Chalmers offers Australia a New Deal

Hayek explained that sound economic decisions cannot be made centrally by experts or bureaucrats because they can never have all the knowledge needed. Moreover, they lack transient information about people, local conditions and special circumstances - that is, the knowledge of time and place. That knowledge is held by millions of people and the price mechanism enables them to use that knowledge effectively in economic decisions.

Free markets optimise the economy for the benefit of free people.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment told us that liberty works and that prosperity flows from it. Two hundred years of history has shown us that this is true – that it works in practice. Moreover, it applies, not just in the Anglosphere or in the developed world. The concepts are valid universally.

Societies which have embraced liberal democratic principles – individual rights, private property, the rule of law, and representative government – have thrived. Now everyone can live happy, prosperous and meaningful lives if they and their leaders choose to build their societies on these principles.

Let us hope that Jim Chalmers allows us to set our own values, resists the temptation to impose his own, and allows the free market to continue to deliver prosperity.