{"id":177149,"date":"2025-09-29T08:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/177149\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T08:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T08:51:20","slug":"labor-government-bets-on-industrial-losers-and-misses-the-ai-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/177149\/","title":{"rendered":"Labor government bets on industrial losers and misses the AI prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Free-market advocates rightly frame interventionist industrial policy as the classic case of governments \u201cpicking winners\u201d. If done well, however, it can leverage an economy\u2019s natural comparative advantages and drive lasting prosperity. Done poorly, which is often the case, it can bleed private capital from productive to non-productive industries, prop up uncompetitive industries and further entrench rent-seeking at taxpayers\u2019 expense.<\/p>\n<p>The Albanese government has yet to show it can distinguish between the two. The glaring example is the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.afr.com\/policy\/economy\/smelter-bailout-will-only-suffocate-our-prosperity-20250923-p5mx93\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">taxpayer-funded bailout<\/a> of ageing, loss-making and energy-intensive manufacturers such as Glencore\u2019s Mount Isa copper smelter as well as the growing pressures to support Rio Tinto\u2019s Tomago aluminium smelter. Some companies invoke the importance of preserving regional jobs and sovereign capability or facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy.<\/p>\n<p>Loading&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Free-market advocates rightly frame interventionist industrial policy as the classic case of governments \u201cpicking winners\u201d. If done well,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-177149","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}