Albo goes father back in time
If you follow Anthony Albanese on Twitter, which I masochistically do, you will know he grew up an only child in a single-parent household with his mother on welfare.
It’s tragic story that stoically can only be drawn out him once or twice a day.
On the "Meet Anthony" and "Anthony's Story" sections of his website it's more a case of first meet his mum and hear her story.
As a boy, Albanese he never knew his father, who his mother said had died in a car crash.
Dad remained stubbornly dead until Albanese was about 14, when his mother let him know his father was a safer driver than previously reported.
Albanese’s impoverished mother met the man who would give her a son while on a cruise ship to take a European vacation.
He was still very much alive until 2014 and living in Italy, where Albanese Jr eventually met him and discovered two half-siblings.
Another thing you learn following Albanese on Twitter is that he wants pretty well everything – from toothpicks to a Large Hadron Collider - made in Australia.
He set out his ideas, which he called “feathering your own nest” but others night label as autarky or the economic philosophy of luminaries such as Kim Jong-un, in the union super-funded New Daily.
He asserts that Australians “go out of their way” to support local businesses.
You’d have to wonder how local the businesses are if people need to go out of their way.
Also, what exactly are the “non-Australian-owned” shops that people inconveniently detour past?
Chain stores such as 7/11s? Aldis? McDonald’s? Apple Stores?
These brands still employ Aussies and in many cases are Australian-owned franchises.
Anyway, Albanese’s plan to promote local businesses is, naturally, based around government spending. A lot of government spending.
He has a 10-point Buy Australia plan.
The 10 points are listed here and are mostly broad aspirations, so more a wishlist than a plan.
Getting best "value for money” is not on that list, apparently Labor thinks there is no point in that.
Allegedly Albanese has an economics decree but he seems to have, deliberately or otherwise, forgotten everything he would have been taught.
Jobs do not exist for the sake of employing people, they exist to provide necessary and desirable goods and services.
OK, it is true often jobs do exist only to employ people but that means those people aren’t creating something of sufficient value to anybody else.
Every “make-work” job takes away from a nation’s potential to create a surplus of value, otherwise known as wealth.
The best way to increase value without even needing to “make” more or different things is to trade.
Trade is based on the proposition that each party has something that will be of more value to the other.
Australia extracts more valuable minerals and fuel than we need, so we sell that to countries who can’t do that.
In return we buy manufactured goods from places that have larger urbanized populations and lower wages, which means that place gets richer and all-round wages tend to be pushed up.
Both parties win – it’s called Comparative Advantage and is a key reason why the world has grown richer whenever trade between nations increases.
For no explained reason, one thing in particular Albanese wants Australia to make is public transport vessels.
The ALP website says this: “We’ve seen what happens when governments buy trains, trams, and ferries from overseas on the cheap. They don’t fit the tracks, they don’t fit under bridges, and they’re not fit for purpose.”
When and where exactly have ferries “not fit under bridges”? Or even trains or trams not fit tracks?
If a government can’t even measure a ferry, train and tram correctly when buying them there is little reason to think they will be competent enough to make them.
Even if they get it wrong or can’t find the right gauge, refitting trams or trains to fit on tracks would still seem more efficient than making the whole thing.
The phrase “on the cheap” smacks of xenophobia or as left-types like to call it “dog-whistling”.
The most likely place these things are being made “on the cheap” is China.
Is Labor suggesting Chinese-made things are inferior? They should at least be up front with this accusation.
This type of economic nationalism, or populism if you prefer, is normally what you would associate with Donald Trump, Pauline Hanson or Clive Palmer.
If “on the cheap” refers to slave labour than that is a valid argument but it didn’t seem to stop Victorian Labor from buying trams with serious accusations hanging over them.
Albanese’s all-Australian made future is to be ushered in by the “Future Made in Australia” office.
Anyone trying to make sense or even coherently say that title is in for some future headaches.
This office, obviously by means of lavish spending showered upon union-approved or even owned activities, will “build the capacity of local industry in areas including textile, clothing and footwear; digital, innovation and start-ups; paper, pulp and fibre and renewables component manufacture”.
Building a capacity does not mean that capacity is wanted or needed.
Knowing where the growing needs and opportunities are is something bureaucrats are not renowned for.
That’s why industry plans are renowned for picking “losers”.
The striking thing about Albanese’s future “vision” is how backwards looking it is.
Under Hawke and Keating Labor, mostly with the support of the Liberals, modernised Australia's economy.
This was done by dismantling the "Australian Settlement”, a cozy arrangement between government, manufacturers and unions that protected inefficient Australian industry behind high tariff walls.
The other part of that deal was restricting immigration, in particular Asian migration, to prevent job competition by those willing to work for less and so preserve the white working man’s paradise.
While obviously Albanese cannot call for a return to Labor’s foundational platform of “White Australia” he is quietly opposing increasing immigration, which won't please George Megalogenis.
Albanese’s policy mix harks back socially to an older version of Australia.
One where a family provider left home at 8am to clock on by 9 at the factory. plant or building site, clock off at 5 to be home by 6pm.
It was the industrial-era of model of employment that anchored the 1950s nuclear family around a working dad.
In other words the sort of safe, comforting and secure household Albanese never enjoyed.
That vision of Australia is antiquated.
Time was simply up for “Settlement Australia", where what had been steady, stable and secure had become sclerotic, unable to cope with OPEC oil shocks and the faster pace of globalising world centred more on Asia.
Labor’s economic reforms, fostered by the Howard government. powered Australia through an unprecedented golden era of growth, even as other regional economies stalled and spluttered.
Indeed Australia played a largely unsung role in getting "Asian Tigers" roaring again.
The old Australia that Albanese seems to yearn for is gone, but unlike what he believed about his dad, it is gone for good.
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