Long before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the global economy, a reset to serve the wellbeing of people and the planet was plainly needed. As Australia rebuilds, after the immediate health crisis has passed, it must be with the explicit purpose of constructing an economically and ecologically sustainable world. Executive director of Per Capita and former political advisor Emma Dawson teamed up with author and professor Janet McCalman to envision how that reconstruction might be achieved in a new book called What Happens Next? Reconstructing Australia After COVID-19. With contributions from some of Australia’s most respected academics and leading thinkers, What Happens Next? sets out a progressive, reforming agenda to tackle the twin crises of climate change and inequality in a new pandemic age.
Today, Emma and Janet are on the blog to answer a few of our questions about What Happens Next? – read on!
Emma Dawson
Tell us about your book, What Happens Next?.
Our book is about bringing Australians together to heal our society. The pandemic has opened up old wounds and found its way into the cracks in our armour: under-paid, unprotected employment with no sick pay for our care workers; under-regulated aged care; under-funded childcare; shortages of social housing; of expecting the market (e.g. international students) to pay for our own universities and research. Looming over it all is climate change and the severe inequality that has grown over the past four decades.
Our economy was not doing well before the pandemic and people were finding themselves falling behind. We can do better. What Happens Next? offers a roadmap to a recovery that will stick! We need to have the courage that Australia had during and after World War 2 when we built our welfare state, our manufacturing industries, our research universities, much of our irrigation schemes, our airlines, our homes and our education systems. At the end of the war, all countries were deep in debt, but they spent their way out of it and built a new world better than before. We have a similar opportunity again if we can find a new ‘green accord’ and invest in a renewables-led economy that works for people, not just big corporations. We need a new national partnership between all sectors of society.
Is the idea that we can just return to life as it was before COVID-19 an unrealistic fantasy? Which elements of pre-pandemic life do you see being forsaken, continued or altered?
Unfortunately, it is, but there are some things we don’t want to return to. The hard things will be continuing restrictions on mass gatherings until we have reliable vaccines; the other hard thing is that we are now in an age of pandemics and this is likely to happen again. But as with all adversity, we must ask: can we find new ways of doing things? Can we grow from this set-back?
What do you think will be the biggest challenge Australia faces when we do overcome the immediate health crisis?
Our biggest challenge is to start thinking about everyone, not just about those who are already well-off. Stimulus must not go into big corporate pockets first. Small business has been one of the biggest casualties of this crisis. We need funds for manufacturing start-ups using renewable energy, and for food producers’ co-operatives. We need to rescue the arts and creative workers. We need more public servants. Governments need to change their song sheet from blaming the poor for being poor—being leaners rather than lifters—and accept that investing in the people with good housing for all, free education, free health care, a living safety and above all, a dedication to full employment, just as we did in 1945, will build a stronger, happier Australia. Our best GDP growth was during the high-deficit years after the war when both Labor and the Liberals built schools, universities, public housing and infrastructure. In other words, a strong public sector that invests in the nation and a generous welfare state, are the basis of economic growth. Before the pandemic, austerity combined with rent-seeking over the past twenty years slowed down economic growth, outside the stock market and high finance, to a crawl.
In our book there are essays on rebuilding manufacturing, food growing, energy, the public service (which was a huge employer of people that has shrunk and reduced the career chances of thousands of young people, especially graduates). There are essays on healthcare, on nurturing children better, on schools, vocational education and universities. These are ideas we hope people will debate and develop.
We also need to rethink our democracy so that citizens have more say through deliberative forums and consultative planning of economic and environmental reconstruction in their region or community.
We are not utilizing the full capacities of our people, and our people are our greatest asset.
How different do you think Australia’s actual post-pandemic future will be from what you’ve proposed?
Of course, we don’t know. We fear that we won’t make the big changes to the economy, the social fabric, education, research, agriculture and the environment that we must to survive. We fear that people will continue to be spooked by fake news and spin and be too timid to risk real change. The way that real change has to happen of course, is for people to mobilise, join political parties and unions and make it happen. Just sitting there feeling miserable and waiting for a magic leader to come out of the sky will not work. Nothing that has made life safer and better for people has been won without a battle. Real change comes from the bottom and prods the top into action.
