Eyes On Enterprise

 
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The COVID-19 pandemic is not a Trojan Horse for bigger government, the Prime Minister has said, in keeping with his party’s founding principles. By Tim James.

Enterprise will drive Australia’s COVID-19 recovery. Government is not the answer. These are timeless truths with poignant historical parallels. 

Robert Menzies highlighted this principle in his famous Forgotten People speech in 1942, reflecting on how Australia would recover from war. “Individual enterprise must drive us forward,” he said. The idea of living off the state was “madness”. He talked of a generation becoming beneficiaries instead of contributors as though someone else’s wealth and effort could see them thrive.

History tells the story of Australia rejecting the big government and command economy Curtin and Chifley had started building, albeit via emergency wartime powers. Menzies was the champion for individual initiative and enterprise who kept the state in check and oversaw a period of great growth. 

Which brings us to today. The Morrison Government has necessarily invoked big, immediate interventions, programs and spending commitments to see Australia through to the other side of this pandemic. Similar to Menzies during the war, the Morrison led government understands there is a time and place for urgent and substantial intervention. But importantly under this government there is no push for permanent bigger government or a command economy looking forward. 

Encouragingly, Prime Minister Morrison this week turned the focus of Australia’s post-COVID-19 recovery to enterprise.  “Our government sees business at the centre of the economy,” he said yesterday. “We do not see government at the centre of the economy.”

Morrison spoke of the need for a “revitalisation of the private sector economy” and committed to policies that will drive growth, employment and investment. This is what Liberal leadership looks like.

Incidentally, just imagine for a moment if Labor was in charge, bringing forth $387bn in new taxes and treating enterprise as little more than “corporate leviathans” and “the top end of town”. It would be big government and a centralised command economy writ large.

Labor’s governing document still dictates that it is a “democratic socialist party” with the objective of the “democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange”. Even Labor’s current National Platform is more than 300 pages in length – big government, big policy  and big documents. Which would be a big disaster for Australia. 

Yet the idea that people can live off the state and that government can be at the centre of an economy is alive and well in the left. It’s the core message of Labor, the Greens and others. . 

COVID-19: Read the MRC’s coverage of the debate in Australia and around the world

Even in the early days of this crisis, Labor leader Anthony Albanese missed no opportunity to outline a manifesto for long-term bigger government including sweeping industrial relations changes and huge expenditure on social housing. Greens leader Adam Bandt believes the recovery lies in renewables investments and a Green New Deal in which the government leads job creation and industries. The 1970s are calling, Adam, and they want their socialist ideals back! 

So the left desperately hopes for bigger government amidst a big crisis. It forgets that the Australian people last year rejected bigger government, wealth redistribution and higher taxes.

Thankfully PM Morrison has made it clear his government’s Budget in October will be oriented towards driving recovery through business, growth and real jobs founded in enterprise. An essential part of this budget exercise, as the Watercooler reported last week, should be running the ruler over every area of government expenditure and tackling waste, inefficiency and unproductive spending in all forms.

The MRC will continue putting its shoulder to the wheel in enterprise policy. Stay tuned for more from us in relation to energy, deregulation, industry policy, taxation and industrial relations. Indeed, Menzies’ great words in the Forgotten People speech “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield” could be the mantra for these challenging times.

 

 
COVID-19, Tim JamesFred Pawle