From Newspoll today:
Labor has maintained its two-party-preferred lead of 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent as the Turnbull government reaches 100 days since its narrow election win.
…Support for other parties and independents is 15 per cent. Of that group, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation accounted for 6 per cent and the Nick Xenophon Team about 2 per cent.
Meanwhile, an interesting snippet from David Uren on Bill Shorten suggests there may yet be hope for Australianism:
Lately, it looks as though Labor’s Treasury spokesman has been losing his arguments with his leader.
Bowen and Scott Morrison have given similar speeches in the past few weeks defending free trade, foreign investment and migration, and calling for the anti-globalisation forces to be resisted.
We must not “pull the doona over our head and insulate ourselves from the economic changes that are occurring globally”, the Treasurer said…the Opposition Leader put a very different face on Labor’s approach to globalisation.
“It’s easy to wax lyrical about the benefits of free trade and pour scorn on the evils of protectionism from the comfort of financial security,” Shorten said. Free trade had to work in the interest of all, not just the wealthy few. “Nothing undermines faith in free trade faster than a flawed agreement that costs local jobs or puts them in jeopardy,” he said.
It seemed like a slap in the face of his Treasury spokesman, who had been waxing lyrical on free trade just 24 hours earlier.
Shorten went further last week at a media event held at a cable manufacturing plant in NSW’s Hunter Valley. “I’m all for free trade and for making sure that Australia competes with the rest of the world, but it’s got to be on a level playing field. And no one in Australia currently believes that Australian manufacturing is playing on a level playing field with the rest of the world,” he said.
Free trade and globalisation are not the same thing. Free trade is the unfettered exchange of goods between nations. Globlisation is also the unfettered movement of capital and people. It’s quite possible to have the first while managing the second two in such a way that local populations do not feel threatened and abandon the first. This is something that Jessica Irvine needs to learn:
Have you been to Kmart lately? Microwaves for $49. Toasters, kettles and sandwich makers for $7.50 each.
And don’t even get me started on IKEA. Seventeen pieces of Tupperware for $4.99. That’s 15 cents a lid.
Decades of free trade with our lower cost neighbours have created a cornucopia of cheap consumption.
But economists are on the cusp of losing the free trade debate.
It was always a tricky sell.
The link between free trade and rising global prosperity is observable. But it’s not always intuitive.
Humans still tend to see transactions as zero-sum games. Someone wins; someone loses. But that both buyers and sellers can be party to a mutually beneficial exchange is a fundamental observation of economics.
So too, the observation that free trade can make everyone better off.
It’s time economists stepped up and started to advocate loudly, persuasively and in simple terms the benefits of free trade.
From Donald Trump’s proposed 45 per cent “Trump Tariff” on Chinese imports, to Theresa May’s crackdown on migration, to our very own One Nation, we are witnessing the rise of anti-globalisation and anti-free trade voices.
We know our Jess has to protect Domainfax given it is fully dependent upon the “citizenship exports” sector and the housing inflation model, but there is no essential link between free trade and globalisation.
That’s where Bill Shorten should go. Don’t throw free trade out, throw globalisation out. Work on turning around Australian competitiveness by limiting capital and people inflows that inflate the dollar and input costs while liberalising trade.
