You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

A piece by Fairfax’s Elizabeth Farrelly, “In Brexit and Trump, neoliberalism has reached its natural conclusion. What now?“, received lots of social media love over the weekend. It would not normally be of note except it elegantly exemplifies the growing confusion around liberal economics, which is now under more sustained pressure in Australia than at any time  since the 1980s. And it shows that, like words such as “decimate” and “genocide”, “neoliberalism” is increasingly stripped of meaning, becoming a collection of whatever can be vaguely pinned on more conservative political opponents.

“Gradually, as it released its low-dose toxicity into our bloodstream, we’ve deprived and debilitated our health system, our vocational education, our universities, our ports, our public service, our postal system, our electricity provision, our public assets, our parks and institutions, our public housing, our super, our correctional system, our building regulation and our motorways. As the rich get richer and the fragile vanish from the conversation, the world starts to feel like that scene in The Lion King where Scar takes control and the Pride Lands become the deathlands, tided in misery.”

While economic-analysis-by-cartoon-analogy isn’t the sign of the greatest rhetorical rigour, you get Farrelly’s message — neoliberalism is a poison that is destroying us. The only problem is, go through Farrelly’s list, and much of it simply makes no sense.

Take our health system, which supposedly has been deprived and debilitated. Australians are among the world’s longest-lived people, and not merely is our longevity increasing but the quality of our lives is better. We have a remarkably successful health system on which we spend just below the average for the OECD. If Farrelly wants to see a well-funded health system look no further than the United States, which spends nearly twice as much on its health system as a proportion of GDP — and which performs abysmally compared to ours.

[Keane: neoliberalism is fine, but what we have is crony capitalism]

What about parks? It’s not at all clear how that relates to neoliberalism — beyond that it’s a core part of liberal economics that, to the extent possible, those who produce negative externalities (like pollution) should be made to pay for them. Around 13% of Australia’s landmass is now protected, and the area protected under the reserve system has grown significantly in recent decades. What about building regulation? The main problem with building regulation in communities like Sydney isn’t that somehow it’s too market-oriented, but how it frustrates the development of higher-density housing that could reduce the massive ecological footprint of expanding cities and provide cheaper housing for low and middle-income earners at locations vaguely close to economic opportunities.

Superannuation? That’s simply bizarre. Our compulsory superannuation system is an explicitly anti-market mechanism — we ban people from using their income any way they want and force them to save it, much of it in industry superannuation funds overseen jointly by unions and employers, run on a non-profit basis. But somehow that’s neoliberal poison? And our postal system? People have stopped sending letters, the bread and butter of any postal system. Australia Post has curbed services not because of any neoliberal agenda but because maintaining a 20th century delivery system based on analog communication makes no sense when the bulk of communication is undertaken electronically. As for ports … that’s not clear. Does Farrelly dislike that Chinese companies own them?

As for the “fragile” vanishing from the conversation, presumably Farrelly doesn’t spend too much time on social media. Or noticed what happened when the Abbott government delivered a budget widely seen as unfair and punitive toward low and middle-income earners — thereby initiating its own downfall. She seizes on ACCC head Rod Sims’ recent comments about privatisation as though he had undergone a Damascene conversion, when he was merely making the point that dozens of “neoliberal” economists have been making for decades — that governments structuring asset sales to maximise their cash return ends up harming the public interest, when they should be structured to maximise competition.

It’s also hard to know quite what Farrelly is saying about Trump and Brexit. They are, she says, “simply Reagan and Thatcher’s pigeons, home to roost.” Does she mean they are blowback responses to Reagan and Thatcher? Which is odd given in both cases they are right-wing elitists espousing a mix of populism and neoliberal policies — Trump sounds like a protectionist but wants to deliver tax cuts for the rich, while Brexiteers want to rid themselves of the decidedly un-neoliberal burden of economic European regulation. Are they pigeons coming home to roost on the non-neoliberal elements of their policies only?

Similarly, Farrelly’s vision of neoliberalism is a peculiar one — neoliberalism is both “approving of [monopoly] as proof of ‘merit'” (“hence, for example, Rupert Murdoch”, she adds, inexplicably, as though there were no press barons before Murdoch) but also too approving of competition. At other points, her attempt at a critique lapses into incoherence. Thus:

“… competition as a guarantor of excellence (and therefore consumer satisfaction) works if – but only if – the consumer can assess and compare products. This is possible in, say, restaurants but not in master of philosophy degrees or breast surgeries. Or forklift courses. In most things that matter, product quality is not discernible until it’s way too late to change, and often not even then.”

As a teacher might scrawl on a poor year 12 essay, does this mean the market should not be providing “things that matter” (like breast surgery) because consumers can’t work out if they’re getting a good product? Should they be provided only by government monopolies? Or not at all? Most people have difficulty working out whether they’re getting value from their mobile phone plan — so should we go back to a nationalised carrier?

“Even in its own, strictly utilitarian terms, neoliberalism has failed us,” Farrelly maintains. But where has the significant rise in real incomes of Australians — even of the lowest income earners — come from since the 1980s? That didn’t magically happen by itself — it was the result of hard decisions to move away from an economic model of state monopolies, financial restrictions and cloistered manufacturing. Why has there been no recession for a quarter-century in Australia? Why has our unemployment rate remained below 6.5% since the financial crisis when more regulated economies have seen double-digit joblessness?

[So, you think you’re middle class …]

If not “neoliberalism”, then what? Back behind the tariff wall, taking us back to when buying a pair of school shoes for your kids cost a huge chunk of your weekly wage? Back to when the government controlled the exchange rate? Back to high inflation and high unemployment in a low-productivity economy? Back to the days of an engineering-obsessed Telecom that didn’t give a stuff about its “customers”, who couldn’t go anywhere else? Back to the Wran years in NSW when the state was plagued by winter blackouts because the government had failed to build enough generation capacity?

What Farrelly identifies as problematic areas mistakes neoliberalism for poor decision-making and crony capitalism. Yes — state governments (both of them Labor) reduced their investment in social housing — having taken advantage of the Rudd government’s financial crisis-induced boost in social housing to hide their cuts. That’s what bureaucracies do — there’s nothing innately neoliberal about cost-shifting. Vocational education has been a disaster, yes — in fact it’s a perfect demonstration of crony capitalism versus neoliberalism. The core idea of neoliberalism — of freeing the individual to take full advantage of economic opportunities — relies on an effective health and education system that maximises the chances of individuals pursuing their own welfare with minimal recourse to the state.

What’s mainly clear from Farrelly’s piece is that “neoliberalism” is anything the left dislikes. Don’t like Westconnex in Sydney? Neoliberalism. Got a problem with super? Neoliberalism. Too much lower-priced, higher-density housing in your inner city suburb? Neoliberalism. As for our low unemployment, fantastic health services, popular public school systems, strong retirement savings system, minimal inflation and a successful economy — they’re presumably just accidents unrelated to the policymaking of the last 30 years.