Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Government–business relations
business studies at the micro level. Understanding the levels of analysis can be
useful in researching different aspects of government–business relations, broadening
the potential field of academic literature that can be drawn upon for research
and in formulating theories at the grand (highly abstract), middle-range (typically
the result of a research project) and narrow-range (used to guide practice) levels. 14
Government–business interactions
A number of scholarly disciplines have contributed to our understanding of how
governments and businesses interact. For example, Jacoby 15 listed a variety of
ways that government–business interactions occur in practice. Governments may
attempt to stabilise the economic environment for businesses; subsidise some
industries; promote business abroad; finance small and minority firms; purchase
military hardware and other products from businesses; enter into joint or mixed
ventures with businesses; tax businesses and make businesses tax collectors (such
as the current arrangements for the Goods and Services Tax); regulate particular
functions of businesses; engage in joint management of public utilities (such as
ActewAGL); and sell postal services, power, government publications, police and
fire protection, and many other commodities and services. Businesses, on the other
hand, may consult with government informally or individually, or formally and
collectively, through lobby groups such as the Business Council of Australia or
through specialist lobbying firms; support political candidates financially or in
other ways; or publicly criticise governments in an effort to influence the policy
agenda (such as the Minerals Council of Australia’s campaigns against the Rudd
government’s mining super-profits tax and the Gillard government’s carbon pricing
scheme). Businesses may also launch campaigns against government policies
through advertising and other forms of public appeal. Increasingly, businesses
and executives lobby governments and make public appeals on issues that do not
necessarily relate to the financial interests of their industries, such as when Qantas
chief executive Alan Joyce spoke out in support of the ‘yes’ vote in the recent
plebiscite on same-sex marriage in Australia.
There is a ‘rich tradition’ of the study of government–business relations at the
national level in Australia. 16 Although state involvement in the market was the
dominant paradigm for much of Australia’s early history, the impact of government
intervention on the economy was not without its critics. 17 Coinciding with the rise
of ‘neoliberalism’ and the New Right in the 1980s, Australia adopted an approach
to managing the economy known locally as economic rationalism. 18 The traditional
14 Merton 1968.
15 Jacoby 1975, 5–6.
16 Bell and Head 1992; Bell and Wanna 1992; Wanna 2003, 420.
17 Eggleston 1932; Hancock 1930; Kelly 1992; Smith 2006 [1887].
18 Pusey 1991.
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