UNSW economics professor Richard Holden says “the corporate scandals in Australia … are the result of crony capitalism”. Meanwhile, anti-neoliberal Queensland university economist John Quiggin argues that the reason Qantas was able to behave the way it did was because it “was able to use a dominant position achieved under public ownership to behave as an aggressive profit-maximiser, while still trading on its image as the ‘national flag carrier’”. That is, Qantas had an outsized advantage from before it was privatised. That advantage is, of course, the favouritism shown it by policymakers.

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It comes as no surprise that RMIT economics professor Sinclair Davidson, who used to be at the Institute for Public Affairs in its economics-focused era, believes that the Qantas scandal shows that the economy “isn’t neoliberal enough”. In his words, “The rise of crony capitalism has occurred because business has moved away from its core function of producing goods and services that meet the needs of paying customers in the hope of earning a profit.”

But it is instructive that Davidson finds himself on a unity ticket with Matt Grudnoff from the progressive Australia Institute. Grudnoff says the problem we have in Australia is that we don’t have enough competition – because we’ve drifted away from a free-market system into an oligopolistic one.

In Australia, working the government angle has become the most profitable game in town for big business. As US economist Michael Munger explains, there comes a point in a company’s productivity cycle where it can’t get any more efficiencies out of innovation. When that happens, Grudnoff says, they turn to government to shut out competitors. If there’s not much competition for only a few big players, suppliers and workers have no choice but to take the money they’re offered.

Sinclair Davidson believes that’s only going to get worse. “The broader issue,” he says, “is the politicisation of business. The clear boundaries between what is private and public have broken down. So we’ll see more of this in future, not less.”

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Qantas is not the only company that has benefited. It was just so brazen that it made our economic system visible even to people who don’t spend their time thinking about economic systems.

So let’s take the opportunity to say what’s really wrong in our economy. Because as long as Australians keep blaming the wrong culprit, cronyism will thrive, with all its attendant ills.

As Salt-N-Pepa might say: “Don’t be coy, avoid, or make void the topic, cuz that ain’t gonna stop it.” Let’s talk about economics, baby.