It’s argued so furiously that it could all be mistaken for an actual debate:
Business leaders have warned Jim Chalmers not to “sleepwalk into being a quasi-command economy” nor rewrite Australia’s successful market-based system in the Treasurer’s quest to usher in a new era of values-based capitalism.
Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott and Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the private sector would work with the government in good faith but advised against undermining the market-based system.
Other industry bosses and chief executives of major health, superannuation, insurance, mining and finance companies welcomed Dr Chalmers’ vision to “rethink capitalism” but cautioned against overreach, which could leave energy markets exposed and shrink profits needed to fund aged and health care.
This is what Chamler’s “vision” of greater “co-investment” and “collaboration” with markets achieves. It invites vested interests into the policy tent, elevates their voices to a pitch that drowns out national and public interests, and covers the resulting systemic corruption of policy with the fig leaf of fake debate.
There is no “right” debating “left” here. It is not “public” versus “private”. It is certainly not “markets” versus “regulators”.
It is the “fake right” in the body of specific and narrow businesses that despise markets, having a fake debate with the “fake left” in the body of a treasurer proposing precisely zero reform of substance.
This is status quo masquerading as revolution.
It is gaslighting.
