There Is No News*

The Rudd government’s planned Australia 2020 conference, where “the best and brightest minds from across the country [will] tackle the long term challenges confronting Australia’s future,” is misguided.

Although the Prime Minister’s acknowledgment that the Labor Party does not include “the best and brightest minds” deserves praise, the fact that the idea was developed or at least approved by the Labor government invites skepticism. Who, for example, chooses “the best and brightest minds”? Should it be done by logical argument? If so, you don’t need the direct participation of “the best and brightest,” for if you can accurately choose which is a logical argument, then you hardly need to contact their author; there are no copyright issues with policy proposals.

And going beyond the “three year electoral cycle” is all well and good, but what happens at election time when the Rudd government has abolished the Welfare State, the Department of Education, the Department of Health, etc? The best and brightest minds would advocate this, but it would surely mean Labor losing the next election, for one could not imagine the Liberal Party practising and praising classical liberal principles.

Political economy is quite a straightforward, simple and specialist discipline. It involves acknowledging that if you tax one group of people to give money to another, then one group benefits at the expense of another, and, consequently, the incentive for everyone (both tax-recipient and tax-payer) to satisfy customers rather than government diminishes. It also involves acknowledging that taxation is not voluntary, just like robbery is not voluntary. Allowing a bunch of pretentious academics to escape from university and practise political economy is like organising a robbery with genuine masterminds and long term planning behind it.

The best government is always made up of the less optimistic, who rightly believe that neither they nor anyone else are qualified to rule. But with a collection of self-proclaimed and government-sanctioned experts, one doubts whether the “experts” will not ask for a large scale confiscation of the property of civilians (through taxation) to fund their schemes. Chances are they are ignorant of economics, and will neither consider going through voluntary channels and approaching business with their ideas, nor try convincing the populace before they try convincing the government.