In a raw and unusually personal episode, Steve Davis admits something has broken in his connection to SA’s government and sits down with former geopolitics lecturer David Olney to make sense of the spin, the Park Lands, the politics of distraction, and whether there’s still a strand worth holding onto.
This is not a typical Adelaide Show episode. For the first time in 434 instalments, Steve Davis opens by confessing he’s not sure how many more episodes there will be because something has broken in him. Not in South Australia’s people, whom he loves unreservedly, but in his trust of the state’s governance. What follows is one of the most honest conversations the show has ever hosted.
There is no SA Drink of the Week this episode. The mood didn’t call for it.
In the Musical Pilgrimage, Steve closes with Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virtuosos, a song whose thesis turns out to be the quiet heart of everything discussed: that we’ve retreated into our selfish dwellings, stopped sticking our arms over the fence to say hello, and in doing so have left ourselves vulnerable to exactly the kind of politics this episode is about.
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Running Sheet: Something Has Broken: SA Politics, the Park Lands, and the Politics of Distraction
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:00:00 SA Drink Of The Week
There is no SA Drink Of The Week this week.
00:03:15 David Olney and Steve Davis
Steve opens by describing where he is: not disconnected from South Australia’s people, but from its governance. He says he is earnestly worried, and that there is no performative aspect to the episode. To stress-test his thinking and provide context, he has invited back David Olney, whose academic background covers history, international politics, international security, and complex problem-solving. David notes that colleagues once told him he thought more like a psychologist or neurologist than a political scientist, always searching for the human motivation beneath structural problems.
David introduces the work of political theorist Ted Robert Gurr, who studied the conditions preceding revolution across different periods of history. Gurr found two sequential thresholds: first, when people stop believing things will get better; and second, when they become convinced things are actively getting worse. Steve places himself at Gurr’s second threshold, citing the government’s handling of the algal bloom, a secret tower deal at peppercorn rent, tree clearing in the Park Lands for a golf event, and the prospect of further clearing for a motorcycle race. His concern is not with the events or sports themselves but with the irreversible damage to trees that Tourism SA uses to represent Adelaide.
Two further things have deepened Steve’s despair. The first is what he reads as a coordinated flood of upbeat ministerial social media videos that do not address the Park Lands issue at all. He sees it as a tactic borrowed from Trump’s playbook. The second is the government’s launch of a media literacy tool to help students decode messaging, at the same time as the government itself, in Steve’s view, avoids transparency, attacks critics personally rather than engaging with their arguments, and operates through private deals. David draws on Rebecca Costa’s book The Watchman’s Rattle to frame this: Costa observed that as civilisations struggle to deal with significant problems, political attention shifts to small and peripheral ones. David’s illustration from literature is the war in Gulliver’s Travels fought over which end of a boiled egg to crack.
Steve recommends the book Angertainment by Ed Koper as a guide to recognising this pattern. He uses Koper’s framing to contrast two dystopian visions: Orwell’s 1984, where repression at least provokes resistance, and Huxley’s Brave New World, where a population entertained into passivity never finds cause to push back. David agrees that Huxley’s version is the more troubling of the two.
David then explains neoliberalism at Steve’s request: the economic model adopted across the English-speaking world in the early 1980s under Thatcher, Reagan, and Hawke, which replaced mixed economies with market-driven ones. David argues that the mixed economy model of the postwar decades, while imperfect, delivered stable living standards and could absorb shocks. What replaced it produced private monopolies, underinvestment in infrastructure and services, and a political landscape where both major parties operate within the same economic framework. His summary: in Australia, both parties wear one jackboot and one fluffy slipper. David connects this to the growth of parties like One Nation and Britain’s Reform Party, arguing that voters who have seen no meaningful improvement from either major party are reaching for alternatives, not out of ideological conversion but out of exhaustion.
Steve raises a related concern: that the same billionaire interests bankrolling One Nation-type parties have no real incentive to disrupt neoliberalism, which raises questions about where that political energy actually leads.
Toward the end of the episode, Steve reads from a reply he has just received from his federal member, written in response to a handwritten letter he sent six weeks earlier about a gas tax. The reply is considered and personal, acknowledging hundreds of individual constituent responses and explaining the member’s position. Steve describes it as a strand still holding, though he is careful not to place too much weight on it. David names two economists whose recent books offer some grounds for thinking a better model is possible: Mariana Mazzucato and Daron Acemoglu.
Steve closes by naming David Pocock as an example of what a politician in this era can be, and David adds Barbara Pocock to that list. The episode ends with a brief exchange about what Don Dunstan and Malcolm Fraser might have made of where their respective parties have ended up.
The following resources were mentioned during the episode.
Books
Angertainment by Ed Koper
The Watchman’s Rattle by Rebecca Costa
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1984 by George Orwell
Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
The Common Good Economy by Mariana Mazzucato
Podcasts
The Rest is Politics with Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart
The Rest is Politics US featuring Anthony Scaramucci
00:42:34 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimage this week we listen to Australia Day by Steve Davis & The Virutalosos.
