The first cracks in the façade of neoliberalism

This episode of New Politics was released on the 7th of April,

2026, and produced on the lands of the Wongal and Gadigal people.

We had a very unusual situation during the week where the Shadow Minister for Sovereign

and Capability Andrew Hasey said these words about neoliberalism.

We got smashed in 2022. We got smashed in 2025. Our primary vote is being

cannibalised from both the right and the left. So I think adopting a posture of humility and being

open-minded is important, not being reactive. This is a new era. You know, the world order is

collapsed in the last couple of years. We're experiencing a lot of economic pain,

inflation is very sticky. I've mentioned all the factors that people feel. I just think we need

to overhaul the whole system. So we either fix the system or it's torn down by people like Paul

Enhancin. No one's going to reward us for a final last stand for neoliberal politics, okay?

There's no medal for that. I actually want to win and deliver centre-right government for

this country. And the best way to beat Labour is to start listening to people and meeting them,

meeting their concerns head on rather than, you know, reactively slapping them down.

And this was in the context of unaffordable housing prices, low wages and other related issues,

but it's the first time that a prominent member of the Liberal Party, all the Labour Party,

has criticised neo-liberalism and put out that thought bubble of, hang on, maybe it's time

to change all of this. And he was quickly pulled into line by the Liberal Party leader,

Angus Taylor, and of course the Labour government totally ignored what he said because they are

actually a big part of this neo-liberalist agenda that is totally failing the community of today.

And Hastie also questioned the involvement of Australia in the war against Iran. He also

questioned the decisions of the United States President, Donald Trump. And as we've said in

the past, David, nobody loses votes in attacking Donald Trump. And these are the issues that the

Labour Party would normally be looking out for questioning the role of neo-liberalism,

trying to make the economy fairer. They usually do question that relationship with the United

States, but taking into account that it was John Curtin who started gravitating away from Britain

and towards the United States eight years ago. But it's still an area that's frequently questioned

by the Labour Party, maybe not so much by MPs, but certainly by their membership. And when

you're opponent is starting to talk about all the things that you would normally talk about,

well, maybe it is time for a change. It's been talked for a long time that it's a

duopoly. The one nation love to talk about the duopoly, which is a concept they got from

America anyway. And it was quite astounding that Hastie would start to question because he's

considered somewhat on the right of the Liberal Party and the right of the Liberal Party of the

ones who basically destroyed the party to keep this failed system of poorly thought through economics

in. You can tell I'm a big fan of it. What the long game is, I'm not sure I'm not quite sure

he's had a road to Damascus experience in terms of he's working up one day and thought, oh my goodness,

there are all these people who have exploited for 40 years who are now seeing that what has been

promised has failed as much as, oh my goodness, there are all these people who aren't voting for

the Liberal Party. And his seat is a fairly safe seat, but there are no safe seats in the Liberal

Party anymore. So again, I think he's probably a pretty decent tactical or strategic thinker,

being expilitry, but so I think he's seeing the writing is on the wall that as we pointed out

that the oil crisis of the 70s led open the door to neoliberalism, the oil crisis of 2026 will

probably close it all together. And so he's probably also the survival instincts have cut in.

Well, he also knows he gets some more MPs joining him on that road to Damascus, but I think generally

it is good to see politicians saying to question neoliberalism and I'm not going to become a

fanboy of Andrew Hasey, but I don't care where this comes from as long as people start questioning

the whole concept of neoliberalism. And we might be at the end period, but it's still of neoliberalism,

but it still seems like we're stuck in there and having a difficulty finding a way out of all of

this because it's obvious that the model is failing. We're seeing that in Australia, we're seeing

that in quite a few advanced economies around the world, we've got rising inequality,

unaffordable housing, industries that are falling apart. That's Andrew Hasey mentioned that

manufacturing bases completely gone and there's been a lot of technological change during that time,

a lot of beneficial change, but nothing else has really changed. And I guess finding that pathway

out or, aside from getting everyone to join you on that road to Damascus, like all of these

concepts, like it didn't start with the United States and the Britons in the early 1980s.

It started before that, but they were the ones who were mainly forcing you through

faturism and Reaganism in the early 1980s. They were the ones who let us down this path. So it's

almost like a case where they have to change as well to lead us out of it, but it's off

from that we might be looking at China to create the pathway. China is on track to become the

world's largest economy and it's pretty much everything goes through China at the moment.

It's also blocks like bricks. It's already challenging that old economic order. That's why the

United States doesn't want to have anything to do with bricks and it's doing its best to dismantle

that. But if the centre of economic gravity is moving away from the United States, then the

economic rules might have to move with it and it's not going to happen today or next week.

