Chalmers gets philosophical while Dutton goes after corporations

In case you were wondering, we’re living in Australia’s fourth economy — at least according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

In a speech titled “Patterns of Progress”, Chalmers argued yesterday that Australia had first a colonial economy, then an industrial one, then the open trading economy of Hawke and Keating. Now, after a wasted decade of Coalition rule, we’re in a fourth economy — of renewables, services, and AI (because it’s now compulsory for politicians to invoke AI). Chalmers added fragmentation, not so much because it fit with his neat 1940s/1980s/2020s schema but because it gave him an excuse to attack Peter Dutton as divisive.