Steve introduces Australia Day as a song exploring how Australia lost the social conditions that made postwar migrant integration work. The central argument is that Italians, Greeks, and Vietnamese newcomers were absorbed into communities partly because people had time and proximity, sticking their arms over fences and saying hello. McMansions, mobile phones, and an economic model built on scarcity and anxiety have eroded that. David adds that prime ministers who romanticised the 1950s as a human ideal were simultaneously promoting the economic model that made those conditions impossible to replicate. Steve writes the songs and uses a virtual session band to produce them, with the hope that a live musician will one day take them further.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no video this week.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
434 TAS MIX.output
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Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Welcome to episode 434 of The Adelaide Show podcast. A little bit different this time. I don’t think it’s gonna be anywhere near as long as our episodes normally are, and it’s because I actually am not sure how many more episodes of The Adelaide Show will happen. I need to take a break, and the reason I need to take a break is that something has broken in me, and it’s my sense of connection to and trust in our government, and therefore, I fear not long beyond that, the various institutions that have enabled this wonderful city and state of Adelaide and South Australia to be the place that I truly love and have, you know, spent…
Well, this is the 434th time of [00:01:00] showcasing just the wonderful thoughts, the passion that we have here. Uh, we’re going to unpack this in just a moment, and I hate to say this. It’s just… Oh, let’s unpack it un- after, uh, we get underway formally. It’s a very sad day. It might be the last ever episode. I’m kind of hoping I can take a pause, a break, and find a different way to feel connected to South Australia again.
I certainly feel connected to the people around me. I truly lament what our government is doing, the way it’s governing, and the consequences that are in the wings and not far off. But I’m not going to, uh, unfurl my thoughts alone. I’ve asked a special guest to return to The Adelaide Show, which he’ll do in just a moment, to help make sense of this current state of play.[00:02:00] [00:03:00]
Well, after that opening, let’s try and make sense of what I’ve said, and I just want to share with you, dear listener, many of you have been with us almost from the beginning of 2013. Some have been, uh, since the beginning of 2013, and I, I just want to share openly and honestly where I am. And to do that, to make sure that I’ve got some context and to push back on my thinking where appropriate, I’ve asked David Olney to return to the Adelaide Show.
David, welcome back.
David Olney: Thank you for inviting me, Steve.
Steve Davis: David, of course, uh, you used to lecture in the realm of geopolitics, uh, complex problem-solving, all these sorts of things, so you’ve, you, you’re used to [00:04:00] looking at the world through different lenses. How would you define your skill set here?
David Olney: I suppose I’ve got a combination of things here that, you know, I studied a lot of history as an undergraduate and studied complex problem-solving and taught complex problem-solving and taught, you know, international politics and international security.
But really, I think what made me different to a lot of people I worked with in a politics department was the psychologists I knew said, “You think a lot more like a psychologist or a neurologist.” You’re always looking for what is the underpinning human aspect of these bigger problems and issues. And I think in some ways that’s why when I left academia, I was happy to leave because there seemed to be less space for me to be interdisciplinary and to be looking for what is the human motivation for the strange state of the world.
And the world was [00:05:00] strange when I finished teaching in 2020, and it’s even stranger.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm.
David Olney: And for me, if you don’t try and understand how strange it’s become at a human level, then the strangeness becomes too big and too awful to get your head around.
Steve Davis: So that’s what I want, want to do today. I just want to get the human understanding of where we’re at.
It may well be that we, I might need to come back for some occasional episodes to share further thinking on this, because I doubt I’m alone in this, and I think the, the, um… What’s despair? I– You know me. I’m typically an optimistic person. I do tend more often than not to give the benefit of the doubt.
David Olney: Mm-hmm.
Steve Davis: And I have always had a soft spot for, uh, the underdog, and many Aussies do, by the way. Many Aussies do. I just want, as best as we [00:06:00] can, a fair go for everyone, and to trust that those who are in roles within our institutions, courts, schools, uh, media, et cetera, uh, police, emergency services- Are there for the right reason, and they’re actually all s- pulling towards the common good as much as possible.
A bit naive in parts ’cause humans are humans, but I think overall-
David Olney: No, not, uh, naive’s the wrong word.
Steve Davis: Okay.
David Olney: You, what you’re talking about is hanging onto your ideals and trying to work towards them, and Australians have a tendency to go, “Oh, you know, I’m being naive.” No, no, no. What you’re being is someone who’s trying to make the world move towards a more ideal place.
We shouldn’t ever apologize for that.
Steve Davis: Mm. Mm. And it is an ideal worth striving for.
David Olney: Precisely, and I think I can automatically jump in here with the despair idea-
Steve Davis: Yeah …
David Olney: and give you something from political theory that might help you start unpacking what you’re [00:07:00] thinking about.
Steve Davis: Okay.
David Olney: So a very famous thinker called Ted Robert Gurr, who looked at lots of periods in history of when does a period of history lead to some sort of rupture or revolution versus when doesn’t it?
