Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
governmentlevel,theCommonwealthbegantodevolveresponsibilitytothestates,
and the states shifted many service provision responsibilities to local government –
the least resourced tier of government.
Australia’s industries are now some of the most globally engaged and efficient
in the world, but there are fewer people involved due to greater dependence on
technical and capital investment, often at the expense of the labour force. Farmers,
for example, use capital-intensive methods to maximise outputs; their farms are
bigger to take advantage of economies of scale, but they often employ fewer people.
The shift towards neoliberal principles in government policy boosted Australian
grossdomesticproductbuthadacatastrophic impact on many rural, regional and
remote communities as people left to access services in larger population centres
or were squeezed out by the scale of many of the businesses left behind. This
began a prolonged period of depopulation across all Australian rural, regional and
remote communities, with the exception of those either on, or very close to, the
coastline. By 2000, more than 80 per cent of the Australian population lived within
50 kilometres of the coast. 20
The Hawke and Keating Labor governments (1983–96) implemented comprehensive
neoliberal reforms, deregulated many sectors, including the finance
industry, and sold off government entities such as Telstra, Qantas and the
Commonwealth Bank to the private sector, all of which had immediate impacts
on services at the local level, with many withdrawn because the private sector
was not prepared to underwrite unviable businesses. Commonwealth and state
governments were keen to re-orient the economy to capture the perceived benefits
of an increasingly deregulated global marketplace. The Commonwealth government
initiated several different regional development programs, purportedly to
assist regional businesses and communities, but the emphasis was on economic
efficiency, competitiveness and entrepreneurialism. The expectation was that selfdirected
and largely self-funded regional development programs would drive
change. The commitment to laissez-faire (market-led) policies also led to the sale of
state government assets, the privatisation of public services and the devolution of
some public services to local governments. By selling off, contracting out or shifting
the responsibility to private consultants and local government for inefficient
publicly owned and operated assets and services, governments were able to reduce
overall levels of expenditure and emphasise the role of markets in achieving an
‘efficient’ allocation and provision of services. In effect, neoliberalism privileged
economic efficiency above social equity or, as Stilwell argued, ‘structural efficiency
first, redistribution later’. 21
Australia was in recession in the early 1990s, and ‘interest in regional
development policies … experienced somewhat of a resurgence’ due to two
20 Salt 2004.
21 Stilwell 1994, 61.
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