Premium – 472. Australia’s AI Pitch Deck

I was under the impression also, in the 80s, this is when Australia did do its own liberalization.

This is when they floated the dollar.

This is when they did financial deregulation.

This is when they started to privatize.

This is...

I think the difference there in Australia is that, you know, yeah, Thatcher and Reagan forced the union movements by breaking them to accept these sort of accommodations.

These were partners.

The unions, at least in Australia, sounded like they were partners on it, right? But this wasn't like some stark...

divergence from the under underlying idea here right that there is this idea this sense that okay well you know we will we will rein in wages right we will rein in wages that you're paid for labor and on the flip side we will expand social benefits right That's not an alternative to what he calls the economic rationalism, right? Because it's still saying, yeah, look, you joined a union so that you can increase your wages or get better benefits, and we're going to deny you one of those so that you can have better social compensation or better social benefits or better social safety nets, right? But it's still...

there's still a restriction that's going on.

There's still liberalization and we're still centering the social contract around capital

and its desires and its needs, right?

So, I mean, you know, that is a little interesting that it's framed as we did not go down that route when it kind of, you know, they kind of did.

do that in a way, right?

Absolutely.

I mean, Medicare came about in 1984, right? And this was a kind of hallmark policy of Bob Hawke's government.

And Bob Hawke was part of the Australian Labor Party.

So Albanese is also kind of Hawke.

hearkening back to that.

But you're exactly right, Ed, that some of the other hallmark policies of this era in the Hawke government was, as you said, floating the Australian dollar, is also deregulating financial markets.

It was privatizing state sector industries, like selling off a bunch of state-owned companies like Commonwealth Bank, Telstra, Qantas, CSL, all these things that are now a major bank, a major telecom, a major airliner, right? All of these things that are now major companies, CSL is a biotech company, it's a multinational, right? All these things that people don't realize or have forgotten were state-owned companies until they were sold off all at once by this privatization in the 80s.

So you're right.

It's like...

This is some historiography happening here to be like, but you were doing the same thing.

Maybe you weren't rounding up coal miners and pushing them off the Dover cliff or whatever, but you're still doing the same stuff.