Over the past month or so the prime minister and treasurer have branded themselves as champions of growth and investment. Anthony Albanese told a national small business summit that they were “vital … to Australia’s future prosperity, as job creators and innovators”. Treasurer Jim Chalmers told last month’s Australian Financial Review Business Summit of his desire to get the economy “more competitive and dynamic and productive”.

All this is sound rhetoric. But what does it mean in practice? Australia has joined a number of other Western countries in abandoning the hugely successful liberal market economic model and replacing it with a 1950s style state-directed interventionist model. Both the prime minister and the treasurer have argued that by pumping subsidies into Australian businesses under the auspices of the Future Made in Australia Act this will somehow stimulate the economy.