No power to the pundits?

There’s been a bit of talk over on LP about the demise or otherwise of neoliberalism, with a couple of side comments about the power or otherwise of conservative pundits like Bolt, Akerman, Devine et al. This is something I’ve been wondering about a bit lately. Last year, for example, I got Bolted (I first responded then when it became clear that he is in fact bonkers, walked away from the fight) and it had no after effects whatsoever. I subsequently did two months of solid media and public forums and not one person mentioned the piece, on air or off.

But still I waver between thinking they have no power and thinking that actually there is a complex dynamic at work here that gives them a large amount of indirect political power.

Whither neoliberalism? And the progressive future

Today I was supposed to be in Sydney to talk about ‘What next after neoliberalism – creating a progressive future’ to the Crunch Time conference organised by the Centre for Policy Development and other progressive organisations such as the Australia Institute. The session was a panel discussion with David McKnight and Sarah Hanson Young, But I came down with a bug earlier in the week and for the first time ever I simply wasn’t well enough to fly. Anyway, I’d prepared a few notes and here’s what I was going to say.

In perhaps typical academic style one might begin by questioning the topic. I’m not so sure that we are ‘after’ neoliberalism. Yes, there’s been lots of talk about government regaining the ascendency over markets, with ‘nation-building’ projects having been announced and ‘stimulus packages’ that seemingly fly in the face of ‘hands-off’ market approaches to governance, but various forms of free-market thinking that owe much to neoliberalism remain embedded in just about all our civic and private institutions.

Been reading the Australian?

If so, you might have been relieved to discover, last Saturday, that the Antarctic ice sheet is growing not receding, and that the scientist Ian Plimer has comprehensively demolished the ‘religion’ of climate change. You can find this rubbish debunked here.