‘Slouching towards Spring St’

Speech to Per Capita John Cain Luncheon

17 September 2025

Introduction

Before I start, I want to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we are gathered – the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation – and pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.

I want to acknowledge traditional owners watching online – especially anyone from Yorta Yorta country, where I grew up.

I want to acknowledge an old schoolmate of mine – war correspondent John Martinkus – who died over the weekend.

And I want to thank Per Capita for inviting me here today.  

It is an honour for me to speak at a forum named after John Cain. You see, John Cain was the first person I interviewed when I started work on Catch and Kill in 2011.

I re-read the transcript of that interview while preparing this speech, and much of what Cain said then still has currency now. For instance, he worried about the ‘sectarian snake’ of racism, and felt anti-refugee politics was a proxy for the White Australia policy. He also felt that – post 9/11, post the Tampa election of 2001 – Australian political culture was ‘frozen in time’. John Cain was right then and he’s right now: we are still frozen in time.

Speaking of time, I’ll start by asking a question on the minds of more than one political trainspotter.

Why re-release a 10-year-old book about an extinct government? What possible relevance could the story of the Bracks-Brumby government have to the economic and environmental challenges we face today?

And what about the reemergence of Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and neo-Nazis? And what about the still-unforgiven original sin of Australian settlement, the state-sanctioned dispossession and killing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders?

Those are all fair questions.

And, given I’m a speechwriter, I’ll begin answering them with a story.

‘I think of Rosie’

Seventy years ago – on February 19, 1955 – my maternal grandparents, Bob and Anne Powell, took their three kids to the Foster show in South Gippsland. They also took the family pony in a trailer because their eldest – my aunt Rosie – was riding at the show. 

Afterwards, Rosie asked for permission to ride home to Toora. Bob and Anne said, ‘Yes’, and drove past Rosie as she trotted along the shoulder of the South Gippsland Highway.

That was the last time they saw their daughter alive. Soon after they passed Rosie, she was hit by a truck driven by a local teenager. She died an hour later in Toora hospital.

Rosie was 13. Her little sister, my mum Penny, was 10.

The death of Rosalyn Anne Powell changed my mum. Changed me. Changed my children, too. I won’t go into all the changes, but sometimes it feels like I was born without a layer of skin, especially whenever I hear about the death of a child. But I also think of Rosie whenever I hear a Welcome to, or Acknowledgement of, Country. Let me explain why.

Seventy years on from 1955, the loss of Rosie still resonates in my family; still shapes choices we make in ways not always apparent to ourselves, let alone people outside the Powell clan. And that resonance, some might call it intergenerational trauma, was caused by the loss of one child in an accident.

So, whenever I hear a Welcome to Country, I can’t help wondering: What if my family’s loss was deliberate rather than accidental? What would it be like to belong to a First Nations mob that, as the Yoorrook Justice Commission found, was a target of genocide? What would it be like to have trauma of that magnitude resonate down the generations?

I cannot possibly imagine the answers to those questions, but I think of Rosie. And I also wonder – whenever I see violence and hatred on our streets, whenever I see misinformation in the media, whenever I see injustices like Robodebt or wage theft or unfettered carbon pollution, whenever I see vested interests put before the public good – whenever I see any of that I wonder: How did we end up in this place? Where did we go wrong? When did we become so blinkered, so quick to cancel, so cruel? And I’ve concluded that the answer to those questions comes back to a pathological lack of collective empathy, which is another way to say ‘neoliberalism’.

‘Neoliberal Piracy’

Now, I’m not a policymaker. Nor an academic. Nor a politician. So, I won’t share a cribbed take on the work of Milton Friedman or the machinations of the Washington Consensus or America’s descent into violent madness. Instead, I’ll go for the vernacular.

We should give Margaret Thatcher credit. At least the former British Prime Minister was being honest when she said: ‘There’s no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look after themselves first.’ 

