New thinking about the common good challenges decades of neoliberal policy and raises questions about inequality, public services and Australia’s federal system.

Some astute scholars associated with the University of Divinity are focusing on how the common good may be defended in what they discern to be Australia’s post-liberal era.

The core idea of the common good is that the resources of a society and its economy should be equitably, justly and compassionately focused on the wellbeing of the greatest possible number, not just on powerful elites. It is the very antithesis of the neoliberal ideology that has been comprehensively shaping and distorting public policy in Australia (and the world) since the 1980s.

Neoliberalism is contemptuous of ideas about cooperation, community and society, arguing that only competitive individuals are able to make an economy grow. Infecting all of the advanced economies, and many lesser economies around the world, scholars, political activists and even some politicians are waking up to the fact that the neoliberal project has been a complete and utter disaster.

Its most egregious consequence (one of many) has been the massive increase in socio-economic inequality right across the world. A tiny rich minority (less than 5 per cent of the global population) today own vastly more capital than the rest of the global population, especially the poorest half. The fake rationalism of neoliberalism masks this grim development. In documenting its invidious growth in meticulous detail, the economic historian Thomas Picketty has labelled it as “terrifying”.

In Australia any commitment to the common good has been swept aside by the flood of neoliberal propaganda and........

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