Cargo cult Australia

[Patrick Cook, reflecting on a previous resources boom in the late 1970s, the National Times. The gang of three are Malcolm Fraser, PM, John Howard, Treasurer & Doug Anthony, Minister of Trade & Resources]
Evan Jones

Letter to The Australian, 5 March 2006
With billions of dollars worth of yellowcake to be shipped to China and almost certainly to India in the coming years, the question that raises its ugly head every now and then is this: what does the future hold after we have dug the last hole and shipped the contents off-shore? Maybe we could start importing the world's garbage to fill the holes where our wealth used to be. Clever country? You would have to be joking.
G. Unwin Gold Coast, Qld

On 8 April 2002, visiting American business/finance writer Mark Gottlieb published an article in the Canberra Times headed ‘Our miracle economy may be a mirage’. Gottlieb was confronted with ‘an unbroken stream of optimistic comments about the state of Australia's economy’, but applied some lateral thinking to the test. Gottlieb had a quick look at how Australia stacked up against the Netherlands. Even by conventional macroeconomic criteria, the Netherlands beat Australia hands down – no mineral or natural resources; 83% of the population but 93% of Australia’s GDP (2000), giving GDP per capita at US$25,000 compared to US$20,500; an inwards foreign direct investment of US$52bn compared to US$7bn. But Gottlieb would not know that it is verboten in Australia to look to Continental Europe for ideas.

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Well might the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research hold a conference on the theme ‘Making the boom pay: securing the next generation of prosperity’. It is not a subject that the Howard Government has contemplated to date.

There is a tension between the Government’s optimism and the danger signals regarding the economy. The environment has crashed the party uninvited. But the Government remains mired in self-denial. It lost time with the appointment of Rio Tinto employee Robin Batterham as Chief Scientist. It thinks that the market will equilibrate water flows, and now that nuclear power will solve Australia’s emissions problems.

The incapacity to see clearly beneath the surface is not the fault of any one Party, but is bipartisan. It is deeply structured. It is helped significantly by the dependence on macroeconomic indicators of the nation’s economic health that chart aggregates. The estimated increase in Gross Domestic Product (at current prices) for the last financial year 2005-06 is about 7 ½ percent. Brilliant. How could one quibble with that?