With those words, Thatcher revealed one of the fundamental beliefs – and errors – of neoliberalism: its disciples do not believe in society. I’m sure they care about their family and friends and their immediate community – people they have a tangible connection with – but, judging by their actions, they lack the imagination to believe in people they cannot identify with. And when a society loses faith in the intangible connections of citizenship it loses the ability to defy gravity.

When that happens, to quote William Butler Yeats,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned

Don’t worry, I’m not about to suggest Donald Trump is the ‘rough beast’ Yeats saw slouching ‘towards Bethlehem to be born’ in ‘The Second Coming.’ What I am saying is that a society only works if a critical mass of people believe in principles such as the rule of law, representative democracy, and human rights; and if society repays that faith by giving its people a fair chance to build a better life.

That belief in society – and that reward for keeping the faith – has been corroded by unfettered neoliberalism, because unfettered neoliberalism does not believe in society and does not value service. It only believes in the individual and only values the ‘animal spirits’ of the market, which is, ironically, a Kenynesian thought bubble. The trouble with this nihilism is that, once people lose faith in big, unifying ideas like society, things fall apart and many of us start believing in anything, including the fairytales of sovereign citizenship.

Coming back to Thatcher, the austerity measures of the Cameron government were the ultimate expression of the UK’s every-woman-for-herself mentality. And, as always, the most vulnerable paid the price. Since austerity, the UK has seen a resurgence of Dickensian diseases such as scurvy and rickets, and the generation of children who grew up after the GFC are shorter than their European peers. As for Brexit, it was about more than the lies of the UK Independence Party and nostalgia for the Dunkirk spirit. Much more. Among many other things, it was an act of collective nihilism borne out of hopelessness, and hopelessness is the ultimate franked credit of neoliberal piracy.

Bear with me, now, because – in case you’ve missed it – I do have an axe to grind against neoliberalism. I’ll confine my axe grinding to three headline points.

First point: Keynesianism wasn’t perfect – no economic theory is – but it did believe in the collective endeavour that is society; and, post-War, helped create the middle classes of the mid-twentieth century. Second point: neoliberalism only worked because – and this reflects its parasitic nature – it piggybacked on the middle-class society created by Keynesianism during the post-War era. Neoliberalism stopped working in the US and UK – and is beginning to stop working here – once it bled working people dry.

My third point is an analogy. A nation is like a family car. Each generation – and this is where society really counts – needs to agree to invest in repairs, maintenance and upgrades to ensure the national Toyota keeps up with the SUVs on the international freeway. But neoliberalism doesn’t prioritise nation-maintaining, let alone building, investments. Instead, it discourages societal investments in the national Toyota until the jalopy breaks down, then wants to sell the wreck for parts.

All of which brings me to the Bracks-Brumby and Andrews-Allan governments.

‘Bolte, Bracks and Andrews’

I’ll start with some national, then Victorian context.

National context first. Australia side-stepped the worst impacts of Thatcherism and Reaganomics because the Hawke-Keating government moderated neoliberalism with social-wage policies such as universal healthcare, compulsory superannuation, and the indexation of pensions. But – although the Rudd-Gillard government implemented social reforms like paid parental leave and the National Disability Insurance Scheme – the tide has been turning against working people since the reform era ended in 2001.

That tide turned into a tsunami during the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government. In fact, according to economist Ross Garnaut, ‘the decade from 2013 delivered what was probably the largest ever fall in average Australian real wages.’ But the seeds of this failure of governance and policy were not all sown after 2013.

You could argue the first seeds were sown in 1994, the year the Keating government released the Working Nation white paper. Working Nation wasn’t a bad policy – it included strategies to make Australia more inclusive – but it was the moment when, for the first time since 1945, the Commonwealth abandoned full employment. As a result, after the 1996 election of the Howard government, Keating’s plans for making society more inclusive were forgotten, and our most economically vulnerable citizens became fiscal cannon fodder: a buffer used to lower labour costs and manage inflation.

