As the comments thread for a recent post made clear, the most notable single representative of the Keating era elite consensus (free-market economic reform and aggressive social progressivism) has been Paul Kelly's Australian. Today's editorial plaintively asserts that "Howard must revive that reform feeling". It starts out with a standard bold generality "A secure economic future for Australia demands bold policy initiatives and a new wave of structural reforms that will help create wealth in which all Australians can share. " But all that's proposed is the dead duck of Telstra privatisation (a 'bold' proposal that's been floating around for 15 years or so) and tax-welfare reform along the lines of the Five Economists' plan that the government rejected three or four years ago.
For good or ill, the free-market reform agenda is essentially played out. The big action in the future will be in health and education, areas where there is no serious proposal for a fully market-oriented solution and where a range of partial market-oriented reforms have repeatedly failed to deliver the goods.
And while I think Howard's success in changing the terms of debate on social issues has been greatly overstated, it's clear that top-down elitism of the kind exemplified by Keating is, and will remain, on the nose with the Australian public with respect to both social and economic issues.
Posted by jquiggin at November 27, 2002 07:25 AM | TrackBack