A Modest Farmer [Bert Kelly], The Bulletin, October 6, 1981, p. 94.

Recently I poked gentle fun at the South Australian Liberal Minister of Industrial Affairs, Dean Brown, for relying on the ability of governments to wisely guide industrial development. Since then I have read an article in The Australian Quarterly by Michael Stutchbury which traces the failure of Don Dunstan’s attempt at guiding SA industry.

No one denies that Dunstan had brains, that he was full of enthusiasms or could express his enthusiasms with eloquence. And he was in full control of SA’s government machine. Yet his efforts to guide our State’s industry failed miserably.

Dunstan’s idea was to give us a more diversified industrial structure. He thought we were too dependent on the car and whitegoods industries and this made us too reliant on markets in other States. “When the purse strings are tightened in NSW and Victoria, South Australia strangles,” he complained. So he set out to diversify our industries. He had drawn up a scale of merit marks; those industries that employed a lot of female labour scored best, and so did those who paid high wages. Mundane matters such as ready access to raw materials were not considered important. The tobacco industry was put on top of the list but all the tobacco leaf had to be carted in and most of the finished product carried out again. Or perhaps our farms were to be diversified also and we were to be guided to grow tobacco. Those industries that used a very modern technology were looked upon with particular favour because we were to become the technological capital of Australia.

In spite of these grand designs, nothing much happened. I quote from Stutchbury’s article:

Once target industries were identified, Dunstan’s plan was to try to interest local companies to fill the perceived gaps. Dunstan maintained that this approach had not been as successful as expected because of the claimed lack of entrepreneurial skills in the local business community. Thus the emphasis often shifted to trying to attract business from outside the State. Failing those two steps, it was envisaged that the State Government would itself fill particular gaps by forming companies for this purpose. That this last resort was never carried out Dunstan blamed on the lack of entrepreneurial skill within the bureaucracy. There was even an unrealised Dunstan proposal to establish a business school to train public servants for government entrepreneurial ventures … The industrial development bureaucracy found it necessary to devote most of its efforts to opposing (with mixed success) proposals by the Industries Assistance Commission to reduce tariffs in individual industries, particularly the motor vehicle industry.

So even then the bureaucrats spent most of their time working out ways of stopping the tide of change going in and out. And no doubt our captains of industry, those valiant defenders of the free enterprise system, spent most of their time on their knees asking for government assistance in one form or another. No wonder Dunstan’s grand design never got off the ground, in spite of everyone’s splendid intentions.

But that was in Dunstan’s time, with a socialist driving the South Australian ship. What are things like now? Let me quote again from Stutchbury’s article:

The stated aims and policies of the present Liberal Party South Australian Government provide a striking continuity to the experience of the 1970s. Despite having been elected on a smaller government platform, its policy utterances at times seen indistinguishable from the interventionist strategies of the Dunstan administration.

For instance, the Minister of Industrial Affairs, Dean Brown, clearly laid down technology as the desired attribute of local industry. He has said, “The South Australian Government wants Adelaide to become the technological capital of Australia and we are determined to make sure that our industry responds to the challenge.” In this same speech he implicitly recognised the areas of market failure perceived by the Dunstan Government. For example, he bemoaned past deficiencies of “initiative, determination and people prepared to take the necessary risks” in manufacturing and claimed that research and development spending in manufacturing industries was “far too slow”.

Thus the State Government has announced plans to spend $3-4 million on developing a ‘technology park’ in Adelaide to attract high technology industry. Desired industries nominated by Mr Brown for this development include space technology, solar power and information processing.

Stutchbury seems to see Brown as being very much like Mr Dunstan. I see him as a socialist in Liberal clothing.