Contributed by Jim Hayes

Australia is amidst an election campaign, and no one is saying much about the economic headwinds our nation faces. If anything, this is great time for leadership that charts a new and better economic future. What we get is versions of business as usual, instead of a decisive response.

The International monetary Fund (IMF) has released its latest report on the state of the global and individual economies. In news the report on Australian is not good, and this should be no surprise to those who know something about how economies work.

Expectations for Australia in April have been slashed. Annual output for 2025 will be $13 billion less than predicted in January. Real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be 1-6 percent instead of 2.1 percent. This is on paper.

In reality, real life performance is less. The measurements used are inadequate. Even if this is overlooked, it doesn’t change the magnitude of where we are heading.

Yet who is talking about this in the present election campaign? Who is offering a path out of the economic threat? The closest we come to this is with the Greens. There should be a national consensus over the course of action Australia has to take.

Trouble with the Australian economy began before the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9. Existing problems were aggravated when this crisis hit. The economy got another kick in the guts during the Covid era and is now taking a new kick in the guts with Donald Trump’s economic war. Australia may not be the worst-off nation. But we should be doing much better.

Who is giving leadership and offering a plan out of the mess?

Instead of this, we get a politically generated response from Treasury, suggesting that the damage to Australia’s economy is only modest, and that reasonable economic growth will persist. The implication is that the Australia government, irrespective of who wins the election, will have little to do.

IMF cuts global growth forecast

Video from CGTN Europe

Treasury’s position is the result of the political bipartisanship on this matter, and this has been the position since before and after the Global Financial Crisis. It persists in the face of the Trump tariffs imposed on Australia.

The tariffs come together with dictating how Australia trades with other nations. Displease Washington, and it is likely to bring more economic pressure. Tariffs come with a push to open the doors to more American goods and financial exports to Australia, whether these are in the national interest or not.

Australia’s real interests lie in becoming more economically and politically independent. Without this, the capacity of the nation to overcome threats is compromised.

All this is even more important when our own increasingly dysfunctional economy is met with an increasingly dysfunctional and failing global economy. The same IMF report has downgraded global growth from 3.3 in January to 2.8 percent. The economy of the United Sates has been downgraded from 2.7 to 1.8 percent. Europe is in even worse shape.

It must be remembered that most of the global economic growth is accounted for by the growth of the Chinese, Russian, and some of the other significant members of the BRICS+ alliance.

In effect, there are two parts of the global economy, linked in many ways, but separate in others. Although the primary focus must be to deal with the domestic economic problems, success will depend on which wing of the global economy should Australia move towards. The numbers show that the United States and Europe lead the shrinking part.

BRICS isn’t only performing better. It offers far more national flexibility. And BRICS is the centre of global production and therefore the generator of real wealth. Australia can benefit from this with more trading options, better trading terms, opportunities to benefit from infrastructure development, and a share in the economic growth.

Instead of this, Australia is being pushed into becoming involved in Trump’s escalation of the already existing economic, political, and military war against China and other nations.

The barrier is in the lack of political will, imposed by the insistence that Australia must follow Washington in all circumstances, and regardless of the cost. This is what must change.