In support of free enterprise

It does not, as its critics sometimes claim, put the interests of businesses above those of consumers. On the contrary, free market policies in general, and competition policy in particular, are above all about putting the interests of the wider community above the special and powerful interest of producers and producer groups.

It does not protect and support the interests of big business. Rather, a competitive free market economy is the best restraint on the abuses of large and monopolistic enterprises, even the trans-national corporations so loathed by opponents of globalisation.

And it is not about connivance between businesses and politicians or bureaucrats in the name of a rationalist consensus. In fact, more than any other economic and political system, it rejects the tax breaks, corporate welfare, 'protective' regulations and other means by which business and government might collude to further the interests of business, usually at the expense of the wider community.

In a political environment where the very word 'rational' is becoming offensive, it may seem a lost cause for CCI to call for a reasoned debate about the desirable and feasible ends of economic policy, and the means of achieving them. But the economic and social cost to Australia if hostility to the free market is allowed to govern economic policy means that it is imperative to try.