Glorious idealism and the free market vision

The market is not just about materialism. It’s savouring a meal, lovingly prepared by those who front up for work because they want their customers to leave satisfied. It’s the natural high that comes from helping the right family find the right house, knowing the bricks and mortar will soon become a home.

By failing to acknowledge you can’t, in the end, regulate for what really matters, Kevin Rudd wrongly concludes the moralising hand of government is needed to become good economic citizens.

Our economy is fairing relatively well not because of regulation. As we’ve seen elsewhere, rules can be got around or ignored if those supposedly being regulated choose to. Australia has performed because the vast majority of those in the business community, contrary to our PM’s low expectations, have opted to do the right thing.

President Obama recently acknowledged the solution for Iraq is not military in nature. The US cannot police Iraqi streets until they are completely safe, just as regulators cannot protect us economically. Why - because it’s ultimately up to individuals to make it work by doing the right thing.

Obama is unwilling to jeopardise his political capital by extending this same principle to winding back regulation. Australia therefore has a unique opportunity to fill the intellectual and spiritual policy void brought about by recent global economic events.

We can only hope the PM reinvents himself again on the flight to London, completing the transformation from an economic conservative to a social democrat to a neoliberal.