Corporate Thinking
The Queensland Government generates around A$90 billion in annual revenue and posts a modest A$1 billion profit, figures comparable to global giants like Lockheed Martin (A$108B revenue, A$8.1B profit), Cisco (A$87B, A$19B), and BHP (A$83B, A$11B).
But unlike these corporations, Queensland’s “business model” depends on charging its shareholders, the taxpaying citizens, for services that they often neither want nor need. Take car registration: it serves no real function other than cash extraction.
Imagine if a government behaved like a modern corporation and found revenue outside its shareholder base.
In Queensland, that could mean owning and operating export-facing assets, such as mines, generating 100 percent external income. Domestic services could then be delivered free, reducing internal tension and aligning incentives.
Critics say governments shouldn’t own companies. But they already do, just poorly, mostly because of who runs governments. Who thought it was a good idea to put the largest corporations in the country in the hands of failed real estate agents and 2nd rate arts graduates?
The argument that governments can’t run businesses, the neoliberal position that they used to justify the sell off all those businesses in the 90s, is false; it’s the clowns that run governments that are the problem.
Back to the government-owned companies, instead of extracting wealth through local monopolies like the TAB, why not build export businesses?
If corporations can scale by reaching customers beyond shareholders, there is no reason governments should not do the same.
offshore westerly 