Fortunately, I made the greatest misjudgment of my working life while I was still at university in Newcastle. I concluded that economics was hopelessly unrealistic and boring, whereas accounting was practical and fascinating.
The most disillusioning moment of my working life came soon after I heard that I’d passed the last exam to become a chartered accountant. For years I’d told myself that, once I was qualified, I’d be confident, capable and contented as an auditor.
Nothing changed. I had to admit to myself I neither enjoyed being an accountant nor was much good at it. A year or so later I washed up at The Sydney Morning Herald to offer my services as an over-aged graduate cadet, at a much lower wage.
The news editor who hired me said he didn’t imagine I’d last, but it was worth a try. It was only at the man’s wake a year or two ago that his widow explained what he meant. Knowing I was an accountant, he’d tried to persuade Fairfax to pay me more than a cadet’s wage, but failed.
The editor soon suggested I try my hand at economic journalism. “Accountant, economist – pretty much the same thing, surely?” I bit my tongue and took his advice. Smartest move in my working life.
This month is the 40th anniversary of my appointment as the Herald’s economics editor – surely some kind of record. I’ve been writing for The Age for much of that time.
My survival is owed to a great extent to the trouble I had recovering all the economics I was supposed to have learnt at uni – and to the many hours people who ultimately became professors, Treasury secretaries and Reserve Bank governors spent on the phone with me, explaining the facts of economic life.
Whatever I learnt I immediately explained to the readers. For all those years I’ve seen my role as explaining how the economy works, why economists take the attitudes they do and what the government is seeking to achieve with its policies.
Four decades as an opinion writer leave you with a lot of strongly held opinions. In the early years I preached the prevailing gospel of economic reform; lately I’ve been more like a theatre critic, helping readers decide whether they agree with particular policies.
And, like many old journos, these days I don’t have much faith in either side of politics.
Economic life – and that’s what economics is, the study of “the ordinary business of life” – has changed hugely while I’ve been in this job. All the deregulation and privatisation of the Hawke-Keating years have greatly increased the degree of competitive pressure facing our businesses – from imports and other businesses – much of which they have passed through to their employees.
It’s a long time since anyone thought of Australia as The Land of the Long Weekend.
The world changes more frequently than it used to. The value of our dollar now changes by the minute; the Reserve Bank reviews the level of interest rates once a month. Jobs – even full-time, permanent jobs – have become less permanent.
Much of this change stems not from governments but from the rapid pace of technological change and globalisation (itself to a large extent the product of advances in telecommunications and information processing).
Our standard of living has risen greatly over the years, and we’re surrounded by gadgets that do amazing tricks, though it’s no longer certain that children will end up richer than their parents. Youngsters stay much longer in education, but will have to work until they’re 70.
Home loans have become much easier to get, but infinitely harder to afford.
Pay rises have to be bargained for – often less via unions than directly with the boss - and, over the past four years, have become tiny to non-existent. Rises used to be doled out several times a year by a bench of judges in Melbourne.
My enthusiasm for my topic – for my 43rd federal budget, for instance – is undiminished. Why? Because I keep learning more economics and because the economy, and economic fashions, keep changing.
One “learning” I've acquired is that, while economics - the business of producing and consuming, earning and spending – is and always will be vitally important, it needs to be kept in its place. An economics-obsessed nation isn’t likely to be a happy, fulfilled nation.
Malcolm Turnbull now portrays himself as the great champion of “aspiration”. He’s right. All of us should aspire to something better. But there are plenty of goals more worthy and likely to be more satisfying than gaining a higher income.
What would be wrong with aspiring to make life better for others rather than ourselves?
It’s the same with that great god, economic growth. It’s a good thing to grow. But why must the economy grow bigger rather than better?
I aspire to an economy where bosses are less obsessed with earning more and less convinced that being tough on their employees and customers is the way to get there. Why are they so sure making more money under those conditions will make them happy?
I aspire to an economy where bosses (and politicians) calm down and realise that working with an engaged and satisfied staff to give customers value for money is a more genuinely rewarding way to work and live. I can’t believe such an economy would do badly.
