Over the last few months there has been a discernible shift in the tide of public debate. Criticism of economic rationalism has become much more fashionable, when for most of the 80s it was ruled out of court as being manifestly silly....
moreOver the last few months there has been a discernible shift in the tide of public debate. Criticism of economic rationalism has become much more fashionable, when for most of the 80s it was ruled out of court as being manifestly silly. You've got the Victorian opposition, you've even got Malcolm Fraser polemicising against it. So from a whole lot of different sectors, including busi ness and manufacturing, economic rationalism is more under siege than it's been for years. And obvious evidence of this is the way that Michael Pusey's book Economic Rationalism in Canberra has been receivedmuch more respectfully than it might have been until quite recently, one would have thought. One starting-off point for this discussion, then, is perhaps to step back from the critique of economic rationalism that Pusey's popularised, which is not really a new one and has been lurking around the backblocks of Australian politics for most of the last decade, and look at what it is ...