And he found before any revolution, two human level conditions are always reached First thing is humans stop believing it will get better. And when a majority of humans stop believing it’s getting better-
Steve Davis: Yep …
David Olney: then you know you should start paying attention and working out what’s going wrong for your people.
His second condition is when people believe not only is it not going to get better, but when they genuinely believe, no, not only is it not gonna get better, it’s actually going to get worse. Once people are convinced it can’t get better and the most likely trajectory is it’s gonna [00:08:00] get worse, that’s when systems rupture and people change, you know, change political models, economic models, systems radically.
Steve Davis: That’s really interesting. That’s a great overlay because I think the whole algal bloom, the way this government react to, well, didn’t really react, um, seems to have watched and deflected what’s happening with that, got me to the first point-
David Olney: Mm …
Steve Davis: where I, I can’t see it getting better. Not the algal bloom, but the, the way- The way our
David Olney: system works
Steve Davis: Yes.
David Olney: Yeah.
Steve Davis: But in the wake of secret deals for this stupidly huge tower, uh, that at, at peppercorn rent for a money-making organization, and then the deal for the, the golf with ripping out trees from our parklands, one of the few things that does make Adelaide unique and does [00:09:00] have a, a benefit for all. Uh, and now, furthermore, to rip even more out for a motorcycle race, um, I’ve tipped, I, I actually think it’s getting worse.
I have tipped over to that point where I think it’s getting worse. And the reason that I think we have this haze of, um- Cynicism over the state of politics is that we have a very well-oiled l- uh, government machine that has taken the whole spin doctor discipline to the absolute zenith that it’s ever risen to, where everything is squeaky oily, uh, squeaky clean, it’s oily, things bounce off it.
Media does not seem to have the [00:10:00] gumption to stick and be abrasive because they’ll just be locked out. And then apart from that, and, and there are two things that really… I’ll, I’ll pause after this for your feedback, two things that have really made me despair what is happening. First, I get the sense, if my Facebook feed is anything to go by, that there’s been an order to all government ministers and MPs to flood the zone.
I have never seen a constant barrage of little, um, lovey-dovey, powy-wowy videos coming from ministers and MPs like I’ve seen in the last few weeks. It has been a tirade of them. And do they address one of the key issues that is galvanizing many people of the rape of our parklands, as Samuel Harris [00:11:00] rightfully calls it?
Um, no, they don’t. That’s not even addressed. That’s one thing, David, the flooding the zone, ’cause what that makes me worry about is that seems very much like something that Trump does. And the second thing is the government just unveiled win- which I think is peak cynicism, a tool to help students understand the media and decode the messaging in the media, while it itself is running roughshod over communication with its publics, doing things in, in private, not coming forth with the truth, and basically, uh, attacking the person, not the policy, when anyone tries to criticize them.
And that, David, is what has completely left me severed from feeling connected to, um, the [00:12:00] governance level of South Australia.
David Olney: And I think you’ve tapped into a really important thing there. You’ve been a media and journalism person for so much of your life, that it’s central to you that you put out messages that either inform or entertain Everything you do and have done as a journalist and a media person have had a positive valence.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: And that’s a critical thing. And whether it was on, you know, a micro or a macro scale, your aim was to be positive. What we’re seeing at the moment is media a smokescreen.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: Media is we aren’t doing anything real. Would be in about 2010, if I remember correctly, a very bright lady called Rebecca Costa wrote a book called The Watchman’s Rattle And it was talking about the fact that in ancient civilization, w- [00:13:00] you know, civilizations, people walked around the streets at night to make sure there wasn’t a fire, make sure there wasn’t crime.
Wow. And because you didn’t have loudspeakers, they walked around with really loud rattles. And literally, if they saw something terrible, they would shake their rattles and start screaming, “Citizens, citizens, wake up.” And the point she observed is that as civilizations get to the point where they either don’t know how or don’t want to deal with big, important things, they talk more and more about small, pointless things, and they focus on the little things and turn them into things to be excited about, to be angry about, to go to war about, to apparently make the difference between left and right, you know, economically responsible, economically irresponsible.
Doesn’t really matter what your dichotomy is.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: But you talk about things just to argue. [00:14:00] So the classic example in slightly, you know, more modern literature than Rebecca Costa is talking about is in Gulliver’s Travels, where the two little people in the book-
Steve Davis: Yes …
David Olney: have a massive war over which way up you eat a boiled egg.
Steve Davis: Oh, wow.
David Olney: It’s, “We aren’t going to deal with anything real, but we will go to war over how we eat a boiled egg.” So i- in reality, multiple authors and thinkers have picked up on this idea that when the political elite either don’t know how to or don’t want to deal with the critical issues of the day, in order to look like they’re doing something so that we don’t automatically boot their asses out the door, they start waffling about little things and pretending that little things are big things.
Steve Davis: The master of this, of course, is Trump.
David Olney: Trump is just a, a human without morality or conscience taking the [00:15:00] tools he was given. And we’ve gotta remember, in 2016, Mark Zuckerberg offered Hillary Clinton and Trump a complete team at Facebook to help them with their campaigns. Zuckerberg was completely upfront.
