Fair dinkum, has it really come to this, from Tony Boyd’s Chanticleer today:
The question running around the big end of town after George Wright’s appointment as vice-president, corporate affairs at BHP Billiton is: How do you go from master-minding a successful anti-business, populist election campaign to being the credible face of capitalism?
The answer is relatively straightforward and has nothing to do with ideology. Wright is a pragmatic man who can be relied upon to run a successful campaign whether it is for a top 20 company or a political party.
He was the brains behind the anti-WorkChoices campaign that helped to deliver Kevin Rudd victory in the 2007 federal election campaign.
…The major banks are clearly not winning the battle against Labor’s campaign for a royal commission. The review of their strategy probably needs to involve rethinking the tools they are using to prosecute their case.
Really, Tony? That’s really all you’ve got? A senior Labor man is co-opted by cash and turned against a more than reasonable public policy reform in the WA (within limits) and all you can say is that the banks should have done it first?
Chanticleer is the number one business column in Australia. It sets standards. Or, at least, used to. Let’s compare the Chanticleer shocker with the comparable column at the FT today with Martin Wolf:
Is the marriage between liberal democracy and global capitalism an enduring one? Political developments across the west — particularly the candidacy of an authoritarian populist for the presidency of the most important democracy — heighten the importance of this question. One cannot take for granted the success of the political and economic systems that guide the western world and have been a force of attraction for much of the rest for four decades. The question then arises: if not these, what?
A natural connection exists between liberal democracy — the combination of universal suffrage with entrenched civil and personal rights — and capitalism, the right to buy and sell goods, services, capital and one’s own labour freely. They share the belief that people should make their own choices as individuals and as citizens. Democracy and capitalism share the assumption that people are entitled to exercise agency. Humans must be viewed as agents, not just as objects of other people’s power.
Yet it is also easy to identify tensions between democracy and capitalism. Democracy is egalitarian. Capitalism is inegalitarian, at least in terms of outcomes. If the economy flounders, the majority might choose authoritarianism, as in the 1930s. If economic outcomes become too unequal, the rich might turn democracy into plutocracy.
Chanticleer being a nice case in point.
