While I don’t normally see any point in criticising other blog posts, this effort by Sinclair Davidson is so absurd it can’t be allowed to pass without some comment. If people want to pass as public intellectuals - and get paid by the taxpayer - they should surely comply with the basic standards of critical evaluation that are required of undergraduate assignments. Or at least that’s what we require in business schools; maybe economists only require mindless evidence-free rhetoric.
Davidson begins with the sweeping conclusion that ‘Mr Rudd appears to be out of ideas.’ Parroting a line that Lazarus-with a-dose-of-formaldehyde Howard is using in his efforts to return to the spotlight, Davidson claims that ‘The Rudd government is the first is a generation that is non-reformist.’ Wow, such an insight after the government has been in power for all of five months.
According to Davidson, ‘While bereft of ‘big ideas’ his government has quietly been dismantling some important economic reforms.’ What are they? Well may you ask. ‘The Howard government’s WorkChoices legislation has been scrapped.’ This was done quietly? What bullshit. Julia Gillard has talked about little else for months. And what other ‘important economic reforms’ does Davidson list that the government has ‘quietly dismantled’? Well, ummm, none actually.
I can’t be bothered deconstructing every line in this appalling piece of pap but here’s another sample, discussing the 2020 summit:
Many big-picture ideas have been suggested; although none are original, nor worthy of a weekend in Canberra.
What a remarkable feat, to have evaluated all the ideas suggested by 1,000 people over a weekend by 8 pm Sunday night and come to the conclusion that none of them was ‘worthy of a weekend in Canberra’, whatever that is supposed to mean. Sinclair’s acumen is exceeded only by his work-rate.
Apparetly he is in good company: ‘Conservative bloggers have been unmerciful in their contempt for the whole process and the outcome.’ Gosh, the caterers are still packing up the orange juice bottles and conservative bloggers have already made up their minds about the outcome. No suggestion of closed minds there then. And then there are incomprehensible lines such as this:
The legalisation of all drugs to relieve pressures on prisons and the criminal justice system seems to be exactly wrong.
Well possibly, but why? Or is a professor of institutional economics now also to be taken as an authority on criminology? The confusion is compounded with the next sentence: ‘In short lots of social engineering …’ Maybe I’m thick, but I can’t for the life of me understand how legalising something constitutes ’social engineering’.
Mixed in with all this intemperate ranting is a goodly dose of hackneyed conservative contempt for ‘the progressive mind’. ‘Reopening the Republic debate alone should consume the chattering classes for years.’ Honestly, Sinclair, even Gerard Henderson has stopped using that tired old expression so beloved by the late Paddy McGuinness. Hmmm, he was an economist too.
Throughout the piece we find errors like these: ‘The Rudd government is the first is a generation that is non-reformist’; ‘the governments own in-house economic think-tank’; ‘interventionalist’; ‘the governments’ economic narrative’; ‘the Howard governments’ economic record’ (for god’s sake Sinclair, is it really so hard to learn how to use apostrophes?); and ‘none are original’. Davidson comments (sourly?) that ‘This piece just got knocked back from the international MSM’; jeez I wonder why.
Sinclair Davidson is a full professor at a public university. It goes without saying that he has every right to hold strong opinions and express them forcefully, but the professoriate deserves better than a piece like this that lacks any semblance of reasoned argument or even of common sense.
