With the breakdown of ideological coherency across the Liberal Party and their coalition partner, the Nationals, Australian conservatives are experimenting with diversifying their vote.
There are plenty of minor right-aligned parties and independents on offer, but which do they choose?
None represent a carbon copy of the Blue Ribbon Liberal values sought by nostalgic voters. They more closely resemble a school of fish, swimming in a generally conservative direction. Together, they offer a mirage of Menzies.
Where these parties disagree represents a wider discussion about what it means to be a conservative. What do conservative voters value? What do they want out of government? And who has real solutions to the problems crippling Australian society?
This puzzle has to be solved before a strong brand can be presented at election. Australia will never have a Nigel Farage or a Donald Trump without a compelling political message rustling in the grass.
Social media, and in particular X, has given voters the opportunity to spectate this evolution of conservatism.
Over the weekend, Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick has been interacting with members of the Libertarian Party, including NSW MLC John Ruddick, on the topic of allowing market forces within the regulatory framework.
Essentially it is a question of trust.
The debate began with a video post by Libertarian Queensland Senate candidate Lachlan Lade.
One of the points where the Coalition splits from the minor parties is that of medical safety and regulation. With the major parties complicit in the serious failure of drug safety and active participants in the violation of informed consent, questions are being asked about drug regulators (like the TGA) and whether or not the existing structure needs to be changed.
In this spirit, Mr Lade’s post reads: ‘For a healthy and prosperous future, we cannot rely on a single taxpayer funded entity like the TGA. We need multiple independent, privately funded health regulators – just like credit rating agencies.’
He adds, ‘We can’t preference Liberal and Labor – those who created the system. Those who are trying to protect the system. Those who are trying to protect the TGA. Anything that feeds on taxpayer funds will inevitably be corrupted.’
Senator Gerard Rennick was quick to reply to Mr Lade, and by extension, the Libertarian Party.
On X, the Senator wrote:
This post is naive. The Libertarian Party need to clarify if this is their policy. I welcome an opportunity to debate this philosophy.
The credit rating agencies caused a Global Financial Crisis because they failed to properly assess the risk associated with subprime mortgages.
The reason, of course, is that the banks were their customers and the only ones that paid them, so the rating agencies did what they were told and hid the subprime risk.
To think that privatising the regulation of drugs would be any different is naive and idealistic. Not withstanding that, Big Pharma are private companies to begin with and have a long track record of deliberately deceiving people.
So much for the market and private corporations.
It’s not a question of the public versus private sector. It’s a question of big organisations not being transparent and accountable.
I don’t trust big corporations, Big Government, or Big Super [funds]. I only trust the people, especially those whose capital is at risk … the solution with big organisations, regardless of whether they are public or private, is to ensure there are proper checks and balances through separation of powers, accountability, and enforcement of the law.
Senator Rennick goes on to accuse various ratings agencies of corruption due to a failure of accountability and a lack of separation between the regulators and regulated institutions.
‘There is no substitute for integrity in leadership,’ said the Senator.
‘Unfortunately, it is lacking both in the public and private sectors. People First Party will fund the TGA from Treasury (who will collect fees from pharma) and split the functions of testing drugs from reviewing vaccine injuries.
‘We will not grant immunity to drug makers for vaccines, or any other drug, and hold them liable for product failure.
‘There is no perfect solution to any of this. The public versus private sector debate is a false dichotomy. Vigilance and integrity is key.’
This started a firestorm on the right. The private versus public debate is the cornerstone of the Australian Libertarian movement, while other conservative parties seek a more balanced approach between the two sectors.
NSW Libertarian MLC John Ruddick replied to Senator Rennick, writing: ‘Dear Senator Rennick, the Libertarian Party accepts your challenge with relish.’
Lachlan is 100 per cent correct. We will have a far more efficient and effective pharmaceutical approval system if the process is subject to competitive free market forces.
Centralising approvals etc is a recipe for certain corruption.
Yes, financial rating agencies were corrupt pre-GFC, but that was a mere symptom.
[The] cause was Bill Clinton (the state) demanding banks approve mortgages for many unsuitable applicants. Corruption then trickled down to [the] whole system … but the genesis of the rot was the big bossy state (as always).
Reality is that, bar the GFC and its rot, the ratings agency market has served investors well. The alternative would be a government department assessing investment risk.
‘Here’s the classic Libertarian hypocrisy,’ replied Senator Rennick, to the above. ‘If unregulated markets are the solution to everything, then why do you need regulators at all? If unregulated markets are the only bastion of positive outcomes, then why doesn’t Big Pharma only ever produce safe and effective drugs? The fact they are even calling for regulators proves their philosophy doesn’t work.’
Indeed, it is my view as a political observer that this topic is the most common reason conservative voters ultimately fail to join libertarian parties. Pure detachment from oversight can be as unhelpful as absolute regulation when it comes to the best outcome for citizens. This is because the private and public sectors are both predatory and perform best when left to scratch at each other.
John Humphreys, Chief Economist at the Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance, joined the conversation.
‘This post by Senator Rennick shows a common misunderstanding of the Libertarian position. Libertarians are not against governance. We are sceptical of centralised monopoly political power and believe that governance is done better when decentralised and competitive.’
That doesn’t mean that decentralised competitive governance is perfect. There is no Utopia in this world, and the attempt to impose Utopia is the fatal conceit at the heart of every leftist descent into tyranny.
