John Quiggin

John Quiggin argues that Macquarie Group's success was built partly through privatised infrastructure deals that enriched investors while leaving the public with expensive or deteriorating services. He highlights Thames Water, Sydney Airport and Australian toll roads, then broadens the critique to CSL, Qantas and Telstra, arguing that privatisation often combines private profit with continuing public support. The piece concludes that policymakers are increasingly recognizing the damage caused by financial engineering and poorly structured public-private deals.

John Quiggin argues that recurring failures affecting Australia’s triple-zero emergency service, including the latest Telstra outage after an earlier Optus failure, stem from decades of prioritising competition and privatisation over reliable infrastructure. He says Australia’s mobile market remains effectively dominated by Telstra and Optus despite limited benefits from competition. Short-term measures should include a national coverage plan and automatic roaming between networks, while emergency services should use a resilient Essential Services Network accessible through all carriers. Quiggin ultimately argues that essential infrastructure should not be left to private monopolies or duopolies.

Older Australians are living longer and remaining healthier and more physically active than previous generations, yet public language and policy still classify people as “old” from age 65. Drawing on his own participation in a triathlon, demographic trends and health data, John Quiggin argues that longer lifespans should not be mistaken for prolonged ill health. Although life expectancy at 70 has increased substantially, the period spent in ill health has grown much less, with most people retaining good health until a short period of decline near the end of life. This has implications for how Australia plans work, healthcare and aged care.

AI is generating substantial productivity gains in software, but companies such as Atlassian are also announcing layoffs. Rather than allowing the benefits to flow mainly to corporate profits, the gains should support a renewed reduction in working hours, building on historical campaigns for the eight-hour day, shorter weeks and weekends. Remote work demonstrated that established work patterns can change with limited disruption, although workers in physically present jobs have benefited less. The author argues that weakened unions and governments’ reluctance to challenge employers have stalled progress, making renewed pressure for shorter working hours urgent.

John Quiggin argues that Coles’ Down Down promotions can make prices higher overall by raising prices sharply and then advertising only a partial reduction. He says evidence in the Federal Court indicates that this strategy was planned in advance, while Coles defended its conduct by arguing that consumers could not understand complex pricing patterns and that Woolworths’ rival program was worse. Quiggin contends that Coles and Woolworths should adopt truthful-advertising policies to rebuild trust, but short-term commercial pressures, widespread public distrust and consumers’ attraction to apparent bargains make meaningful reform unlikely. He warns that personalized pricing enabled by digital technology could make deceptive pricing even more sophisticated.

Large CEO bonuses at CSL and Optus are difficult to justify when the companies report no Australian company tax, while executives face little downside risk when performance is poor. The article argues that privatisation and deregulation failed to produce the promised productivity and economic dynamism, instead expanding senior-manager pay and weakening obligations to workers and consumers. It links this outcome to the cult of the CEO and shareholder-value ideology, but notes growing resistance through renewed interest in public ownership and worker opposition to corporate demands.

Australia’s A$600 million rescue package for Glencore’s copper operations, following much larger support for Whyalla steelworks and assistance to Nyrstar, signals that government bailouts may be becoming a routine industrial-policy tool. The shift away from neoliberalism reflects growing competition with China’s state-led economic model and the United States’ retreat from free trade, but it lacks clear criteria for selecting industries, protecting competitors and securing a public return. The article argues that Australia must make difficult choices about which mineral-processing industries are genuinely strategic, whether profitable companies should provide equity or other compensation for assistance, and how policy should respond to oversupply and China’s dominance. It recommends replacing ad hoc rescues with a coordinated strategic vision and stronger regional partnerships.

John Quiggin argues that Optus’s failure to properly handle triple-zero emergency calls exposes the structural weaknesses of privatized telecommunications. He contends that apparent gains in telecommunications pricing and services were driven mainly by technological progress rather than competition, while privatization produced duplicated infrastructure, entrenched monopolies and inadequate broadband investment. The article calls for a single publicly owned wholesale network model, stronger public control of vital infrastructure and a broader reassessment of neoliberal economic policy.

Qantas’s $90 million fine for illegally dismissing 1,820 ground workers, combined with a separate $100 million consumer penalty and a $120 million compensation fund, signals that corporate misconduct may no longer be treated as merely a cost of doing business. The case exposes how Australian labour-market reforms weakened workers’ bargaining power and encouraged outsourcing. Recent measures by the Albanese government, including criminalizing deliberate wage theft and closing labour-hire loopholes, indicate a shift toward worker protection, although enterprise bargaining remains fundamentally problematic. Multi-employer or industry-level bargaining could reduce incentives to outsource, while employer groups continue to advocate deregulation. The Qantas penalty is portrayed as a significant but incomplete step toward restoring workplace balance.

The United States spends far more per person on healthcare than Australia and other wealthy countries while producing worse life expectancy and chronic-disease outcomes. John Quiggin argues that Donald Trump’s accusation that Australia is freeloading on US medical research and drug pricing misrepresents the evidence. The US could reduce costs by extending government negotiation programs and adopting elements of Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and Medicare, but private-sector lobbying and the Trump administration’s preference for confrontational deals make meaningful reform unlikely. Australia should stand firm against US pressure and treat the country pragmatically as a trading partner rather than an unquestioned ally.

