If you’d been wondering what Anthony Albanese had in mind for a second term in power, he whipped off the tarpaulin on Thursday and gave us a first look.
His “Future Made in Australia” plan is also a mainstay of his future political program – a large-scale series of subsidies and incentives for investment in green energy and manufacturing.
Thanks to Utopia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has had to avoid any reference to “nation building”.Credit: ABC
He didn’t declare a new era of “nation building”. The satirists of Utopia have made that phrase forever unspeakable for serious occasions and national pep talks. But it’s nation building by another name: “Aim high, be bold and build big,” pitched the prime minister. He pointed out that the US, EU, Japan, South Korea and Canada have fired up major new government programs with trillions of dollars to subsidise key industries.
“The game has changed,” he said in his Brisbane speech. “All these countries are investing in their industrial base, their manufacturing capability and their economic sovereignty. This is not old-fashioned protectionism or isolationism – it is the new competition.” And: “We need sharper elbows when it comes to marking out our national interest. And we need to be willing to break with old orthodoxies and pull new levers to advance the national interest.”
The prime minister didn’t pronounce dead the “invisible hand” of market forces, but he made clear that the helping hand of Anthony Albanese would be the one pulling the levers, and sharp elbows will fly: “Securing jobs, attracting investment and building prosperity has never been a polite and gentle process where every nation gets a turn – it’s always a contest, it’s always a race … Australia is in this race, no matter what.”
Albanese’s speech was conceptual, not concrete. He was claiming an ideological licence to overrule 40 years of Australian commitment to free markets. And establishing a policy imperative, a “new competition” between nations for investment.
His speech contained no specifics on the scale or design or scheduling of his plan. The most specific offering was the slogan – the government would bring a bill to the parliament mid-year with the title “Future Made in Australia”, he said.
But this automatically means that the Coalition will need to decide whether to vote for or against it. Albanese will dare Peter Dutton to block it with the next federal election due by May next year.
The PM has a grand plan for your future. Will it be a Utopia?
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12.04.2024
If you’d been wondering what Anthony Albanese had in mind for a second term in power, he whipped off the tarpaulin on Thursday and gave us a first look.
His “Future Made in Australia” plan is also a mainstay of his future political program – a large-scale series of subsidies and incentives for investment in green energy and manufacturing.
Thanks to Utopia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has had to avoid any reference to “nation building”.Credit: ABC
He didn’t declare a new era of “nation building”. The satirists of Utopia have made that phrase forever unspeakable for serious........
© The Sydney Morning Herald
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