Janet McCalman
What Happens Next? features contributions from some of Australia’s most respected academics and thinkers. How did you go about sourcing these contributions and then organising them into one coherent collection?
We started talking about this just seven months ago. The idea of a Green Accord had emerged in our local Labor branch in North Melbourne. We were thinking then about how to bring people on board in a cooperative way to tackle climate change.
Then the pandemic hit, and Emma and I started talking. Per Capita and Emma have a wonderful array of fellows and collaborators, and Emma seems to know almost everyone. Some we searched for on the web; others were colleagues; and so like Topsy, it grew. Our authors were enthusiastic and produced their essays on time, despite the pandemic. Perhaps this shows how much thinking about ‘What Happens Next’ matters!
Is there an example of a country that you believe has already taken steps towards an equitable and sustainable post-pandemic future?
It is a mixed bag, with primarily European countries with a history of social democracy (even conservative governments such as in Germany) combined with advanced technological expertise and innovation: Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands—which is the second largest food exporter in the world after the US! (Why can’t we do that too, rather than export coal). There are also poor countries that have done well, including the Indian state of Kerala, where they have made the best of very limited resources and severe environmental constraints. COVID-19 has found out those nations with weak, corrupt and selfish states. Those where citizens feel connected to each other and have a high level of trust, have done well.
Is there any action that an individual person can take to help ensure we get the kind of future you envision for Australia?
Absolutely. This is the time to become involved: join political parties even when they are badly run and discouraging. If you want to change politics, you need hundreds of thousands of people joining the major parties and forcing change by sheer numbers. Party bosses need to be swamped by new members they can’t control. Politicians will respond with courage when they can see they have the numbers behind them. This is time to read, think, talk and act. Learn how politics works; get involved in policy debates; start discussion groups and book clubs; spread ideas and energy. As someone very famous taught us: people make their own history, although never in circumstances of their own choosing.
What do you hope readers of What Happens Next? will get out of it?
We hope that readers will come away from the book being able to imagine a different future: that the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter. We offer a broad roadmap that we hope will bring business and unions together. This time we also need farmers and universities and research institutes and NGOs. At least half of this reconstruction has to be in the bush where jobs are disappearing, businesses are closing, towns are shrinking, and everywhere extreme weather is disrupting the bush and the farm. The climate emergency is only going to get worse and we have to tackle it together.
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals could be the core of a new Green Accord, where all parties commit to them, and in return receive subsidies, tax breaks and support for approved projects. The Accord would equally demand good wages and conditions for workers. These sorts of public-private partnerships have been very successful in countries from Scandinavia, Western Europe to Korea and Japan.
Finally, I hope readers will be inspired by Thomas Mayor’s opening chapter about the Uluru Statement from the Heart. If we can start that healing, it can provide a new light on the hill for all of us.
And finally, what’s up next for you?
Emma and Per Capita are prodigiously productive of reports, commentaries and research across the public domain. It is a space to be closely watched. Emma writes frequently for the Guardian and the Financial Review.
Janet has two books coming out from MUP next year: a new edition of Struggletown in March and in September, a social history of the thousands of former convicts from Tasmania who made Victoria home.
Thanks!
—What Happens Next? Reconstructing Australia After COVID-19, edited by Emma Dawson and Janet McCalman (Melbourne University Press) is out now.
What Happens Next?
Reconstructing Australia after COVID-19
In the wake of a global pandemic, Australia's most respected experts chart the way forward.
Long before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the global economy, a reset to serve the wellbeing of people and the planet was plainly needed. As Australia rebuilds, after the immediate health crisis has passed, it must be with the explicit purpose of constructing an economically and ecologically sustainable world. After the Great Depression and the Second World War, economic thinking was transformed across the Anglosphere...
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