Why Labor’s carbon credit scheme’s an economist-conceived sham

August 26, 2026 — 5:00am

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When you write a column about the economy, people assume you must be an economist. But though I had a full major in economics in my commerce degree, I was doing it to become a chartered accountant. I regarded the economics they stuffed into the degree as theoretical bulldust and promptly forgot it.

I used to tell people I was an accountant pretending to be an economist, but it’s decades since I did a tax return for anyone but myself. So now I just say I’m a journo who writes about economics.

This has a side advantage. Not being a member of the economists’ union, I’m free to tell you whenever I think the economists are laying it on a bit thick. Which happens quite a lot.

One lesson I’ve learnt the hard way is that economists are very good at developing reform proposals that look great on paper but don’t work well in the real world.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that the economists’ idea is put to work by politicians, who have their own not-so-pure motives. For example, it was probably an economist who first had the idea that government-owned businesses could be “privatised”. If they existed in a competitive market they could be sold to private owners, which would do no harm to consumers while releasing money the government could use to fund some new project.

The feds did a bit of this – privatising Telstra and the Commonwealth Bank – but the premiers went crazy over it, selling off everything they........

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