You know, “Facebook, social media is gonna change politics, and I wanna find out how much it can change politics. And to learn all this, I will provide both of you with a full team to help you with your campaigns.” Trump said yes. Hillary said no. It’s one of the dumbest decisions she ever made
Steve Davis: There is so much to unpack here in, in…
And I ju- I just want to put a footnote in. Uh, golf tournaments, even though I find them personally boring, I have no great antipathy towards them, uh, and nor motorcycle races or events in the Parklands. It’s the irreparable damage when you take trees that have been there for [00:16:00] a long time and are part of what Tourism SA uses as part of the imagery to attract people to come here.
David Olney: Well, let’s take it from the Rebecca Costa perspective. Okay. To, like, what’s got better at your daughter’s schools in the last 10 years? Anything?
Steve Davis: Not really
David Olney: What’s got better in healthcare in the last 10 years?
Steve Davis: Um, oh, uh, they can do the Medicare rebate payment automatically for you now.
David Olney: Okay. So the technology provided to the service works better. The service doesn’t work better. How long does it take to see a GP? How much does it cost to see a specialist?
Um, what are the roads like between here and the places you go every day? Better, worse?
Steve Davis: Lumpy, bumpy. Uh, every now and then there’s one road that’s improved.
David Olney: So in reality, the reason why something like the motorcycle track and the golf course affecting the trees in the park, why it [00:17:00] causes the boil over, the bubble over in people, is because they’re already at the edge of, what are we doing?
Mm. Like from Ted Robert Gurr’s perspective, we’re already at the it’s not going to get better point, but we still wanna believe it isn’t gonna get worse. Mm. And then we see them do things like this as the way to spend money and time and shape the media instead of make health, education, safe transport genuine priorities.
So it’s things like this happen to, well, have the impact they have because we are already at the edge of overflow on our frustration. Why isn’t it getting better? We’re meant to have all this technology. We’re meant to be clever. We’re meant to be able to learn from other countries, other situations, and what are we doing with it?
We’re taking essentially someone like Alastair Campbell’s brilliant spin from Blair era in England, combining it with what [00:18:00] Trump learnt by having a Facebook team, and using it to promote strange things that should be peripheral because we’re not dealing with big things that are central.
Steve Davis: Well, uh, uh, case in point, at the, the day we’re recording this, um, Matt Abraham was on with the Five Double A breakfast team.
Um, I don’t actually necessarily listen, but I saw it come through on the, they shared the snippet. And the, the topic of discussion is when will our premier tip his hat into the federal ring and go federal? And so they had the usual, you know, Matt Abraham boisterous. I mean, he, when it was Matt and Dave, it was the same thing.
Uh, the boys were getting into it as well. “Oh, yeah, I reckon all he has to do, I reckon one more big infrastructure thing will probably be the icing on the cake, and then in the next term he’ll be able to move,” et cetera. It really is, David… I, I don’t care about the reality of whether he will or not. It’s the fact that [00:19:00] the people supposedly in the role who are our watchdogs keeping the bastards honest from the media perspective have become even more a Punch and Judy show, uh, distracted by sideshows.
I don’t give a flying fig what he does.
David Olney: They’ve bought into the nothingness-
Steve Davis: Yes …
David Olney: as well. So when the media stops asking the big questions the, in a sense the politicians get away with not dealing with the big issues
Steve Davis: The other point, and, uh, if you haven’t listened or read this yet, this book called Angertainment by Ed Koper.
I know it’s next on your reading list, David. And dear listener, if you’re still with us, please have a listen to it because once you’ve either listened to or read this book, you will not see any of these shenanigans, that was a nice way of saying it, the government’s doing without them being stripped [00:20:00] bare like the emperor’s new clothes.
You see it as plain as day. Anyway, he relates, he makes an observation that for a long time, people feared the story of, I think it was, um, 1984. Mm. George Orwell. George Orwell. You got Big Brother, and we’re all in submission, and that was the dystopian vision that we all had to fear. But the other book, which k- tends to be considered a, a peer of that book, is Brave New World, Aldous Huxley.
His fear of dystopia was that we would amuse ourselves to death, which is a book that you and I have read together recently as well. That in fact, the worst thing that could happen to all of us is this 100% injection of cat videos and silly TikTok memes- Mm … and all this rubbish so that people can, when they’re wasting their [00:21:00] lives in these little screens doing absolute nothingness, can get a buzz and get a dopamine hit.
And that, in that environment, there is no control on a premier who wants to build a fortress and, you know, have large mark, um, uh, edifices and achievements in his name, dressed up loosely in the, the rags of economic benefit. But all the while, keeping the bread and circuses part of society occupied, um, shooting the messengers who are complaining about the trees, and being able to not have any scrutiny over the bread and butter stuff- Mm
that needs to be dealt with. Yeah. What am I missing?
