Jim Chalmers’ 2023 essay was written immediately after delivering his first Federal Budget and was presented as a new economic manifesto for Australia, a “values-based capitalism” built upon co-investment, market redesign, wellbeing frameworks and expanded public purpose.
But by 2026, two projects alone stand as irrefutable evidence that this was not a durable economic framework. It was, instead, an exercise in softening Australians up for a far larger role for government in the economy.
The first is the NDIS.
Chalmers wrote in his plan for the future that a government could reshape markets and direct capital into “social purpose” sectors such as disability care. Yet the NDIS has become the clearest modern example of what happens when leaders are allowed to become disconnected from economic discipline. Costs exploded beyond sustainable forecasts. Fraud, leakage, administrative expansion and uncontrolled growth became structural features, not anomalies. The result? A program now so financially overwhelming that governments are desperately trying to restrain the very growth they once celebrated.
The second is Snowy 2.0.
If ever there were proof that governments are poor allocators of capital, this is it. A project originally promoted to Australians at approximately $2 billion has now blown out towards $40 billion, some 20 times the original figure. In significant part, this reflects the reality of politically protected cost structures, industrial arrangements and union influence embedded within major government infrastructure delivery. Ironically, this is the very “market” structure supported and defended by the same political movement that receives substantial union funding and organisational backing.
No private enterprise could survive forecasting errors of this magnitude without shareholder revolt, insolvency or executive removal. Government, however, simply transfers the burden to taxpayers and future generations through fictitious accounts.
And that my friends is the deeper issue.
Chalmers argued that the old economic model had failed because markets were insufficiently “designed” by government. The evidence since 2023 suggests the opposite. Australia’s growing vulnerability has not come from too little government involvement, but from too much faith that governments can spend, regulate, subsidise and intervene better than disciplined private enterprise.
A trillion dollars of debt is not evidence of successful economic redesign.
It is evidence that the redesign itself has failed.
The irony is profound. Chalmers criticised Australia for having “not enough to show for a trillion dollars of debt”. Yet only three years later, the very policy mindset he championed has accelerated the debt trajectory: larger government, larger obligations, larger deficits and weaker productive confidence.
At some point Australians, particularly younger generations who will inherit the bill, must ask a simple question:
If government expansion and “values-based capitalism” were the answer, why are we now weaker, more indebted, less productive and more economically anxious than before?