All systems are imperfect, but the great virtue of decentralised and competitive systems is that they are relatively good at finding and fixing mistakes. In contrast, centralised political monopolies have uniquely bad incentives that lead inevitably to corruption and capture by special interest groups. All manner of Utopian planners have attempted to impose the “one true good” form of centralised political control, but they have failed because they misunderstand the nature of the problem.
Adding my own two cents here in the context of Big Pharma regulators – free markets work to the benefit of their incentive.
If they are funded by pharmaceutical companies, they will compete with their findings to secure more business, not on an honest report of safety. Pharmaceutical companies will fund regulators who approve their products. (Using healthy citizens as a market force only works if they are the customer, but too often government money is the customer as we saw with Covid vaccines.)
If they are funded by the government, they will make approvals that keep government ministers, health ministers, and the bureaucracy happy including the desires of those looking to retire into the private sector. Regulators funded by a mixture of these two will serve both these ambitions, but never the integrity and safety of the product.
To make this kind of regulation work, the penalties for failure have to be severe. Jail terms, economic ruin, the loss of elected office, and fines large enough to erase the profit gained by bad behaviour. Wrist-slapping is the great failure of all current regulation and has the same effect as soft sentencing on petty crime.
Returning to John Humphreys, he went on to say:
One of the consequences of heavy centralised regulation is that it helps create and protect large corporations, since regulations act as a barrier to entry and disproportionately hurt small and new business. That’s why Big Government and Big Business often work hand-in-glove … with Big Business lobbying government for more regulation. This is why there is a world of difference between being pro-market and being pro-business, and why Big Business generally doesn’t support Libertarians.
We see this incestuous dance between government and business with Big Super (mandated by government), Big Finance (bailed out by government), Big Pharma (protected by government), and many other sectors.
Nobody believes that super funds, banks, pharma, or any other industry is run as benevolent charities. Of course they are self-interested, but they are able to get away with significantly more dodgy sh*t because they are protected by Big Government. The solution is to remove their government protection, not dream about a Kum-ba-ya future bureaucracy that will magically forget their own self-interest.
The centralised political bureaucracy is not accidentally or temporarily broken. It is fundamentally broken.
Topher Field, director of Battleground Melbourne and author of Good People Break Bad Laws (and whom many of you may know from his marble videos educating the public on the preference system), has also been a part of this discussion.
‘I admire Senator Rennick greatly and after interviewing him I have said publicly that he is one of the most impressive intellects I’ve interacted with. But even courageous, intelligent, and sincere people can get things wrong, as Senator Rennick has in this case.’
He goes on:
The fallacy here is the false binary between ‘anarchy’ and ‘government regulation’, the idea that only a government body can keep people accountable.
Actually, there’s many non-government regulatory frameworks and they tend to work far better, for far longer, than government regulators which very quickly are either captured and manipulated by the industries they regulate or quickly start to cause the very problems they’re supposed to stop, as in the case of the US financial regulators forcing banks to approve bad loans, triggering the subprime mortgage crisis and GFC in 2008.
The fallacy that ‘only the government can do it’ is common among conservatives, nationalists, socialists, and almost every political philosophy except Libertarianism.
I used to fall prey to it myself, and the realisation that it helped me become a Libertarian was that ‘just because something should be done, that doesn’t mean it’s best if the government does it’.
The government quickly destroys everything it touches, and trying to use government power ‘the right way’ is like Boromir [from Lord of the Rings] trying to use the One Ring the right way. It’s too powerful and filled with evil and will not end the way you think no matter how sincere you may be in your intentions.
Senator Rennick replied, ‘Don’t put words in my mouth, Topher. “The fallacy here is the false binary between anarchy and government regulation, the idea that only a government body can keep people accountable.” I never said only a government body can keep people accountable. I clearly stated that I don’t trust governments or corporations. They both need to be supervised. The difference between me and the Libertarians is that I don’t believe that corporations can solve everything either. Big Pharma, for example, have a proven track record in deceit. Big Banks are constantly bailed out. Regardless of the process, if the rules aren’t efficient or enforced, then the outcome will be sub-optimal. The key is the quality of management.’
What I believe the Libertarians miss when it comes to the power of regulation (and who should administer it) is that, ultimately, the law is linked to the state which is determined by the people through the process of election. The link might be tenuous, but it is real. People need to have their hands on the regulation. It is a deeper sort of libertarianism than the force of markets so long as it takes place within a democracy, not a fake-ocracy.
We never want to end up in a situation where private entities are empowered to operate as law enforcement. Regulation implies legal punishment and so must always have a significant connection to government.
In most areas, market forces ‘regulate’ through profit where the punishment is bankruptcy. This is the only true non-government regulation that does not require the intervention of state law. As a rule, we do not trust this system entirely, with most citizens, of every voting type, agreeing that basic safety regulation and punishments should operate above market forces.
In others words, if you sell bad-tasting coffee, you might go broke, but if you sell coffee laced with cyanide, you go to jail. The same principle will always apply to Big Pharma. The problem is, no one is sending the drug companies to jail when they kill people. That is the failure point. People have to start going to jail, or the regulation discussion is pointless.
If you are wondering why there are no quotes included from the Liberal or National Parties, it is because they have not spoken on the topic. Despite critical problems with the regulation of pharmaceuticals in this country, they have nothing to say. Or perhaps they are worried that their hands are too dirty to clean up the mess.
At least the extended conservative movement is ready to have the discussion. What do you, dear readers, think? What would you like to see happen with the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry?