David Olney: Oh, you’re not missing anything. Really, Huxley’s novel is the more frightening.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: Because you read Brave New World and y- you go sort of, you know, Bernard, the central character, [00:22:00] who, you know, Bernard has a brain that hasn’t been dumbed down. Bernard is one of the smart people who gets to live the better life, who gets to do more interesting things, who gets to have nicer holidays.
But Bernard is still going to have to go off to be put to sleep at the same age as everyone else, ’cause there’s only room for so many people. He gets a better life. He’s just aware enough to know that it’s a very nice gilded cage, but he still knows at what point the cage, you know, sends him off to be replaced Um, it, it’s a frightening book.
1984 really tells you what happens when you pressurize people into compliance, conformity. And what you see is when you pressurize people like that, you haven’t stolen their agency. They still try to think. They s- they try to rebel, the same way people tried to rebel in the Soviet Union, the way people rebelled under Hitler.
You know, famously, and most people don’t know it, [00:23:00] the Nazi regime put 35,000 Germans to death for being fifth columnists, for fighting back So really a system that lets you be entertained to the point of a stupor is infinitely worse than a system that represses you, because repression makes you go, “Why does it have to be this way?
I’ll fight back.” Entertainment just makes you useless
Steve Davis: So, um, I think we’ll almost find a way to draw this conversation to a close for now. I think there’s much more to discuss. And dear listener, what I’m doing here is I am thinking out loud. Um, I, there is no performative aspect to this episode. I’m earnestly worried.
Uh, I’m worried that I’ve never been disconnected before like this. I’m [00:24:00] also worried at a societal level that what this does is when you’ve got a, a Liberal Party and a Labor Party that have both been beholden, and David, I’ll get you to talk about this-
David Olney: Hmm …
Steve Davis: to neoliberalism. I’ll get you to explain a bit more of that, which is, as David’s about to explain, one of the worst things that we could ever endure.
Um, the door is left open for something to fill the void, and sadly, it’s going to be the hate-fueled party, the fear-mongering parties, like One Nation, that are gonna waltz in. And good humans who are feeling fed up, despaired, lost, and unlistened to, good humans, who in a normal situation would not give One Nation time of day, would find that, “You know what?
To hell with it. I’ve got to [00:25:00] choose someone. I’m gonna choose them.” Even though, um, I saw a story today that Pauline’s been saying that she wants to bring the Trump playbook to Australia, but that’s another story, a different day. This is not a One Nation thing. This is the fear of the One Nation type parties, uh, coming in.
Because the ones that are broader churches that ha- have the potential to bring stability, imperfect as it was, are not doing what they should do for us. They really are looking at win at all costs and to heck with anything along the way. But can you just… That was a, a little bit glib, my definition there.
Can you deepen it to understand what this neoliberalism, um, aspect is? And, and I think it was helpful to give it its full context starting in the 1800s, because it’s hard to unsee this and un-know this once you know it.
David Olney: Absolutely. Uh, uh, [00:26:00] to keep it short, I’ll start after World War II, because- Okay … to, you know, if we’re looking at the, the economic and political system we’re in, the problem that we’re really facing at the moment more than anything is in the early 1980s The English-speaking developed world en masse went down the path of neoliberal economics, which is the market is always right, private investment is always better than state investment.
And at some level, you can see people wanted a change by the late ’70s because between World War II and the late 1970s, most of the, you know, the English-speaking developed nations had had mixed economies. We’d had three of the best decades possible in the 1950s, 1960s, beginning of the 1970s. The oil shock came along, and we rode it out better than we could have because the mixed economy could absorb shocks.
So if we look at Australia as an example, [00:27:00] you know, the telephone company used to be nationalized. The electricity used to be nationalized. The water used to be nationalized. And guess what? That means you can provide it at a cost people can afford without needing to put profits in people’s po- profits in people’s pockets.
Now, is that the most economically efficient way to run a business? No. But you need to ask the question, is the point of electricity for everyone, gas for everyone, petrol for everyone, healthcare for everyone, education for everyone, to make it a commodity that distinguishes between those with enough money to spend and not enough money to spend?
Or are some things such important social goods that we should do them properly at the lowest cost properly for everyone because society will run so much better? So during World War II, the mixed economy where [00:28:00] the state did things that, that the state thought society needed done well at the lowest cost, the state ran them.
This model became unpopular in the 1970s, got replaced by neoliberalism when people like Thatcher, Reagan, Hawke, I can’t remember the Canadian prime minister in the early ’80s, came in. This idea of, “Oh, no, no, if we free it up and we let markets do it, everything will be cheaper and everything will work faster, and the market will balance out, and we will end up with low-cost versions of everything.”
But instead, what we ended up with was monopolies of very powerful companies going, “But we don’t want to provide the cheapest product.” No. “If we do that, we make less money. Why would we wanna do that when we are the only ones that can now run this? Now it’s not run by the state for the good of the whole population.”
