Fisher’s Ghost is rising will anyone listen?

We remember Paul Keating’s “humility” in self-promotion, unfortunately Wayne Swan has a character that shies away from this behaviour.

But Labor cannot afford Swan’s humility: he needs to be out of the back room, in the cab with the punters on their radios, on the television  in their living rooms letting them know what he is doing. For Labor to have a long term in Government it needs to own the economic debate.

Despite Hockey being criticised by some in his own party, he has struck a nerve with the electorate.

Swan needs to take the debate where Hockey will never be able to go.

But more importantly, we as a society need to re-embrace social markets. Our community cannot afford not to learn from our history, our future is too important.

At the turn off the last century we saw significant changes in the way capital was organised, we saw different mechanisms to protect the consumer. It was primarily regulation or anti-trust laws in liberal democracies with all their inherent shortcomings.

Social Democracies had the added tool of utilising public enterprise to create social markets. Now is the time for this tool to be brought out of the shed and put back in the workshop. The other tools on their own are ineffective.