Abundance: the US book is a sensation among our progressive MPs. But can it spur action in Canberra?

The Guardian

a day ago

'We should be able to argue that the clean energy future should be fucking awesome.'
It's days away from the start of the 48th parliament, and if in Canberra there's one book that you must at least pretend to have read by then, it's Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
Klein, a New York Times journalist and host of a popular podcast, produced the above quote during an interview in March, a couple of weeks after the book's release.
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With that kind of enthusiasm, it's no wonder that the book – subtitled How We Build a Better Future – is a sensation among progressives in America and around the world.
Klein and Thompson helpfully distil the book into a simple idea: 'To have the future we want, we need to build and invent more of what we need.'
Need more?
At its heart, the authors are trying to create a more effective progressive movement focused on providing for people in ways that matter for them – from affordable housing and childcare, to key infrastructure, to cheap and clean energy.
In Australia, Productivity Commission research has found that the construction sector is building fewer homes per hour worked than in the 1990s, despite adding more than 700,000 home building jobs.
The PC places the blame squarely on a proliferation of rules and compliance that has slowed the pace of innovation and wrapped up builders and developers in red tape.
Meanwhile, Deborah Cobb-Clark, an economics professor at the University of Sydney, at a conference last week highlighted survey data which showed 40% of young Australians think they might not have a comfortable place to live in the next 12 months.
The pessimism runs deeper than housing.
In 2022, 72% of all Aussies did not believe a child born then would do better than their parents – a 14 percentage point increase from the year before, and the biggest rise in the world.
'There's a lot of pessimism, and a lot of angst, and a lot of concern among young Australians about their place in Australian society,' Cobb-Clark said. 'For many outcomes it's perceptions of inequality that are more important than real inequality.'
The answer, say Klein and Thompson, is a 'liberalism that builds' – a can-do government that is focused on outcomes.
Klein elaborated on the Pod Save America podcast: 'The future is going to be defined on affordability'.
'We are in a period where the big economic problem for a long time is going to be: the things people need the most of, we just don't have enough of them.'
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is trying to sell us his own vision of a cleaner, greener and more dynamic Australian economy built on industries of the future. He sees a major role for the government in driving this transformation.
So it's no wonder he has called the book a 'ripper' and said it is doing the rounds through 'a whole bunch' of Labor colleagues.
Andrew Leigh, an assistant minister in the treasury portfolio, is a convert who has been – to use the term doing the rounds online 'abundance pilled'.
Leigh, the author of a number of economics books and who has a PhD in the subject, even titled a speech in June 'The Abundance Agenda'.
The chair of the Productivity Commission, Danielle Wood, has read it and found much to agree with; after all, finding ways to unleash the productive potential of the economy is her job.
A little over a month out from Chalmers' economic reform roundtable, Wood has talked about how Australia must regain a 'growth mindset'.
In the US, where Trump is reversing major spending bills for clean energy, the authors are arguing for no less than the dawn of a new political order to replace the tired neoliberalism that began its decline in the 2010s.
Faith in government and its legitimacy rests with producing results for citizens, the authors argue.
The collapse in Americans' trust in government to do the right thing, from 77% in 1964, to just 22% in 2024, is in part down to the incapability of politicians, to paraphrase, to get shit done.
It's not a great leap to see this as a cautionary tale for Labor: reach the policy goals that matter for people, or risk a Clive Palmer running the joint.
Australia is not America by any means, so the blockages identified in Abundance are not as daunting.
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Our politics and people are not as polarised, our system not as litigious, our parliament not as sclerotic.
Still, the challenge to pursue an abundance agenda is far from easy. It demands some uncomfortable debates within the left – between environmental groups, unions, and politicians.
And when it comes to the clean energy transition, the bipartisan divide on green energy here is wider than in almost every other country.
Edelman's global trust barometer report for 2024 found that 28% of Australians classified as on the 'right' reject green energy technology, compared with 7% on the left.
Klein and Thompson say that in the US 'the government has taken on the task of decarbonisation and the responsibility of coordinating a once-in-a-century transformation of America's built landscape'.
'But it is doing so with laws and agencies and habits that are better designed to block green construction than to allow it.'There are obvious parallels with Australia, where opposition to huge green power generation and infrastructure projects is growing among local communities and environmental groups.
Bob Brown caused a stir in 2019 when he opposed a major windfarm project on Tasmania's Robbins Island and criticised plans to lay transmission cable through the Tarkine forest.
He likened the Robbins Island proposal to the thwarted plan to dam the Franklin River in the 1980s – a landmark victory for the nascent green movement.
Nearly six years later and the renewable energy project remains in limbo. The then environment minister Tanya Plibersek delayed the decision until after the May election.
Klein and Thompson accuse the environmental movement of 'trade-off denial', saying 'society has run out of time to save everything we want to save, and to mull things over for years'.
'Nothing about this is easy, and it is not always clear how to strike the right balance. But a balance that does not allow us to meet our climate goals has to be the wrong one.'
There are plenty of other curly questions for politicians, even those fully on board with the so-called abundance agenda.
As an example of the type of overregulation that slows down projects, the authors point to Biden's worthy $US39bn program to subsidise semiconductor manufacturers to set up factories in the US.
Rather than a laser focus on how to get this done, applicants needed to answer questions about 'specific efforts to attract economically disadvantaged individuals and promote diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility'.
Now consider Treasury's National Interest Framework to assess proposals under Labor's Future Made in Australia program: 'The government will also apply community benefit principles in relation to investments in priority industries. These principles will have a focus on investment in local communities, supply chains and skills, and the promotion of diverse workforces and secure jobs.'
Klein and Thompson's comments could just as easily apply in the Australian context: 'Many of these are good goals. But are they good goals to include in this project? There is no discussion … of trade-offs.'
There's no doubt that Klein and Thompson's book offers a manifesto that American democrats could take to the next election.
It offers a lens for a new type of more effective progressive government. Leigh has called it 'progressive productivity'.
So will the future be 'fucking awesome'?
Let's hope so. The stories we tell ourselves are important, and a shift in mindset where the future is there to be won could help.
One thing's for certain: it will take more than an abundance of rhetoric to get there.
Patrick Commins is Guardian Australia's economics editor