So we’ve moved- Mm … since 1979 into a world where it [00:29:00] doesn’t matter in the UK, Canada, uh, you know, Australia, the US, New Zealand, whether you are looking at the Progressive Party or the Conservative Party. On both sides of the political, you know, divide, they believe the only way to run an economy is with neoliberal policy that privileges the market and profit over a social good.
Mm. So we are now at the point where you are just voting for different levels of neoliberalism. So I made the joke while Steve and I were chatting before that essentially sometimes, you know, the right has neoliberalism with jackboots on, sometimes progressive parties have neoliberalism with fluffy slippers on.
In Australia, both parties have one jackboot and one fluffy slipper. They’ve both done hardcore neoliberalism, and they’ve both done, you know, fluffy slipper neoliberalism. But at the end of the [00:30:00] day, the neoliberal model only leads to one place, and that is we don’t invest in infrastructure, we don’t invest in research, we don’t invest in making things better because what company wants to give away profit to do an investment that doesn’t make them richer unless we mandate that they do it?
So we have huge regulation on our energy industry to make up for the fact that companies don’t want to invest in infrastructure and don’t want to do research and development You know, we have a completely distorted education system where sending kids to private schools costs a fortune, where university degrees have gone up horribly in price We have a health system where even though we supposedly have universal healthcare, people feel the need to have incredibly expensive, you know, private health cover.
Nowhere near as bad as America, but compared to Finland or [00:31:00] Norway or Sweden or Denmark, where you just go and get the healthcare you need to be a healthy citizen. What’s the point of having a system where you have to pay for something that doesn’t just make you healthier, makes the entire society healthier?
And the neoliberals will always make the argument that, “Oh, yes, the, you know, the mixed economy, the state-led economy was unsustainable.” Well, it might have been unsustainable in the form it was in in the early 1970s, but destroying it has led us to something that is unsustainable for social cohesion, unsustainable for social wellbeing, unsustainable for the wellbeing of our political system and our political institutions.
It’s carved everything out to provide profits to shareholders instead of going, “What do we need to put in to make a society in which people thrive and do things that add value to all of us because [00:32:00] of the enhanced activity at all levels, social, economic, and political?” So we’ve really gone down a strange path of believing a singular economic model is the only model.
Steve Davis: Hmm.
David Olney: And really, this is why Britain’s got the Reform, well, Britain’s got the Reform Party. This is why America picked Trump, who’s basically transformed, you know, the Republican Party. This is why One Nation is growing here, because most people in the English-speaking developed world know that their traditional left and right party haven’t delivered anything that has helped them in living memory, and they don’t see an alternative.
But there’s these parties that say, “We’ll drain the swamp. We’ll break the system.” And at a certain point, if you don’t believe it can get better, and you’re starting to believe the only thing that’s gonna happen is it’s gonna get worse, well, maybe the last [00:33:00] act you can do that feels democratically powerful, like you have agency, is to help break this thing that isn’t delivering.
Steve Davis: And yet here’s the rub, and we are gonna close. And, and there’s also an email I wanna share with you and to finish off this episode. Um, okay, we can see that both the, the major parties have put, thrown their lot in with neoliberalism, and yet Gina Rinehart and the big money is bankrolling your One Nation type party, giving, gifting planes, et cetera.
Are we like frogs who might jump out of a boiling pot into another one because It’s, there’s n- uh, why would a resource wealthy human, an entity, allow a political party to buck the neoliberalism system?
David Olney: Because-
Steve Davis: It’s not going to, is
David Olney: it? Because Pauline is not wanting to change a [00:34:00] thing about the, how the economy works.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: Pauline Hanson is as much of a neoliberal as John Howard or Paul Keating. There is no difference in her fundamental understanding of how the economy should work Yeah. But-
Steve Davis: It’s a, yeah, go
David Olney: on … she’s unleashing anger, and at the moment, unleashing anger means that the general public are more angry at the politicians than they are at the billionaires, who are the only people who are doing better in the last 40 years.
Steve Davis: So, uh, three bits of homework for all of us, uh, before I share this email that just came in, uh, from a politician. Um, anger ta- Angertainment by Ed Koper is seriously worth listening to or reading. Uh, there might be some examples he uses that make you feel uncomfortable, but it… You know The Emperor’s New Clothes, where everyone pretends that the emperor’s wearing great [00:35:00] clothes, but the emperor’s nude, uh, and a little kid calls it out?
Ed Koper is that little kid. Uh, he is the guy behind GetUp. Uh, so yes, he does come from a, on one level, a left side of politics, but as he explains in the book, there’s a lot of mythology around this whole left-right divide.
David Olney: Well, he comes from the frustrated-
Steve Davis: Yes …
David Olney: chunk of the population. I think that’s a much…
Once again, you said naive when you’re being ideal. Mm-hmm. He is far more someone who wants action rather than continued inaction. And historically, who takes more action? The left, because the left wants change historically.
Steve Davis: Yeah.
David Olney: The right wants to conserve. That’s where their names come from.
Steve Davis: So please do yourself a favor and read that book or listen to it.
I’ll put a link in the show notes. And there’s a couple of podcasts that, David, you recommended. Um, what is it? This…
David Olney: Uh, The Rest is Politics.
