--- title: "Too Much Market Reform, or Too Little? Denniss and Sanchez Set Out Opposing Cases" url: https://australianproperty.network/opinion/point-counterpoint-debates/paired-perspectives/denniss-sanchez-too-much-market-reform-or-too-little-paired-perspectives/ date: 2026-10-11 modified: 2026-10-11 lang: en author: "APN National Insight" description: "An APN 23000 Series Paired Perspectives piece: Richard Denniss of The Australia Institute argues that four decades of tax cuts and smaller government have failed; the economist Alex Sanchez, writing for the Centre for Independent Studies, that Australia is retreating from the reforms that served it. Their cases side by side." categories: - "Paired Perspectives" tags: - "24610" - "government spending" - "Neoliberalism" - "Productivity" - "Tax Reform" - "wealth inequality" word_count: 1742 --- # Too Much Market Reform, or Too Little? Denniss and Sanchez Set Out Opposing Cases #### Too Much Market Reform, or Too Little? Denniss and Sanchez Set Out Opposing Cases APN 23000 Series  ·  23310 Paired Perspectives Reference O-261006-152914-MEDIUM  ·  6 October 2026  ·  Significance Medium The question Has Australia had too much market reform, or too little? Companion 22000 output [*Low-Tax Country or Big Government? The Denniss and Sanchez Figures Tested*](https://australianproperty.network/insight/national-insight/national-claim-test/low-tax-country-or-big-government-denniss-sanchez-figures-tested/) (I-261008-152915) Data anchors **NIL RETURN** Denniss stated his position on 6 October 2026, and Sanchez in a paper published on 14 May 2026. Every figure below is the speaker’s own; the central figures on both sides are tested against their primary sources in the companion output. Filed at MEDIUM significance: two opposing readings of the same economic record, each bearing on how housing and public services are paid for. ##### 23000 Series — Paired Perspectives The Australian Property Network’s (APN’s) 23000 Series is the attributed opinion layer of the APN Codex. A [Paired Perspectives](https://australianproperty.network/apn-codex/series-20000/series-23000/series-23300/series-23310/) piece sets two published views on one question side by side, each drawn from the public record in the speaker’s own words and given the same structure and space. **Neither position is APN’s, and the framing does not choose between them.** Where the evidence bears on the question, it is tested separately in the 22000 Series, so that the reader can see the arguments and the data apart. ##### The Question For four decades, Australian economic debate has returned to the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s: the float of the dollar, financial deregulation, lower tariffs, privatisation and a smaller tax take. On 6 October 2026, Richard Denniss, Executive Director of The Australia Institute, used his podcast to argue that the approach he calls neoliberalism has failed: lower taxes and smaller government have not produced the shared prosperity promised for them. In May 2026, the economist Alex Sanchez argued in a paper for the Centre for Independent Studies that the opposite has happened: Australia has been retreating from the reform era, and the cost is showing in spending, tax, debt and productivity. **Both say many Australians are not getting ahead; they disagree on whether the cause is too little government or too much.** Position A — Too much Dr Richard Denniss Executive Director, The Australia Institute ###### The position Four decades of tax cuts, deregulation and a smaller role for government have not delivered what was promised for them, and Australians’ lives have become harder as a result. ###### The reasoning He describes neoliberalism as the view that problems are best left to individuals and markets, with governments taxing, spending and regulating less. Its central promise, that lower taxes on high incomes would lift everyone’s prosperity, has in his view not been borne out: the gains have accrued to the wealthiest. Being poor is costly, he argues, and has become more so as public provision of housing, health and education has been reduced. Regulation, in his account, is what makes markets safe to use, from road rules to food standards. Budgets are choices about what governments pay for, not evidence that the country cannot afford better services. Governments that spoke for smaller government have also spent heavily on their own priorities, which he says has taught voters to distrust public spending in general rather than to ask what it buys. ###### The evidence cited Housing has become increasingly unaffordable, inequality far worse and secure work harder to find. Wealth, he says, is more concentrated than it has ever been. Australia is one of the lowest-tax countries in the world, which leaves households paying privately for schooling, health insurance, child care and aged care; European countries that collect more tax, particularly from the wealthy and from large companies, spend more on services. ###### In his words > “We’ve now got 40 years of data saying that it didn’t happen.” **Source:** *What’s the Point?*, “What’s the point of neoliberalism?”, The Australia Institute, with Anna Chang, published 6 October 2026 ([video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3VOALW_xyk)). Close paraphrase with the short quotation marked. *Context:* The Australia Institute is a progressive public policy think tank. The episode closes by promoting the speaker’s essay *More Fool Me* (August 2026), on the gas industry. Position B — Too little Alex Sanchez Economist; adviser to Labor in opposition and government, 2019–2024 ###### The position Australia is giving up the gains of the Hawke–Keating reform era, and needs a renewed reform program to restore growth. ###### The reasoning He argues that the reforms that followed Paul Keating’s 1986 warning that Australia risked becoming a “banana republic” (the floated dollar, financial deregulation, lower tariffs, privatisation and a smaller government) produced the largest sustained rise in living standards of the post-war period. Policy has since moved, in his view, from growth to redistribution, regulation