Now to the Victorian context. Four months after my aunt Rosie died – on June 7, 1955 – Henry Bolte was elected premier of Victoria. I see parallels between Bolte and two other Victorian premiers, Steve Bracks and Daniel Andrews. Like Bracks in 1999, Bolte was an unknown quantity when he won. Like Andrews in 2014, Bolte won because of the disfunction of his opponents.

I’ve grouped Bolte with Bracks and Andrews for another reason. Bolte was followed by two more Liberal premiers – Rupert Hamer and Lindsay Thompson – and that conservative dynasty remained in government for a month shy of 27 years. Bracks started a similar run in 1999 – with Labor in power for 22 of the past 26 years.

I see the 22-year span of the Bracks-Brumby and Andrews-Allan governments as connected; a story of a government in two halves. They are separate governments with different leaders and preoccupations. For instance, Steve Bracks and John Brumby were fiscally conservative and more interested in policy development, with Bracks giving the secretary of his department, Terry Moran, the go-ahead to turn Premier and Cabinet into a think-tank.

By comparison, the government led by Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan is more dominated by its leaders and their private offices, more prepared to go into debt, and more interested in infrastructure than ideas – as demonstrated by the size and scope of the Big Build. In addition, Andrews’ second term was defined by the traumas of the pandemic.

How, then, are the governments connected? In two ways. The first connection is people and ideas. Many of the key players in the Andrews-Allan government – Andrews, Allan, Tim Pallas – started under Bracks and Brumby; and many of the ideas of the Andrews-Allan government are connected to the Bracks-Brumby years.

Some connections are overt. For example, the Metro Tunnel is one of three signature Andrews-Allan achievements, but it was first announced and planned by the Brumby government – at the instigation of policy wonks such as the late Andrew Herington.

Other connections are oblique. For example, the second signature Andrews-Allan achievement is the level crossing removal project and it was at least partly inspired by the lag in public transport investment that contributed to the defeat of the Brumby government.

In addition, both governments showed ambitions for national leadership. Bracks and Brumby created the National Reform Agenda adopted by the Howard and Rudd governments – as well as providing the bureaucratic base camp for what became the Garnaut review on climate change and carbon pricing.

Andrews and Allan are no less ambitious. I mentioned the Yoorrook Justice Commission. Victoria’s Indigenous communities have – with the backing of Andrews and Allan – worked for a decade to get this state to the point where, 190-years after the Port Phillip Association illegally set up shop, we are close to Treaty. That is an extraordinary achievement – an achievement that, after the heartbreak of the Voice referendum, shows a possible way forward for other Australian jurisdictions.

My point: there is a continuity of purpose and ambition that connects the two Labor governments. What separates them are their circumstances and preoccupations.

‘People Power’

Of course, personality also plays a part in the differences between the Bracks-Brumby and Andrews-Allan governments. For instance, Daniel Andrews was a conviction politician at times limited by impatience – and, therefore, he was more impetuous that Steve Bracks, John Brumby and Jacinta Allan – but I suspect Andrews’ impatience might have been one of the secrets of his electoral success.

You see, as Australia entered the 21st century, neoliberalism began to bite – and working people started going backwards. In addition, Victoria started experiencing a population boom far larger, in raw numbers, than the post-War boom.

Again, it’s helpful to compare periods. Between 1947 and 1971, Melbourne’s population grew by 1.2 million people.Since 2000, Melbourne’s population has grown by 2 million. Bolte took office in 1955 – by which time the population boom was in full swing – and went deep into debt to keep up with demand for infrastructure and services. Victoria’s debt under Bolte peaked at around 50 per cent of Gross State Product.

This century’s population boom started under Bracks and Brumby, but the Census and Treasury both significantly underestimated growth. These errors were compounded by two other factors: first, Bracks and Brumby held back on metro rail investments because of cost blowouts associated with Regional Fast Rail; second, growth in employment, the economy and public transport patronage were also consistently underestimated by Treasury. As a result, Brumby didn’t make a big investment in public transport until it was too late – and lost in 2010.  After Brumby lost, Victoria’s population boom kept gathering steam, and, when the Coalition failed to act quickly, the electorate sacked a one-term government and turned back to Labor.

