For three and a half decades Australia has been dominated by three periods of policy that sought to balance US and Asian influences.
The first was Keatingism which set Australia on a path of strategic, multilateral Asian engagement while it also embraced the ‘Washington Consensus’ of liberalising economic reform. In essence, the latter also represented an heavy engagement with US economic imperialism. It included tight fiscal policy, independent (and low) interest rates, free markets, privatisation and floating currencies.
The second period was Howardism. As the anxieties of Keatingism played havoc with Australia’s traditional values on both fronts, Howardism eschewed the multi-lateralism of Asian engagement, preferring bilateral relationships. Howardism was values based and often bad-mouthed Asian nations, as well as booting refugees into the sea to reassure Australians that they were safe. However, it continued to implement the Washington Consensus, heavily engaging in trade with China’s expanding economic imperialism, as well as opening the spigots on economic migration, largely from Asia. It was fortunate that the same period was strategically demanding of Australia in its US strategic partnership regarding the Middle East which helped balance our two major power relationships.
The first two periods were both national projects. Keatingism was very deliberate, Howardism more evolutionary, but both had an internal logic that balanced Australia’s internal and external interests effectively enough to convince the polity that they were worth supporting, at least for long enough to given policy-makers a decent horizon to work with.
The third period began with the GFC. It is tempting to simply call it “chaos” but there is a constant to the period that coughs up a more accurate label. Propertyism we shall call it.
Propertyism turned away from the Washington Consensus of liberalised markets. Instead it embraced bailouts and deliberate support of asset prices using both fiscal and monetary policy. It enjoyed a mining boom for a period but, in truth, this was relatively minor compared with the main game, which was to keep bank balance sheets sufficiently healthy to maintain the flow of offshore debt that underpinned property prices. Through five changes in prime minister in seven years this one theme remained constant as the Washington Consensus was wound back, fiscal policy discipline was abandoned, monetary policy was all but exhausted, a global currency war was ignored and all potentially disruptive economic reforms were thrown out. Immigration boomed despite weak labour markets and falling standards of living, just to keep property prices elevated.
Propertyism had no foreign or strategic policy plan. It never held a leadership team in power long enough to formulate such outlooks. Propertyism was driven by the rent-seekers that occupied policy post-GFC: banks, real estate lobbies, ‘citizenship export’ sectors and a property-dependent media. It coincided with the rise of a more assertive foreign policy in a now rapidly developing Great Power in China. It was a match made in Heaven as the inflow of Chinese capital became essential to keeping property prices aloft. Rampant illegal buying was disguised by officialdom and a corrupt media. Chinese immigration drove demand for yet more houses. With the flow of people and money came further corruption of a system that was already breaking under the strain of no leadership. As eminent Sinologist Stephen Fitzgerald put it yesterday:
“The influence is palpable through the now near-monopoly PRC control of Chinese language media and censorship of its content; the surveillance, direction and at times coercion of Chinese students through PRC-directed or controlled student associations; the enlisting of ethnic Chinese business people to these and other causes serving China’s interests; and the pressuring and attempted muzzling of ethnic Chinese critics of the PRC,” he said.
Professor FitzGerald described the push as “a soft power offensive with a hard edge”.
“Behind it lies the strategic foreign policy Xi has called a special ‘diplomacy for countries around China’s periphery’ (Australia being one such),” he said.
“The objective is to co-opt these countries to the enterprise of realising ‘China’s dream’, specifically its Great Power status and the legitimacy of its power ambitions.”
Having exhausted monetary and fiscal policy, Propertyism now threatened to suck the marrow from Australia’s strategic alliances and fundamental values. It threatened Australia’s most continuous principle of existence, that it was part of a global Anglophone power network that brought liberal democratic order to the world (for all of its many and deep faults).
It’s time for Propertyism to end. The nation needs a project again. It can’t just drift stupidly into the embrace of a Chinese economic imperialism that will wreck its democratic principles, its vibrant multi-cutluralism, it’s inter-generational equity and its strategic frameworks.
It’s time for ‘Australianism’ that protects democracy, cares for our youth, shields multi-cultural success from destructive excess and sustains Asian rules-based diplomacy, as well as “civilising capitalism” as Malcolm Turnbull put it. This is not a question of race, it is one of cultural heritage and social contracts. If a country can’t protect these then what’s the good of it? Australianism will:
- cut the immigration intake to historic norms and rein the “citizenship exports sector”;
- overhaul the Chinese investment and place it alongside the nation’s strategic objectives. Raw materials investment to help develop a peaceful China is welcomed, everything else faces an Australianism test;
- ban foreign political donations and install a Federal ICAC;
- ban and enforce foreign buying of real estate;
- reboot foreign policy that engages the US much more heavily in Asia.
With these policies, Propertyism can be turned back and Australia can once again balance its Great Power relationships. There will be some economic pain at first but any political party embracing Australianism will rule for a decade, returning order to policy-making, so the pain will be short-lived.
If not, we’ll be the first nation in the history of the species to commit treason via a sign that says “auction this day”.