The proposed acquisition of Santos by an overseas consortium led by ADNOC subsidiary XRG and including the Carlyle Group has prompted concerns about Australia’s energy security and national interest. John Quiggin argues that physical control of Australian gas resources means foreign ownership would not necessarily threaten supply, while Australia’s weak gas taxation and existing export contracts already limit public benefits. He contends that the deeper issue is the absence of a coherent national energy policy: Santos is expanding gas exports and developing the controversial Barossa project despite global net-zero goals. Neither a profit-focused private equity firm nor Abu Dhabi’s state-owned oil company is likely to prioritize Australians’ wellbeing, but Australian governments have also failed to establish clear public-interest standards.

John Quiggin argues that Australia’s childcare problems reflect a broader failure of for-profit delivery across human services, including vocational education, aged care, prisons and hospitals. He says providers can raise profits by cutting service quality, exploiting weak regulation and cream-skimming profitable markets, while policymakers repeatedly respond with more safeguards rather than addressing the underlying model. The VET FEE-HELP collapse, private-sector failures in aged care and the retreat from private prisons and hospital partnerships are presented as evidence that market competition has not delivered public value. Although a Productivity Commission childcare inquiry acknowledged problems with the sector’s growing for-profit share, Quiggin says it stopped short of recommending a fundamental shift. He credits the Albanese government with strengthening public TAFE and calls for a broader move away from for-profit corporations toward public and not-for-profit provision of childcare, education and healthcare.

Donald Trump’s tariffs and broader retreat from international institutions, development aid and scientific cooperation signal to John Quiggin that the United States is abandoning its traditional global role. He argues that Australia should stop expecting a return to US democracy or renewed American leadership, accept the painful economic and strategic consequences of separation, seek membership in ASEAN and engage more fully with Asia while balancing US and Chinese power.

Neoliberalism emerged in the 1970s by elevating markets, especially financial markets, above democratic state intervention, and was advanced by Margaret Thatcher through privatization, deregulation and tax changes. Its credibility collapsed after the dotcom crash, the global financial crisis and the austerity that followed, but the backlash has largely taken a right-wing, nationalist form exemplified by Donald Trump. Australia’s Coalition has similarly moved away from classic free-market rhetoric toward measures such as monopoly break-up powers, nuclear energy, business tax concessions and migration restrictions. Until centre-left parties escape the constraints of soft neoliberalism, this right-wing response is likely to remain dominant.

Donald Trump’s return to the White House has made the assumptions underpinning Australian economic policy obsolete, with tariffs, executive rule, weakened international institutions and US pressure on digital regulation creating major uncertainty. Australia should treat both the US and China as unreliable trading partners, develop domestic AI and social-media infrastructure, prepare fiscal stimulus, and have the Reserve Bank cut interest rates to reduce recession risks. The central conclusion is that Australia must abandon expectations of a return to the previous global economic order and become more self-reliant.

Peter Dutton’s proposal to give small businesses a $20,000 annual tax deduction for food and entertainment is criticized as inefficient, costly and likely to encourage ordinary meals to be disguised as business expenses. The policy could cost the budget billions, has been rejected as unserious by economists and the Australian Financial Review, and may expose the LNP to accusations of favoritism. The proposal is interpreted as either an attempt to reward Dutton’s base, a consequence of limited economic policy options, or evidence that voters may tolerate increasingly transactional politics. Such bipartisan patronage could strengthen community independents and further weaken Australia’s two-party system.

Australia largely avoided the worst effects of the global financial crisis because its financial institutions had limited exposure to complex speculative products and governments acted quickly with fiscal stimulus. John Quiggin argues that incorporating cryptocurrency into the mainstream financial system could remove that protection: crypto assets have no intrinsic or government-backed value, and a loss of confidence could trigger a self-reinforcing collapse. He warns that crypto-backed mortgages, institutional loans and opaque stablecoins such as Tether could transmit losses throughout the financial system, potentially exposing traditional institutions to hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars in risk. Proposed Australian stablecoin legislation may be unable to regulate global firms effectively, leaving the country dependent on luck rather than safeguards.

John Quiggin argues that the backlash from former prime minister John Howard and treasurer Peter Costello against Jim Chalmers’ new Future Fund mandate reflects outdated neoliberal assumptions. He says the fund’s original purpose—covering public-sector pension liabilities—is becoming redundant because the relevant liability is declining and the fund’s assets already exceed its expected peak. With the Future Fund now effectively a sovereign wealth fund, Quiggin argues it should consider national priorities, as major funds in Norway and China do, while still seeking strong commercial returns. He cautions that projects unlikely to earn commercial returns should be funded transparently through the budget rather than hidden within the fund, concluding that investment decisions should serve the Australian public rather than financial markets alone.

Major employers’ demands for a full return to the office have largely failed to change established remote-work practices, despite 83% of surveyed CEOs expecting offices to be fully restored within three years. The article argues that remote work benefits employees through saved commuting time and improved work-family balance, with many willing to trade pay for that flexibility, while evidence of productivity harm remains mixed. It contends that CEO opposition is driven less by clear business evidence than by a threat to managerial authority: if employees can work effectively without managers’ physical presence, the traditional power and compensation of senior executives may be harder to justify.

Coles’ $1.1 billion profit should not primarily be understood as evidence of excessive grocery-price inflation, argues John Quiggin. The more important issue is that supermarkets can improve margins by pushing down the prices paid to suppliers, especially labour costs, while wages have failed to keep pace with prices. The Fair Work Commission’s 3.75% minimum-wage increase roughly matched inflation but did not restore pandemic-era losses in real wages. Quiggin also criticizes the Reserve Bank’s rigid 2–3% inflation target and reliance on high interest rates, arguing that these policies suppress demand and hinder wage recovery. The central issue is the purchasing power of disposable incomes, rather than the age-based or simplistic cost-of-living framing used in public debate.