Marketisation of Australia’s public services has failed

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This time last year, Ross Gittins penned an excellent article lamenting the neoliberal obsession with transferring the provision of public services to private providers, which focussed on aged care:

A key part of the era of what we used to call “micro-economic reform” has been to take services formerly provided by governments – and sometimes charities – and pay profit-making businesses to provide them…

The reformers were sure these changes would lead to big improvements. As everyone knows, the public sector is lazy and wasteful, whereas competition and the profit motive make the private sector very efficient…

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.