critical reception of his Monthly Essay in the summer of 2023 on “values-based capitalism”. Endearingly, he has not.

Abundance is the latest from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson (the prolific “et al” to his more famous co-author). Klein’s books (he’s written one other, without an et al) are interesting, in that they offer the kind of excoriation of progressives and progressivism that can only be delivered by someone who passionately wants both to succeed.

Brought to book? Treasurer Jim Chalmers at the National Press Club. Credit: Rohan Thomson

Chalmers’ colleague, the honourable Dr Andrew Leigh, MP, recommended the treasurer read Abundance. This column has been quite fond of Leigh, from afar, ever since he took it in his head to deliver a conference key-note address based on Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiment. Cracker speech, cracker text. Donald Trump was elected for the first time that very afternoon, but this column is not implying any causality.

Klein’s book has inspired our treasurer. Now “about half of the federal cabinet has a dog-eared copy on their bed stands”, according to Shane Wright’s column in this masthead. So obviously I had to read it. The act of a patriot.

Abundance is an extraordinary book. But before I begin to describe it, a word from our treasurer.

The inspiration he and his team are drawing from Klein (et al) relates to his suggestions on how “we” (society in general, but the book is specifically aimed at progressives) can get out of “our” own way and get on with building housing and energy. As Chalmers said at the National Press Club, the vision is to address the supply side of the housing and energy crunches in Australia. That means we need to knock down the obstacles standing in the way of creating more of both.

Which is good to know. Because while creating abundance is the overall theme of Abundance, and housing and energy are areas of focus, there is so much more that I wasn’t expecting. Klein (et al) deliver a very tidy description of American politics which translates well to the Australian experience. “Americans,” they write, referring mainly to Republicans, I assume, “talk like conservatives but want to be governed like liberals.” They “like both the rhetoric and reality of low taxes, but they also like the programs taxes fund”.

Same-same in our country.

But then they come down hard on their fellow progressives. In many Democrat states, the authors say, voters talk like liberals but act like conservatives. American progressives, Abundance points out, like to adorn themselves with slogans like Black Lives Matter, Kindness is Everything and No Human Being is Illegal. But they push poorer, disproportionately non-white and immigrant families out of their areas, forcing them into long commutes, overcrowded housing and homelessness.

There are many jaw-to-the-floor moments which will have the right reaching for its highlighters and Post-it notes. This is one. After progressives have for years denied that virtue signalling is a real thing at all, in Abundance a couple of progressive authors describe it succinctly, unsparingly, and of their own kind. They go on to explain that progressive states go against their own stated values by creating barriers to building more houses. Zoning laws, followed by environmental regulation and building codes, have been deployed to freeze out development, which keeps out the poor in the name of “preserving character”.

Abundance makes no bones about it: homelessness, which is rampant in the Democrat-dominated state of California, is a choice that progressives have made.

The book traces the creation of these regulatory and legal obstacles to progressives, including lawyer and one-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who invented “democracy by lawsuit”. The technique deliberately orchestrates artificial scarcity where there should be abundance.

These tactics have since been used by progressives to stymie energy-production initiatives. Which is a problem, according to the authors, because “energy abundance might be the single most important technological bottleneck of our time”.

Chalmers wants to trim back the regulation that stands in the way of building housing and energy. And frankly, there’s a lot in that for the other side of politics to love. It’s what’s known in the classics as a red-tape reduction agenda. But this is where Chalmers taps out on Abundance suggestions, and classical liberals (that’s the centre-right, in the Australian sense) should keep reading.

Klein and Thompson are keen fans of nuclear, a clean energy source, which is “by some counts … safer than wind and cleaner than solar”. They also spare a few paragraphs ripping up the “degrowth” movement, which is “simultaneously much more and much less than an answer to the climate crisis”.

And they believe the government should have a role in funding big risky science, but they are fiercely critical of the government grant-awarding process for scientific research, which is too bureaucratic.

To achieve abundance, the authors argue, bureaucracy must be severely reduced. Which, by a rough reckoning on my fingers and toes, would mean cuts to the public service. Because I’m not sure how you make less of the thing that stands in the way without making fewer of the people whose purpose is that thing.

Also, I’m pretty sure we just had an election on nuclear and public service efficiency? But good ideas persist and memory grows hazy.

In any case, Klein and Thompson observe that big political shifts are made when “hidden” political parallels emerge. “Being progressive means making progress, not holding it up unnecessarily,” Chalmers tells me, which makes Abundance “an important read at a crucial time as we work out the best next steps in our economy and society”.

I’ll take it. Better to have an abundance of ideas than another term of Albanese government without any to speak of.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.