The assistant minister for competition, charities and Treasury and assistant minister for employment’s speech to the Economic Society of Australia.
John Maynard Keynes once wrote ‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.’
In academia and parliament, I’ve certainly found that to be true. Economics is surprisingly powerful as a tool for public policy. Those of you who are established in your careers will know well the power that economics has had in terms of shaping Australia’s trajectory.
Last month, we lost Max Corden, one of Australia’s great economists, and somebody who, after fleeing the Nazis in 1939, became one of the great Australian pioneers of openness. Max’s work on tariff reform was used by the Tariff Board, the predecessor to what is now the Productivity Commission, to make the case for Gough Whitlam’s 1973 tariff cut, in which all tariffs were cut overnight by 25%.
Max’s story was one of coming to Australia, being welcomed here and becoming a great advocate for openness. He knew my grandfather, Keith Leigh, who died two years before I was born and would tell me about how the two of them spoke of world events at Melbourne University in the 1950s and 1960s. That intellectual curiosity and global outlook reflect the very best of Australian academia and the economics profession.
You may have heard Thomas Carlyle’s put-down of economists as being ‘the dismal science’. Perhaps you know that the reason that Carlyle described our discipline as the dismal science was that we had what was in his mind the ‘dismal’ view that all human beings — whatever their skin colour — should be regarded as equal.
In that light, I proudly wear the badge of the ‘dismal science’. It is a reminder that economics has its origins in the notion of human equality; the principle that one person’s wellbeing is as valuable to society as another’s.
Max Corden was also a remarkably generous soul in terms of the time he spent with others. He always seemed to have time to ask junior researchers about their work. When I visited Melbourne University in 2006, I loved the chance to engage with Max, to chat with somebody who had worked on the world stage on issues of trade liberalisation.
Read the full speech.
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