Wrong Way: How Privatisation & Economic Reform Backfired
by Damien Cahill (Author), Phillip Toner (Author)

About the author
Damien Cahill is an associate professor in political economy at the University of Sydney. His research examines the theory and practice of neoliberalism as well as the institutional foundations of capitalist economies. He has published widely on neoliberalism, including the books The End of Laissez-Faire? On the Durability of Embedded Neoliberalism and Neoliberalism (with Martijn Konings).
Phillip Toner is an honorary senior research fellow in the department of political economy at the University of Sydney. His research includes industrial structure analysis and industry policy, the economics of technical change and international vocational skills formation systems, and he has conducted projects on these topics for the OECD, the EU, the World Bank, Industry Canada, the South African Human Sciences Research Council, APEC, the Australian Research Council, the Department of Innovation, Science and Research and the National Centre for Vocational Education Research among others. Phillip is the author of Main Currents in Cumulative Causation: The Dynamics of Growth and Development. Previously he worked in economic and labour market analysis including for federal Treasury.

About this book
Wrong Way explains the unreasonable persistence of neoliberalism in Australia and other advanced economies as the effect of powerful intellectual ideas, the economic interests served by these ideas, and the institutions formed to implement neoliberal public policy. Despite long-standing reservations and apparently self-defeating outcomes, neoliberalism has remained ascendant through the mutual reinforcement of these three elements.
All chapters in this book conclude either with guidance to reform ‘economic reform’ in specific industries subject to privatisation or contracting out, or by suggesting new approaches to economic policy. While the scope of this book is certainly comprehensive. Potential topics for further investigation include, for example: privatisation of airports and ports; the abandoning of industry policy; failure in the LNG gas market; the private superannuation industry; PPP’s for infrastructure delivery; water pricing and regulation of the Murray-Darling Basin and delegating certification of new building work to private for-profit firms. Nonetheless, the chapters collected here are an attempt to bring evidence to bear on what has often been a highly divided policy discussion. Wrong Way is driven by the need to seize the opportunity presented by the evident failure of the neoliberal agenda and the growing opposition to it and to carve out a new meaning for ‘economic reform’.

Brief contents
Introduction: Situating Privatisation and Economic Reform
Part One: The Contract State
1 The ‘Radical Marketisation’ of Early Childhood Education and Care in Australia
2 Coercing, Subsidising and Encouraging: Two Decades of Support for Private Health Insurance
3 A Tale of Mandarins and Lemons: Creating the Market for Vocational Education and Training
4 The Real Cost of Prison Reform: The Case of Privatisation in Victoria
5 The Marketisation of Aged Care in Australia
6 The Loss of Public Sector Engineering Competence
7 Markets, Mutual Obligation and Marginalisation: The Evolution of Employment Services in Australia
Part Two: Privatisation and Deregulation
8 Electricity Reform
9 Fair Go No More: Neoliberalism and Australian Labour Market Policy
10 Financial Deregulation Exposes Banking’s Antisocial Character
11 Housing in Australia: The Game of Homes
12 The NBN and ‘the Market’: Faith or Blind Faith?
13 Universities: A Paradox of Privatisation
Part Three: Macro-Economic Dimensions
14 Monetary Policy and Unemployment
15 The Lost Golden Age of Productivity Growth?
16 How Orthodox Economic Models Justify Deregulation, Inequality and Unemployment
17 The Real Costs of ‘Free’ Trade Agreements and the Need for Alternative Trade Policies
18 Foreign Investment
19 Inequality and Neoliberal Economic ‘Reforms’ in Australia

Length: 386 pages
Publisher: La Trobe University Press (September 10, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9781760640385
ISBN-13: 978-1760640385