Free markets are a dangerous fraud
On June 17, I moved to establish a Senate inquiry into tariffs and industry development. That move was prompted by increasingly desperate appeals from Australia's manufacturing industries and unions that Australia's industrial capacity and Australian jobs were being destroyed by cheap imports encouraged by the government's tariff cutting regime.
The consequences are now on the public record. In June 1990, unemployment was 6.7%; in June last year, it was 9.4%; and at the beginning of this year, it was 10.4%. When I moved to establish the inquiry, it was 11.1%. It has now reached an all-time high of 11.3%.
The inquiry has obtained evidence through submissions from employers, unions, industry associations, consumers, workers and community groups.
Neither the ALP nor the Coalition parties wanted to hear first-hand evidence from the victims of their policies. To their shame, government and Coalition senators combined to vote against the inquiry.
However, the Clerk of the Senate confirmed that there was no prohibition on an individual parliamentarian establishing his or her own independent inquiry.
The evidence collected by the inquiry will force the "economic rationalists" in the government, Coalition and senior public service to confront the fact that they are culpable and will lead, hopefully, to a change of attitude and a change of direction before it is too late for Australia's manufacturing industries and primary producers.
Four major themes emerge from the evidence: firstly, there is a significant correlation between tariff cuts and increased unemployment; secondly, there is significant intervention by other governments to develop and protect their industries and to erect barriers against imports from Australia and other countries; thirdly, the promised cost reductions due to micro-economic reforms have not eventuated; and, fourthly, low wage levels, unacceptable working conditions, lack of health and safety standards and the almost total absence of environmental safeguards in some competitor countries, raise the question of how Australia can best maintain hard won living standards and avoid being dragged down to the world's lowest levels in these areas.
We have a choice as a community. We can try to compete with these exploitative practices and in the process negate the industrial, social, and environmental standards we have achieved. Do we buy cheap products, de we allow imports to come in and do we throw our workers on the scrap heap and pay higher taxes to pay them unemployment benefits for doing nothing? Or do we continue to pay current prices for consumer goods, de we forego cheaper prices for the goods we use and continue to have people in productive work? We need a pause in the current lemming-like rush into tariff cuts to stop destroying our industries, stand back, look at each industry sector and develop the measures that need to be taken not only to save industries and to keep people in jobs now, but also over time to develop a strategy which will ensure that our economy delivers full employment, social justice and ecological sustainability.
... Sid Spindler, Australian Democrat Senator for Victoria