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Knowledge now: its unintended consequences: Geoff Sharp identifies the university as the new engine of neo-liberal capitalism and asks if we are in touch with the unintended consequences of this historic alliance.

Article Excerpt
Just a few weeks ago at the University of Melbourne Robert Manne presented twenty essays entitled Dear Mr Rudd (Black Inc. 2008) to Glyn Davis, the Vice-Chancellor of the University. Glyn Davis, readers will recall, once worked in close association with Kevin Rudd in Queensland government circles. One expression of a certain mutuality may be their co-chairing of the great Canberra consultation, which began on 19 April. Another, more questionable, reason for Davis' role could be his other chairmanship--of the Group of Eight leading universities (G8).

While some of the contributors to Dear Mr Rudd attended the Canberra meeting this was no guarantee that the prime ministerial ear was turned in their direction. When the publication of these essays was announced the Prime Minister was quick to say that if this group, in particular, now thought they might have special access, 'they had elected the wrong guy'. That reservation is less likely to relate to the Chairman of the G8. As this article will argue, higher education is now quite central to a bipartisan understanding of the future prospects of the Australian economy. How its role should enter public discussion, however, is itself a debatable issue, one which has not been canvassed in the lead-up to this event.

The Arena editors have long argued that while scholars should contribute to democratic debate, the university, as an institution, should stand at arm's length from particular political alignments. This is particularly the case when party policies appear to converge. If Australians are not to march half blindly into their future, there must be a basic questioning of open-ended growth as a central plank of the current convergence of policies. The unintended consequences of ignoring that issue could have devastating implications for the future of Australian democracy.

The first sections of this article outline the way the unintended effects of neo-liberal economic assumptions could contribute to that outcome. The later sections discuss the problematic engagement of universities with government policies.

Just how open to democratic process the Canberra meeting was, remains full of ambiguity. While at least in the short term one should welcome such initiatives, the populist hoopla which announced this one was in some tension with the top-down control of the selection process. Even so, the whole event may well have helped to consolidate the step back from the creeping authoritarianism of the Coalition's version of neoliberalism. Among a minority it may even stimulate the reflection that, while Rudd is espousing a softer approach to the neo-liberal endorsement of open-ended growth, his basic economic policies are continuous with those of the Coalition. In short, unless Labor can dig far deeper into the particular conjunction of circumstances that produced the neo-liberal infatuation with 'market rules', no reform of particular policies can guarantee Australia's future.

This underlying issue had no clear place on the agenda of the recent meeting in Canberra. To have placed it there would have been to question the growth and development fixations of the new government. Nevertheless, any move towards stirring up the public realm, even to the degree meetings such as this might achieve, just could lead to unintended consequences.

Unintended Consequences

Unintended consequences. No, we don't know half of what we are often ready to think we do and the consequences of our actions can cut both ways. Friedrich Hayek, as patriarch of neo-liberalism, was within a tradition that made that a central theme. But the way he did so distinguished between two sources of unintended consequences. For him the effects of participation in the market can turn out to be more satisfying than was anticipated even if they were in no sense intended. On the other hand, as he also affirmed, if we seek to plan for public well-being, unintended consequences can be devastating.

In Hayek's neo-liberal philosophy the doctrine of unintended consequences is first...

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