‘Deregulation’ has been a powerful catchcry behind a series of major economic policy changes in Australia over the past twenty years. The most recent calls for ‘deregulation’ have been aimed at the broadcast media, the milk industry and the higher education sector, but these have followed earlier programs of ‘deregulation’ in the key areas of finance, telecommunications and industrial relations. The rationale for ‘deregulation’ is an efficient use of resources, human freedom in open competitive markets, consumer benefit and expanded choice. But this is mostly the doublespeak of mystifying and irrelevant ‘market economics’. The term does not really mean what it claims.
1999 The meaning of deregulation PDF
Journal of Australian Political Economy, 45