Policy and Responses for Australia

I am going to be very old-fashioned in this paper and I make no apologies for this. I shall draw partly on the authority of Giblin (in his Inaugural Lecture of 19301) for my stance; and I am most happy to be joined in it, quite independently, by at least three contemporaries — Harold Levien, Merv Lewis and Jim Perkins.2 Put succinctly. I want to advocate easier fiscal policy (coupled with offsetting monetary policy) and the support of those of our existing institutions which, hallowed by history and usage, influence those responsible for the setting of money-wages and prices. In addition, I shall suggest, drawing on recent American discussions and the general approval of the authors of the McCracken Report,3 some mild ‘carrot and stick’ measures that we might consider as back-ups to the influence of our own institutions on the decision-makers in our society. When putting forward these suggestions, I shall try to operate within the constraints imposed by the present Federal government and its advisers, try to devise a package that is acceptable to their philosophy, and to their political and economic outlook. I do this, not because I agree with them — they are in the main repugnant to me — but because I find the present level of unemployment so unnecessarily wickedly high as to make unthinkable either an emasculated Pontius Pilate act or the attitude of let them — the pollies, their advisers and the unemployed — stew in their own juice, it can only hurry on the time when the whole system may be overturned.