Steve Davis: The Rest is Politics. And that’s
David Olney: got to- With Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, who are [00:36:00] trying to rehabilitate themselves after being two of the darkest creatures in British politics in the last 40 years.
Steve Davis: Wow. So I’m gonna listen to that. I’m gonna chuck it on. And the other one is This Week in US Politics?
David Olney: Um, no. The Rest is Politics US.
Steve Davis: Okay.
David Olney: If you wanna understand someone who was in Trump’s first cabinet and was thrown out for being reasonable, uh, Anthony Scaramucci, who was a very successful Wall Street guy.
So unfortunately, Anthony believes in, you know, a modern version of the economy that will destroy us all.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: But he can also see through Trump because he was there and saw it in the first.
Steve Davis: So if you had to pick one, I’m leaning more towards The Rest is Politics itself rather- Yes … than the US version.
David Olney: Because again, the UK is the deepest down the neoliberal path-
Steve Davis: Yeah …
David Olney: to the point where it is now basically dysfunctional.
Steve Davis: All right. I pl- I le- I s- I, I urge you to, if you do read them, I, I’d love to hear from you. Send some messages. There, there may or may not be some other episodes coming. I hope there are.
And in fact, this email, to [00:37:00] finish on, David, means there might be Back on the 23rd of April, I emailed my local federal member, Clare, uh, Cutterham, Clutterham, um, to add my voice to the movement by David Pocock, who I must say is what I would say as the high watermark of what a p- politician can be in this era.
Can I get a quick reflection from you on that? Uh, anything I’ve seen about David Pocock, I have loved because he seems to start at the base of what is best for the humans.
David Olney: Yep. Like, what we need is 100 Davids who think for themselves, ask hard questions, and are completely open to evidence.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: Like, in the Senate, we also have a Green senator from South Australia called Barbara Pocock, an ex-senator.
I don’t think they’re in any way related, but they are [00:38:00] the two federal politicians who give me hope.
Steve Davis: Wow. And you’re not a Greenie,
David Olney: are you? No.
Steve Davis: No. Like,
David Olney: like there’s half of Barbara’s thing, you know, agenda that I go, “It’d be lovely if and… we lived in the ideal world and had the resources.” But we can’t do half of these things.
Yeah. But again, she asks the hard questions. She’s open to evidence, and she is willing to do what’s best for people.
Steve Davis: So I do like your line, we need 100 Davids. Well, at least I’ve got one on this podcast. Uh, so anyway, I emailed my local member to try and agitate for this gas tax so that we get something from what the big multinationals are ripping away, um, from our country, from our sovereignness.
And didn’t hear back. I also hastened to mention to her that for the record, the message I sent her was handwritten without any use of AI. I think that’s important. It’s just, what, six weeks later now. Mm. [00:39:00] I got a reply from her. I won’t read the reply, but I will just say that she did, does say, “Thanks for your email and your support,” ’cause I said I had voted for her.
Um, “Thanks for also bearing with me whilst I put this response together. As I’m sure you can imagine, I’ve received hundreds of emails from members of the community on this topic, and I’ve tried to respond to each of them personally. I was also wanting to see what measures were announced in the budget before responding.”
Um, she said, “I support getting the absolute maximum from a tax perspective and would have loved to have seen a 25% gas tax, but the settings weren’t right for, uh, for one to be implemented now. Um, the once in a generation global fuel shock,” et cetera. You see, I haven’t read it yet, but I will say this, David.
I get one ray of hope from this.
David Olney: She read your email, or one of her staffers read your email. Mm-hmm. Spent a lot of time building a good response. Mm-hmm. She read it and signed it as being a credible attempt to answer your question. Yes.
Steve Davis: And-
David Olney: That is [00:40:00] what we need to see- That is- … from people inside the parties.
Yes.
Steve Davis: That is what we need to see. Not these glib, powly-wowly, lovey-dovey little video snippets that are just childish in the extreme. We need to see this.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: Because she is my elected representative. And you know what? I’m glad I clandestinely checked that, uh, before we finished, because that means there might be another episode.
Uh, ’cause we’ve got… Once you’ve read that book- Mm … Angertainment, and listeners have I would love to revisit because I actually, although I’m severed at the moment… Or not quite a severed. I think I’ve just discovered a strand holding. I’m not gonna put too much purchase in it just yet, but that’s what I need.
David Olney: Mm.
Steve Davis: I just needed to know that the system isn’t 100% broken, and there wa- is a human of some sort. And she then follows up, by the way, by saying, “Um, [00:41:00] just a reminder, here are the times that I’m in my office that I’m w- you’re welcome to, to catch up,” blah, blah, blah. So that’s great. Mm. I’m finishing on a high, a, a muted high.
David Olney: Mm. Well, I, I wanna add a couple of things to that- Okay … that I think can help. The fact that Mariana Mazzucato, one of the most important progressive economists in the world, has a new book out, like literally today, that I can’t remember the name of. But this is one of the only people in the world that could imagine a better economic system that would be good for people and the economy, because she’s a pragmatist.
