Bill Shorten has rebuffed Malcolm Turnbull’s new pitch for policy fairness, declaring it is just another version of trickle-down economics and a manifestation of “poor blaming”.



On Thursday night, the prime minister told the Business Council of Australia the election of Donald Trump as US president had shown the world the benefits of globalisation needed to be shared by the many, not just the few.

Turnbull said fairness was an important part of combating the political backlash against open markets and trade liberalisation, but fairness needed to be redefined.

“Fairness does not mean examining each decision in isolation, looking at a narrow set of winners and losers,” the prime minister said on Thursday night.

“It means making sure our overall system is fair, examining the transfers of goods and services over a person’s lifetime and asking ourselves, does this reflect the benchmarks we set ourselves of an open, fair and just society?”

In a speech on Friday night, Shorten was scathing in response: “The same old Liberal story – the law of the jungle, the survival of the fittest,” the Labor leader said.

“The prime minister has the nerve, the arrogance to say we shouldn’t talk about winners and losers in the short term – that it all works out in the end.”

Shorten quoted the economist John Maynard Keynes. “Well, Malcolm, to quote another economist: in the long run we are all dead.

“The short-term matters, the here-and-now matters. A job matters, your income matters, dignity matters. The costs and pressures faced by ordinary Australians can’t be written off as short term. Life doesn’t take a holiday.

“What this prime minister doesn’t understand – and never will – is that for people who stretch every dollar, week to week, economic change isn’t a game.

“Losing your job, losing your home, losing your support isn’t something you shrug off as the cost of doing business.”