and “resilience”: uncapped programs such as the National Disability Insurance Scheme have grown, assistance to individual industries has returned, and tax is treated as a source of revenue rather than a lever for growth. He proposes reversing the rise in spending without cuts to the safety net: user charges, means testing and contingent loans in disability, aged, health and child care; the sale of off-budget investment funds to retire debt; and lower marginal tax rates in place of threshold adjustments that offset bracket creep. ###### The evidence cited Commonwealth payments are about 26.9% of GDP, which he describes as the highest outside the pandemic, against a fall from just under 27% to 23% between 1987 and 1990. Taxes at all levels take about 30% of GDP, and personal income tax will soon exceed half of Commonwealth tax revenue. Gross debt is about $1 trillion and the underlying deficit 1.3% of GDP. Productivity has stagnated, real GDP per person has gone backwards, and inflation has been above the Reserve Bank’s target band for several consecutive quarters. ###### In his words > “Policy directed not at growth but towards the management of decline.” **Source:** [*Banana Republic Redux: How Australia is surrendering the gains of the reform era*](https://www.cis.org.au/publication/banana-republic-redux-how-australia-is-surrendering-gains-of-the-reform-era/), Centre for Independent Studies, Occasional Paper 215, 14 May 2026. Close paraphrase with the short quotation marked. *Context:* the Centre for Independent Studies is a free-market public policy think tank. The paper states that the author advised Labor in opposition and government between 2019 and 2024. ##### Where They Agree, and Where They Divide The two start from the same observation: on their own measures, many households are falling behind, and both treat housing costs and living standards as the test of policy. Both look back to the 1980s: Denniss to the case for smaller government made by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and adopted in Australia, Sanchez to the Hawke–Keating reforms. Both also want governments to be more deliberate about what they pay for. Denniss would move spending from programs he regards as poor value into health and housing; Sanchez would test every program against whether it is targeted, affordable at scale and free of incentives to dependency. **They divide on the direction of the past two decades, and that is a question the data can address.** Denniss describes a state that taxes too little and has withdrawn from public provision; Sanchez describes one that spends and taxes more than it did and grows more slowly as a result. Both rest part of their case on the tax take. Denniss calls Australia one of the lowest-tax countries, and Sanchez says taxes at all levels withdraw about 30% of GDP from the private economy. On the OECD’s measure, the two statements describe the same number, read in opposite directions. *Also on the record.* The Treasury’s Final Budget Outcome for 2025–26, published in late September 2026, after Sanchez’s paper, put Commonwealth payments at 26.9% of GDP, the underlying cash deficit at 0.8% of GDP and gross debt at $971.4 billion. The Treasurer and the Minister for Finance set out the Government’s reading of that outcome in [*Chalmers and Gallagher: A Smaller Deficit, and an Inflation Challenge Made Worse Abroad*](https://australianproperty.network/opinion/policy-commentary-critique/government/chalmers-gallagher-final-budget-outcome-deficit-inflation/). ##### APN Clinical Reframing Stated in structural terms, the question is whether Australia’s difficulties with housing costs and living standards arise mainly from the state doing too little, through a low tax take and reduced public provision, or from it doing too much, through rising spending, a tax system that leans on personal income and assistance to industries that do not compete. Denniss’s position is that market-led policy has concentrated income and wealth and moved costs on to households. Sanchez’s position is that the policy direction of the past two decades has slowed growth, and that growth is what raises living standards. Both are coherent, and the [companion National Claim Test](https://australianproperty.network/insight/national-insight/national-claim-test/low-tax-country-or-big-government-denniss-sanchez-figures-tested/) finds each partly borne out: a tax take below the OECD average and in the lowest third, though ten countries collect less; Commonwealth spending at its highest share of GDP outside the pandemic since the mid-1980s; dwelling prices near a record multiple of earnings; wealth more unequally held in 2019–20, the latest survey, than in 2003–04, while income inequality has been broadly stable since 2007–08; and the weakest decade of productivity growth on record. **Which diagnosis is right turns less on these facts than on which of them each speaker treats as cause and which as consequence.** Both sources also contain remarks about individual politicians, business figures and other countries. They concern people rather than this question, and are not reproduced. Where a speaker’s language is more emphatic than the evidence, it is paraphrased. This pair is an exploration candidate for the [APN Asset-Wage Decoupling Index™ (24610)](https://australianproperty.network/apn-codex/series-20000/series-24000/series-24600/series-24610/), [Growth per Person (21235)](https://australianproperty.network/apn-codex/series-20000/series-21000/series-21200/21230-employment-gdp/21235-growth-per-person/) and [Housing Policy (Affordable, Social) (21330)](https://australianproperty.network/apn-codex/series-20000/series-21000/series-21300/21330-housing-policy-affordable-social/). No figure or characterisation in this piece may be treated as an APN-certified position for any 21000, 22000 or 24000 Series node. ##### Disclaimer The analysis, information, and opinions contained in this article are for general informational and strategic purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, legal, or any other form of professional advice. 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