Mm-hmm. Mariana won’t do something that’s fluffy. Okay. It needs to work for the economy and for people in a balanced way. And Daron Acemoglu, the other really amazing economist of our era, he’s got a new book coming out in September, and really, I’ve been hanging out for that book all year, that if Daron can’t work out how we get out of this mess, I wasn’t really sure what [00:42:00] econom- which economist could help get us out.
But the fact that Mariana and Daron have, both have new books out this year means maybe we’re finally getting the model that we could use to start believing that not only will it stop getting worse, but believe maybe it can get better again.
Steve Davis: David, thank you for shining a light on some of this with us and framing things differently so that we can absorb them.
David Olney: Thank you for the invitation, and I hope my explanations were clear enough to be helpful for people.
Steve Davis: Finally, in the musical pilgrimage, I am gonna finish with a song I wrote earlier this year, David. It’s called Australia Day, and the main reason I want to finish with it, it’s by Steve Davis & The Virtuosos, and if you haven’t come across [00:43:00] those before, I mean, where have you been as an Adelaide Show listener?
‘Cause I have been pummeling you with them. Uh, I write these lyrics with sweat and toil, and then I use my virtual session band to bring them to life in the hope that an actual human can take these draft song ideas and, and breathe real life into them. But I wanted to bring this, David, ’cause there’s a core thesis in my Australia Day song as to going to try and understand Where we have derailed and allowed our politicians and media to run roughshod, and it is this creep, and I think it’s probably a result of neoliberalism and building lots of different houses and, uh, McMansions and what have you.
There’s a line about, “We drive around two stories high. From our trucks, we can’t see eye to eye.” Mm-hmm. It’s about how we are disappearing more and more into our solitary- [00:44:00]
David Olney: Selfish …
Steve Davis: yep, selfish dwellings. And when we think about the integration of Italians and Greeks in the ’50, ’60, ’70s, it happened a lot, for whatev- There might be some other things sociologically that bind us, but I’m not sure.
I think it was the fact that we weren’t glued to our mobiles. We would stick an arm over the fence-
David Olney: And say hi …
Steve Davis: and say hi, because-
David Olney: We could …
Steve Davis: there was time. And the Vietnamese also benefited as, as the large waves of them came in the ’70s and ’80s. But now, as we get people coming, they are the other, they are different, because we barely say boo to each other, and that’s the thesis of this Australia Day song, that we need to understand that we all, you know, share the same earth, uh, the bit of rock that we’re on, and we share the same flies, et cetera.
And there is [00:45:00] something, if we can find a way for our visitors to be wel- interacted with somehow, and you’ve talked about this before, David, when we talked about the song, that in the workplace is where we can actually forge relationships with people- Mm … who are different, who are other. Um, it’s the, it’s where there is a more of a hope from a grassroots perspective, and I’m so happy that our Ukrainian neighbors, we have become closer and closer and closer, and that does also give me hope.
Uh, their little daughter’s over here playing with my daughters. You know, it’s, it’s a little taste of how it used to be.
David Olney: Mm. You know, some things about the past, we gotta go back to the human things. So the, you know, the irony is we’ve had multiple prime ministers who’ve talked about the ’50s as these halcyon days, and they were halcyon because the economic model didn’t destroy humans’ ability to be human.[00:46:00]
And yet, the very prime ministers who talked about how wonderful the ’50s were at a human level want us to try and have that kind of connection with a model that makes us all scared there won’t be money or opportunity tomorrow. Mm. Like, they, they can’t have their cake and eat it too.
Steve Davis: Yeah. Yes. Let’s have a listen.
Here, here is Australia Day by Steve Davis and the Virtual Oso’s[00:47:00] [00:48:00] [00:49:00] [00:50:00] [00:51:00] [00:52:00] [00:53:00]
Australia Day, Steve Davis and the Virtuosos. David Oldney, I couldn’t think of a better person to share Australia Day or just this conversation with. Thanks again for being so generous with your time and your thoughts.
David Olney: Thank you very much, Steve. A pleasure to be here.
Steve Davis: And it’s all from me. Good night from me, and good night, Don.
P.S., what’d Don think about this state of politics, do you think, David? Just to chuck you on the hot seat. Don Dunstan.
David Olney: I can imagine that it was very [00:54:00] difficult for Don Dunstan to be in the Labor Party before they absorbed neoliberalism.
Steve Davis: Mm.
David Olney: And I would have to expect that his loyalty to the party probably kept him muzzled.
And I’ll give a Liberal example to show, you know, how difficult it must have been for people like Don Dunstan, that, you know, Malcolm Fraser, before he died, gave back his lifetime membership to the Liberal Party as an ex-Liberal prime minister. He was so horrified with what they had become and what Australia had become.
And you can’t get a much bigger statement than you’re the ex-prime minister and you give away your party membership.
Steve Davis: On that note, good night, David. Good night, Don. Good night, Malcolm.