The era of unchallenged neoliberal dominance appears to be over, but it is too early to declare neoliberalism dead.

A book published last year — _Captured: How neoliberalism transformed the Australian state_, edited by Phillip Toner and Michael Rafferty — has gained new relevance following the 3 May Australian election.

This book continues efforts since the 1970s by academics — many associated with the Sydney-based Journal of Australian Political Economy — to forensically critique the rise of neoliberal policy practice in Australia. The latest volume adds numerous case studies to improve considerably the resources for researchers and policymakers to chart an alternative path.

For nearly 50 years in Australia, and to varying extents elsewhere, there has been a sweeping project to radically reorder class relations by reversing Keynesian social democratic policies. This has seen a wealthy few acquire much, but for most the results have been negative. The public service’s capacity to formulate policy has been hollowed out, lowering ethical standards and accountability.

Inequality has risen with widespread replacement of previously secure waged jobs by precarious casual, labour-hire, contracted-out and “gig” employment. There has been a sharp trend of de-unionisation and weakening of the awards system. Real wages have frequently stagnated, including for nearly all of the last decade. Oligopolies, with fewer firms controlling prices, have intensified. This has caused acute cost-of-living pressures. Many young people have been left with less opportunities than previous generations: priced out of housing and burdened by cumbersome long-term debt if they have undertaken higher education.

In the absence of a coherent alternative, large numbers of voters overseas have turned to authoritarian “populism”, as seen in the resurgence of Donald Trump.

Nevertheless, in Australia, neoliberalism is electorally unpopular and — due to democratic limits — the policies imposed have not been so harsh as to abandon the poor to starvation or private charity. Neoliberal ideologues since the 1970s have cut back the benevolent role of the state as much as they could, but have been restrained by public requirements for access to “basic” health, education and income security. Neoliberalism’s rise is itself now reversible through human agency and contestation.

This book’s editors and contributors see one possible way forward as to restore vital social democratic policies, though with much better promotion of gender equality, and care for the environment, than in previous eras.

In terms of gender equality, the case studies include examination of how, since the early 1990s, very profitable opportunities have expanded for private providers in the female-dominated care workforce, which have had the effect of reducing quality of care. The simultaneous introduction of enterprise-based wage bargaining has been detrimental for many women working in this lower-paid sector. Women remain twice as likely as men to be in part-time employment. The costs of privatised early childhood education and care often exceed the financial benefits for women to be in the paid workforce. Australia’s arrangements for paid parental leave still provide insufficient incentives for fathers to care for children. Provision of early childhood education and care has become particularly dominated by profiteers who gravitate to affluent areas – leaving the poorer and needier outer suburbs of the big cities, and remote areas, as childcare ‘deserts’. Understaffing and underinvestment are much more common in for-profit than not-for-profit centres.

In terms of environmental policy, there is an existential need to tackle the severe climate crisis. The sheer scale of investment required to “green” virtually all aspects of production and consumption will require commitment of large public resources. This is only achievable if the state resumes an industrial policy role, involving design and coordination, which it has been reluctant to do in the recent neoliberal era: to more comprehensively now upgrade energy grids and lift demand for local renewable industries.

The change of government to Labor in 2022 produced only modest changes. Stung by their defeat in the previous 2019 election, the government restricted its options by ruling out all revenue proposals it had put forward then. However, eventual modification of the Stage 3 tax cuts by the first-term Albanese Government, making these cuts much fairer for lower-income earners, was positive. The problem of Australia’s revenue shortfall must now be honestly confronted.

The government also reduced use of external consultants to help improve public service capacity in its first term and has pledged to do more of this in its second term. It legislated to allow new possibilities for multi-employer collective bargaining and to tackle other problems like: misuse of casual labour and outsourcing; exploitation in gig jobs; and wage theft. These are helpful shifts in industrial relations laws towards correcting the power imbalance which decades of neoliberalism have produced.

The government’s first term investments towards a Future Made in Australia, and its promises to, in its second term, provide $14 billion in production tax credits for green hydrogen, can be part of advancing industrial policies to tackle the crucial environmental crisis.

It should also reduce private oligopolies through tougher regulation; and add to its plans to reduce all higher education student debts by 20%.

The first-term Albanese Government extended paid parental leave somewhat, and took steps to increase gender equality such as by improving wages and conditions for low-paid early childhood education and care workers. Extra steps must now be urgently taken by the re-elected government, in order to realise its rhetoric to leave a signature policy legacy of universal early childhood education and care.

The era of unchallenged neoliberal dominance is over, but it is too early to declare neoliberalism dead. The priority for the editors of, and contributors to, this book now is for “multigeneration” efforts to further push back against the excessive influence of neoliberalism in Australia, which they have analysed very well.

To maximise success for those efforts, more highlighting is needed of the enduring successes of Scandinavian nations, where social democratic policies have declined far less than in other countries and where in some important instances — such as paid parental leave, including paternity leave — those policies have very substantially strengthened.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.