Opinion & Commentary
Questioning leaders after crisis
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced a change in the way the Federal Government operates.
For the sake of a free, just and prosperous Australia, we wish her well for her new office and the many challenges it entails.
We invite Prime Minister Gillard, as indeed we invite all her colleagues across the political spectrum and the public at large, to discuss with us what we believe are the central challenges facing us today.
The fundamental problem for governments around the world is finding a new balance between the state and the individual.
The century–long experiment with bigger and bigger governments has left the state bloated yet strangely ineffective.
Given the dysfunctional state of governments worldwide, it is time to go back to the core question: What are governments capable of doing and what should they be doing?
This timeless question has kept great thinkers busy for millennia.
As the global economic crisis has turned into a sovereign debt crisis, it is now more important than ever to ask what governments can and should do.
More often than not, it is as important to realise the limits of one’s capabilities as it is to know one’s abilities.
The Anglican General Confession, albeit in a different context, puts this nicely:
‘We have left undone those things which we ought to have done;
‘And we have done those things which we ought not to have done.’
The economic crisis would have been a good opportunity for similar confessions from our politicians.
A calm analysis of government’s role is missing; instead, the pendulum has been swinging erratically between fiscal activism and austerity.
The speed with which the debate has turned is indeed remarkable. Only a year ago, politicians and commentators around the world were informing us of the virtue of stimulus spending as if there was no tomorrow.
Now that tomorrow has come sooner than expected, it is the same people who are talking about the virtues of austerity to get public debt under control. Public debt, one should add, that was left behind by the previous stimulus spending binge.
Journalists know this phenomenon of group think by the term narrative.
It’s simple. First, a few commentators set the tone of the debate. And then the intellectuals, herd–like as they often are, show us why Friedrich A. Hayek once called them the second–hand dealers in ideas.
These feverish, short–lived debates clearly show how thin is the ice on which many of our opinion and policy makers stand.
Untouched by deep–rooted convictions, they change their views according to the public mood of the moment.
In such a climate, we need institutions that stand firm against fashionable fads. The Centre for Independent Studies is just such an institution.
At the CIS, we were critical of exhumed Keynesian policies when almost the whole world was latching on to it as the medicine for the world economy.
We were pointing out the dangers of fiscal irresponsibility when public intellectuals were relabeling profligacy as the new prudence.
We were speaking up for the market economy when the then prime minister was denouncing it as extreme capitalism.
The battle of ideas cannot be won once and for all. Narratives keep changing, public moods come and go.
Which makes it all the more important to keep our beliefs alive and continue to promote them, even if they do not please those who would rather shut us up.
