Wrong Way: How Privatisation & Economic Reform Backfired

Book launch with Senator Doug Cameron

6pm - 8pm Thursday 20 September
speeches & formalities 6.30pm
at The Australia Institute

Level 1, Endeavour House
1 Franklin Street Manuka ACT
(opposite Manuka Coles)

Since the 1980s, successive waves of ‘economic reform’ have radically changed the Australian economy. We have seen privatisation, deregulation, marketisation, and the contracting out of government services such as transport and education.

The benefits of economic reform are increasingly being questioned. Alongside growing voter disenchantment, new voices argue that instead of free markets, economic reform has led to unaccountable oligopolies, increased prices, reduced productivity and a degraded sense of the public good.

In Wrong Way, Australia’s leading economists and public intellectuals look at key economic reforms, including child care, aged care, housing, banking, prisons, universities and the NBN. Have these reforms for the Australian community and its economy been worthwhile? Have they given us a better society, as promised?

The book will be available for purchase at the launch.