Australians are all conservatives now

During the 1970s conservatives stressed the importance of free markets, the need for deregulation, cuts to industry assistance and extensive privatisation of government business enterprises to reinvigorate stagnant economies. Such proposals were painted as being too ideologically driven, too inequitable and too politically divisive. Privatisation was seen as tantamount to selling the family silver and Australia's heritage.

But it was Labor administrations driven by economic and political crises during the '80s that turned to conservative solutions and deregulated the financial sector, sold off banks and significant government-owned businesses such as Qantas. Deregulation and privatisation are permanently embedded in the policy landscape. There is no turning back.

Conservative suggestions for using market mechanisms such as carbon trading, user pay and tax credits to achieve more effective environment, water, transport and education outcomes become increasingly adopted by all governments and parties.

On industrial relations, conservatives long argued for secret ballots before strikes, ending closed-shop workplaces and dismantling the IR club to reduce trade union powers and improve Australia's international competitiveness. Such reforms were rejected as being barbaric, a return to the law of the jungle and an assault on the working class and trade unions.

Yet labour deregulation started by the Keating government and accelerated by John Howard has become unstoppable. It has delivered fewer strikes, real wage growth and record low unemployment. When Rudd announced the watering down of Labor's previous restrictive industrial relations policies this week, it was an acceptance of the inevitability of the workplace reform agenda.

So the conservative policy agenda wins regardless of who is in office. To paraphrase Richard Nixon, we are all conservatives now, even Rudd. So let Labor pretend to debate policy and to criticise the Howard Government. It really doesn't matter, for in office Labor governments eat their slogans of reaction and implement the conservative reform agenda with enthusiasm.

Notwithstanding its wailing about Howard's "market fundamentalism", Labor has no real alternatives. And no wonder. Its ideological foundations have long been eroded and made irrelevant by the continued success of conservatism, changed times and voter expectations.