When I was first a university student in economics in the 1960s an important subject was what was variously called “Comparative Economic Systems”, seeking to examine the difference in structure and performance of “centrally planned” versus more “market-based” economic systems.
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Through much of the next three decades the concept of “central planning” became something of a “dirty word”, aligned with “communism” and “socialism”, as Western economies, in particular, became more “market” orientated and reliant, and many “communist” countries, such as the emerging Chinese economic powerhouse, sought to become more “capitalist” and market reliant, while maintaining fairly strict, communist, centralised “control”.
The Western transition to more market-based structures, as part of a quest for smaller, more fiscally constrained, governments should never have meant less, or no, “planning”. It should never have been seen as a “choice” between markets and planning – it was never that simple.
Many of our major policy challenges today are because of a lack of planning, a lack of medium to longer-term strategic thinking. This trend has been compounded by the accelerating shift of politics, and the focus of governments to the “short-term”. Politics today is alarmingly short-term, opportunistic, populous, mostly negative, whereby the major policy challenges, in almost every area of public policy, have been ignored or left to drift.
Our inadequate, and in some cases, failing economic and social infrastructure, in schools, hospitals, child and aged care, energy, local government, and most noticeably transport, reflect an alarming lack of planning, of basic forethought.
Not to mention the very significant longer-term challenges such as climate change which requires a planned transition, over decades, to renewables from fossil fuels, and from petrol/diesel powered cars and trucks to electric and autonomous vehicles, and so on.
In Sydney and Melbourne now, in particular, failures in transport planning have resulted in massive daily congestion, almost gridlock. Moreover, I have been left with a concerning sense that so called “planned” new transport “links/projects” will merely be short-term “fixes”, just moving the traffic jam around rather than providing lasting, sustainable, transport solutions, with many other “unintended consequences” because transport policies were developed in isolation from, not integrated with, other key policy areas and considerations.
Moreover, I fear that some of our new road projects are ignoring the likely impacts of responses to other policy challenges, for example the now irreversible, and accelerating trend to electric and autonomous vehicles, as an essential component of our inevitable transition to a low carbon society.
I saw a prediction this week (from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development) concerning trucking in the US and Europe as a result of the inevitable transition to autonomous/driver-less trucks, which will see much more freight carried, much more cheaply, with significantly reduced congestion, and virtually no accidents. There are some 6.4 million truck drivers across the US and Europe, 4.4 million of whom stand to lose their jobs in just the next 10 years, with some 2 million unlikely to work again.
Clearly, transport planning can’t be developed in a “vacuum”, but must be integrated with a host of other social and economic policies, in the case cited obviously vocational training, housing, and relocation policies, as a minimum.
What annoys me most is how our governments simply stick their heads in the sand on such issues, assuming I guess, “it won’t happen on their watch”. But, this and a host of other trends are well under way in what is an inevitable global transition, and the trends are accelerating.
Transport planning ... must be integrated with a host of other social and economic policies.
The disruption could be massive, and desperately needs to be managed. The effective response to the climate challenge is being built within what is an inevitable technological revolution, in power generation, in transport, in agriculture, and so on across our whole society.
Smart governments recognise these “inevitabilities” and seek to “lead” on them - seek to plan for them, and manage them and their consequences.
Take a moment and reflect on just how fast we have seen smart phones and social media develop and change our lives, and lifestyles, in just the last decade! And, it is just the early stage in the likely full impacts.
Planning is certainly not a “dirty word” but an imperative.
John Hewson is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, and a former Liberal opposition leader.