Fair Economics - Dennis Glover and Chris Berg

While being introduced it was noted the speakers had met for a beer the night before. Neither Dennis Glover nor his sparring partner Chris Berg struck me as the kind of people I would like to have a beer with.  Nevertheless, I did find their animated disagreements enlightening and not without thought. The problem for me, however, was that they both seemed to be coming from entrenched political ideologies that coloured not just their ideas, but their very language, mannerisms and indeed their lives on the whole.

Glover is Labor through and through. I revere the Redfern speech I thought he had helped pen as one of the high points in Australian politics.  During the session, I became suspicious of this unfounded factoid, and a little research after the session proved me incorrect – it was not Glover at all, but Don Watson. Throughout the session, Glover would refer back to his boyhood when responding to questions, drawing parallels between the fate of his childhood suburb and wider Australian social issues. At times, it illustrated the meaning of a word I had only learnt of a few months earlier in another writing subject: “bathos”.  

Berg works for the Institute of Public Affairs (‘IPA’). For those unaware, the IPA is a well-known, if perhaps oddly named conservative think-tank. The public affairs it concerns itself with are the abolition of minimum wage and discrimination laws, casting doubt on climate change science and the privatisation of government services. In particular, they would like to see the ABC privatised and perhaps put into a shoebox and shoved under a bed with the rest of the ‘Reds’. It sports executives like the irascible John Roskam, and James Bolt, son of the infamous Andrew Bolt. People like Gina Rinehart and George Pell are big fans of the IPA… I’m sure you get the drift by now. Given the erstwhile left-leaning line-up of the festival, I felt duty bound to attend this session (if only to see how poorly the crowd would behave). I was mildly (although not wholly) disappointed. Nobody spat at Berg, although he was booed and quietly hissed at on a couple of occasions.

Naturally, my ears were most tuned to what the men would say on my favourite issue, environmentalism. Neither could be really described as ‘green’ but they did both acknowledge the issue. I was particularly surprised to hear Berg speak articulately on the need for adaptation. Typical to right-think, he ignored the raw economic fact that mitigation is cheaper than adaptation, however, he did correctly highlight that the changes are already happening. Climate change is already damaging our society, and adaptation isn’t something we need to consider in the future, it’s a requirement of our current situation. To this end, Berg argued for the market-based solution of property rights (ie the right of a private individual to own any land, water or air they could afford). Dennis neatly shot this idea in the knee by pointing out that climate change is an issue best tackled by scientists, rather than economists and bankers.

This was the only session I attended in the ‘Bendigo Bank’ room, and I was amused to note the freemason symbol of the square and compass engraved above a doorway. The Freemasons are ‘an open church,’ of sorts and welcome men of all religions (no women, though – however ‘continental freemasonry’ is now challenging both traditional requirements: a religion and a penis). This symbol, to me, represented both men to some extent. While following their different ‘religions’ of left and right, they were both thoroughly entrenched in the status quo, members of the club upheld by the prominence and dominance of the two major parties. And they both had a penis.