We're looking at this over the next 20 years or so.

Neoliberalism wins ultimately because left parties adopt it. We have beastly here and in fact,

you can go back to a hawk and keating here. I'm sorry. You have a blare in Tony Blair in Britain.

You have Bill Clinton in the United States and they try and soften it. Sure. They try and say we can

and you get this notion of the third way, but all central movements end up collapsing in on

themselves from pressure from both the left and the right. And all central movements seem

to end up going right anyway. So now we have in Britain the problem of Keir Starmer,

but even his popularity ratings have moved from appalling to dire.

Moved up the sorry dire to appalling. And down to mediocre, I think. Yeah, yeah, because

he opposed Trump. Now Trump was never a neoliberal in the classic sense of the word. He's a

basically piracy capitalist. Go in, strip it, move on, make as much money as you can.

Neoliberal would say, oh, we only strip what's inefficient. Sure, you do. Sure, you do.

Trump has the soft edges of neoliberalism taken off him. The cacastocracy maybe is perhaps

the better term, the least qualified, making the most money. He shouldn't. And yeah, I've said before,

we've said before. Trump is a symptom, not a cause. And I think now when we're seeing managerialism

in labor as opposed to radical policy development, when we're seeing Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom,

who wins a almost unprecedented majority and looks like even with the bump in the approval ratings,

he's got looks like he's going to lose badly next election, but to whom we don't know because

things like reform, things like one nation aren't as strong as they seem to be. The mega movement,

which is really the equivalent in America isn't as strong. Looks like mega is going to be wiped out

at the next, the midterms coming up in June or July whenever that is. Well, good riddance to

bad rubbish, as they say. No, not many people will be crying, that's for sure. Which is why Trump's

trying to make friends again with Elon Musk, Elon gave him a lot of help. We're seeing a system

that doesn't want to die, but has failed on every objective measure except one in reaching its

most rich supporters and nearly said, I didn't support it, there's a lot of poor people who supported

it, who got nothing from it. But this is the conundrum, David, where this is a big issue in Australia,

where even when politicians identify the problem, and it was very brief, it was just one statement

that he said about the end of neoliberalism not wanting to die on a ditch over it, like when

people like Andrew Hasey point to all of these problems, point of housing, manufacturing, structural

inequality for future generations, not future generations, like it's actually this generation as well.

And I know there's always the system always tries to push back, and the similar to what happened

during COVID when Scott Morrison was the prime minister, there's always this thing about snapping

back. We've got to snap back to the way that it used to be, and the system always pushes back.

Angus Taylor shuts down the debate within the Liberal Party and the Labour government, of course,

ignores him, but who's that contradiction here? Because capitalist countries or advanced capitalist

countries that have gone fully down the pathway of neoliberalism, will they linked into the world's

largest socialist and communist economy? And that's China. So that change or gravitating away from

that neoliberalist or the failed neoliberalist experiment, that might happen. It's not impossible,

and it might happen sooner than we think. So that revolution that we've been

anchoring for some time, David, will it might finally be on the way? And I think that this war

on Iraq by the United States and Israel, that might have a lot more significance than we actually

think it might be having at the moment, especially if it fast tracks the demise of the United

States. And it's not going to come from somewhere or someplace that recognises what the problem is,

but I think it's going to come from a country that might so completely smash the current system.

And I think that's what China is not necessarily wanting to do, but China is in a position to be

able to do that. And again, it's not going to happen immediately, but that seems to be the direction

that we're heading towards internationally. Yeah, Russia would love to, but it's highly problematic.

And Putin, I've heard it argued that Putin is a rational politician, but that doesn't mean that he

doesn't want to see the United States and Europe in absolute chaos. India's problem is Modi.

Modi isn't governing for everyone, and instead of having a united country, it's a country with

division where it shouldn't be. And India, of course, should be the big threat to China in the

population, the similar economy size. China is a bit more disciplined for whatever reason.

I think we're looking at the state of hormones being the American version of the Suez Canal

in 56 that Suez showed that the British Empire had stopped being a major military and political force.

They had a prime minister, Anthony Eden, who wasn't up to the job for many reasons.

He'd been groomed for the job, but in the end, it failed. And Britain was humiliated.

And this is what's happening in the state of hormones. Straight's open, just not to Americans.

There's oil around, just not to America and it's allies. They had to drop Russian sanctions

for a day. It gave them 130 million barrels of oil, which is about a day's use globally. If they

lift sanctions with Russia, it will show that the United States has finished as an influence in Europe,

which I think a lot of Europeans will be very happy with, but maybe not so much Americans.

That's it for this episode of New Politics. Thanks for listening in.

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