Daniel Andrews got the memo: Victorians wanted action. From Day 1, therefore, he took a fast-forward approach to government, pouring concrete and outsourcing social conundrums to royal commissions rather than sweating on the slow-burn of policy reform. In essence, Daniel Andrews was as impatient for change as the electorate he served.

And it worked. Andrews brushed off critics. He bamboozled media commentators who assumed Australian governments should return to Howard fundamentalism after Covid. And he increased Victorian Labor’s parliamentary numbers in every election – an extraordinary achievement.

Jacinta Allan appears to be following suit, as demonstrated by her commitment to make working from home a legal right in Victoria. Does that mean she will win the 2026 election? She’s ahead in the polls, but it’s too early to say. And Labor should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the State Opposition’s in-fighting. As demonstrated by the 1999 Victorian election, anything can happen in a two-horse race.

‘A Soft Landslide’

All of which brings me to Anthony Albanese.

Albanese has been lucky since becoming Labor leader in 2019. Lucky to have run in 2022 against Scott Morrison – surely one of our federation’s weirdest PMs; and lucky to have been gifted Peter Dutton’s inept campaign in May. To Albanese’s credit, he hasn’t let his good luck go to his head, and has adopted a quietly unyielding style of leadership.  

He has rebooted the federal government in his image – steady, competent, risk averse. On the international stage, he has presented himself as a steady-as-she-goes leader, able to repair relations with China’s President Xi Jingping without provoking US President Donald Trump. And, slowly but surely, he is exorcising Howard’s political ghost from Capital Hill.

But is a political exorcism enough? Of course not. To qualify as a progressive leader Albanese must address the social, economic and environmental injustices that have accumulated during 30 years of largely unfettered neoliberalism. He must give voters a reason to hope – if not believe. He must also realise that – although the electorate handed him a gargantuan majority in May – it was a soft landslide.

Labor’s primary vote is still low – 36 per cent according to the latest Newspoll – and minority party support is surging. Those numbers suggest that, come the next election, a significant proportion of the electorate will be prepared to do to Albanese what they did to Victorian Premier Denis Napthine in 2014 unless the PM demonstrates a real appetite for the kinds of reforms that create a big society.

There is no time to waste. The tempo of the Albanese government must increase – and match the impatience of the electorate it serves – because Victoria is not an outlier on the impatience front. Australians know that their standard of living has gone backwards. They know climate change is real. And they don’t want to end up like the UK or the US.

Australians are impatient for change – and, without meaningful change, the centre will not hold and who knows what kind of rough electoral beast will come, slouching towards Spring Street, or Canberra, to be born.

Conclusion

In conclusion, let me say this. With all apologies to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, I do not think the answer to the challenges we face is: read Abundance.

Sure, Abundance is interesting – and is book-of-the-month in Canberra. But, given the shit-show that is the US, do we really need to ape the ideas of another American-centric book? Shouldn’t we be looking to America as a cautionary tale rather than a light on the hill?

I get it. Original ideas are few and far between in politics, but some ideas – like neoliberalism – are the policy equivalent of paterson’s curse: easy to plant, difficult to control, and a pain to eradicate. All I am suggesting is we should read the label more closely before we consume any more bright ideas from the land of the not-so-free.

Personally, I think we’d be far better off to develop and implement home-grown ideas and plans in keeping with our values, our circumstances, our interests, and our people. I think a good place to start would be to fast-track efforts to target rising inequality – because the best way to make people care about their society is to give them a stake in its future.

After all, as Keating said at the beginning of his 2002 Manning Clark lecture, ‘Out here, on the edge of Asia, a long way from major markets and natural groupings, ideas are all Australia has to shield itself from the harsh winds of global change.’

In other words, big reform is not just possible – it’s essential. And that – to come back to my opening question – is why I co-wrote Making Progress with Jenny Macklin earlier this year, and that is why I am re-launching Catch and Kill today.