New thinking about the common good challenges decades of neoliberal policy and raises questions about inequality, public services and Australia’s federal system.

Some astute scholars associated with the University of Divinity are focusing on how the common good may be defended in what they discern to be Australia’s post-liberal era.

The core idea of the common good is that the resources of a society and its economy should be equitably, justly and compassionately focused on the wellbeing of the greatest possible number, not just on powerful elites. It is the very antithesis of the neoliberal ideology that has been comprehensively shaping and distorting public policy in Australia (and the world) since the 1980s.

Neoliberalism is contemptuous of ideas about cooperation, community and society, arguing that only competitive individuals are able to make an economy grow. Infecting all of the advanced economies, and many lesser economies around the world, scholars, political activists and even some politicians are waking up to the fact that the neoliberal project has been a complete and utter disaster.

Its most egregious consequence (one of many) has been the massive increase in socio-economic inequality right across the world. A tiny rich minority (less than 5 per cent of the global population) today own vastly more capital than the rest of the global population, especially the poorest half. The fake rationalism of neoliberalism masks this grim development. In documenting its invidious growth in meticulous detail, the economic historian Thomas Picketty has labelled it as “terrifying”.

In Australia any commitment to the common good has been swept aside by the flood of neoliberal propaganda and legislative action to deregulate and privatise the economy and to cut government down to size. The wellbeing of all – the common good – has been wantonly sacrificed to the greed of the few. Socio-economic inequality is growing at an alarming pace, placing severe strains on social cohesion and giving spurious legitimacy to mindless populist and racist voices in mainstream politics.

Enlivening thinking about the common good is essential, but two major roadblocks stand in the way for its advocacy in contemporary Australia.

First, neoliberal ideologies remain entrenched in the limited minds of the majority of our MPs, bureaucrats, and influencers in the media, and among the general public. It remains the dominant policy-making paradigm, uncontested or critically interrogated in any meaningful sense. It has become ingrained in the political culture of the nation, insinuating itself into every nook and cranny of the economy and society. Challenging it, or thinking outside the iron cage of neoliberalism, invites scorn and intellectual and political marginalisation.

Nonetheless, recently, there have been some attempts to legislate for the common good. As Minister for the NDIS from 2022 to 2025, Bill Shorten courageously championed a policy of inclusion and enablement that placed high value on the human rights of people who have been isolated and devalued for far too long.

Sadly, his work has been compromised by the ideological power of neoliberalism to outsource many of the essential services to private operators, not a few of whom have been corruptly amassing profits for themselves while cutting or mismanaging those services for very people who need them.

Exactly the same neoliberal fate has been undermining aged care sand childcare services. Isn’t it plainly obvious to all that private operators will always aim to be profitable in order to serve the interests of CEOs, senior managers and shareholders, not the common good? Neoliberal politics rules, and it’s definitely not ok.

The second roadblock to enlivening ideas about the common good in Australia is a constitutionally structural one: that is, the country’s shambolic federal system of government.

The nineteenth century founders of Australian federalism designed a constitution intended to maintain the superordinate role of state governments and the subordinate role of the commonwealth government. However, their “horse and buggy” constitution did not anticipate what would happen in the twentieth century and beyond: that is, the increasing centralisation of power in the federal government. This structural problem has never been adequately resolved. While they have lost considerable amounts of their powers to the federal government, the states remain regions of self-entitled provincialism, massive incompetence, and the worst examples of political and economic corruption across the country.

The carve-up of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) among the states is one glaring example. In the most recent carve-up, Western Australia continues to enjoy far a greater allocation of GST money than it should, solely because of political considerations: that is, federal political leaders who fear the loss of voter support, hence a loss of federal seats at election time. In the example of Western Australia, the blinkered provincialism of WA voters thus takes precedence over the common good of the whole nation.

Throughout the history of Australian federalism there have always been, and continue to be, examples of short-sighted sweetheart deals between state governments and the federal government in which state provincialism can be seen to override the common good. The very structuring of the states is the problem here. The boundaries defining what would become the states at federation were drawn up during colonial times, as the colonies were being pushed by Whitehall to become self-governing entities in the 1850s. Those boundaries were drawn on maps in London, with virtually no reference to the geographical, ecological, economic or cultural realities on the ground. They are about as irrational a set of boundaries imaginable, incubating anachronistic state-centric loyalties, blinkered localisms, and political leaders with their own petty axes to grind, all at a cost to the common good of all Australians.

So the astute scholars referred to at the head of this post are on to something very relevant to the wellbeing of all Australians. Unlike too many of their colleagues in universities across the nation, they are awake to the fake scientism (or positivism) of economic rationalism (neoliberalism). It is in fact a morality tale: that is, one that breeds cynicism, selfishness and which idealises grubby rent-seeking and vulgar profiteering. They are delving into moral philosophy, political theology, and possibly democratic socialist thinking to bring a new values approach to defining the common good. All strength to their collective arm.

Hopefully, their work may also lead to fresh ideas for reforming the Australian constitution, to invent a post-federal system of government for the country that faces up to the enormous challenges now facing it, both from within and from the new world disorder.