It’s time to reMAKE the state.
Remaking for all, not just the few
reMAKING for all, not just the few
It’s time to reMAKE the state.
There is no doubt that we are in yet another ‘moment’. Five years ago we experienced the Black Summer bushfires and a sudden sense of solidarity as we collectively breathed in the ashes of this country. It felt like this disaster created a moment of possibility for action on climate change. But before that momentum could be harnessed we were hit by the global pandemic. This time our breaths were shared on a global scale. Again this felt like a moment of possibility as even conservative governments showed what could be done when people were prioritised over profit.
Each time it seemed we got to the precipice of possibility and failed to take the leap.
We’re on another precipice now.
As the US democratic system visibly crumbles and the world order changes, the drivers of this destruction are being laid bare. This is a moment where we are seeing an increased hijacking of the state by private and corporate interests, the suppression and marginalisation of the citizenry and the exponential concentration of money and power.
Much of this is not new, but the scale on which it is happening and the blatant disregard for optics is revealing.
Understanding what this moment is, helps us to decide what happens next and how to act.
So many of us want to contribute to dealing with these crises and indeed our collective and strategic contribution is going to be absolutely essential. The 9 pillar vision for Australia reMADE shows us where we want to go, and now it is time to work out how to get there: we are going to need to learn to remake the state, to supercharge the citizenry* and to rebalance money and power.
While all three of these things are inextricably linked, this paper focuses primarily on forces and agendas currently repurposing the state.
*Please note that when we use the language of citizen or citizenry we refer to all people who are members of a city or community, not just those with the legal paperwork.
The changing state
The state is constantly changing and being changed. The way the state works, who is given and who takes power, is constantly shifting and always contested. Deciding to consciously affect this flux is not radical. It is simply paying attention to the way things are evolving and then stepping into the fray as an intentional force.
We can either sit passively and watch this happen or we can remember that the forces controlling the state are only powerful so long as citizens comply with ideas, practices and actions that legitimise their exercise of power.
To do this, we need to understand not only what the state is, but how it is currently being changed and repurposed by those who seek to gather money and power at the expense of the citizenry.
Defining the state
Scholars have been writing about the definition of the state for thousands of years.
And there are societies and nations that have lived without the structure of the state for millennia. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are a very important example of this and show that alternative ways of organising ourselves are possible. We suggest looking to the ever brilliant Wakka Wakka and Kombumerri woman Dr Mary Graham as a starting point. We will be returning to Mary’s wisdom to guide us in the next phase of this project.
For the purposes of our discussion we consider the state to be the site of territorially centralised governance where institutions operate to:
agreed and enforced rules;
raise and distribute resources; and
define and defend borders and rights.
Key to many definitions of the state is the notion of the ‘legitimate monopoly on violence’; the degree to which this violence is turned on citizens and those outside of the state varies.
We take the position that the state as a form of centralised governance is not inherently good or bad. The state can take many forms, with the players who have the most power determining whether it is democratic or oligarchic, tyrannical or aristocratic, or any other shape.
In an ideal democratic state the citizenry holds the power, deciding who is in government and holding them accountable. The citizenry would not just be the beneficiaries of the state, but partners in how it functions. Key to this is the role of debate and contention between the citizenry itself and between the citizenry and government: an intrinsic part of democracy and community agency.
Right now in Australia (and other liberal democratic states around the world), the rights and power of citizens are being rapidly diminished. This is not an accident, nor is it inevitable. It is the result of decades of intentional manoeuvring to shift the power of the state from the citizenry towards private, vested interests – interests that are overseeing climate breakdown, genocide, the rise of inequality and insecurity, and the downfall of democracy.
So how is the state being repurposed and changed?
There is an ongoing tussle in regards to who and what shapes the focus and the purpose of the state. Corporations and uber wealthy individuals might denigrate the state as an institution but they also use it to enable, subsidise and validate the creation and concentration of private profit. As different forces contest for power both good and bad things emerge - often simultaneously!
Consider the way things have been contested over the past 150 years. The mid 1800s to the early 1900s was a time when corporations held significant political power and influence (particularly in the US where the 14th Amendment essentially enshrined the rights of the corporation as if it were a ‘person’). But even during this time, the citizenry continued to contest for control.
Each nation has its own timeline and history. It was as early as 1907 that the Australian state passed the Harvester judgement requiring the implementation of fair wages (for white, able bodied men) and the year later a provision of the old age pension for the same people. This was not inevitable but rather the work of ongoing advocacy and pressure from unionists and community leaders.
The big changes globally (for liberal democracies) occurred in the aftermath of World Wars I and II and the Depression. In part as a way to appease the workers and hold off the communist threat, a greater emphasis was put on the role of the state to provide welfare. In Australia, between the 1930s and the 1970s this included things like the introduction of the widows’ pension and unemployment and sickness benefits. This laid the ground for the intentional embracing of a social democracy in the 1970s by the Whitlam government and policies to redistribute revenue through welfare spending to create a strong social safety net.
This was by no means a utopian relationship between citizen and state. Some populations were excluded and the forces controlling the state could ultimately decide who was, and was not, worthy of care. But the agreed purpose of the state was resource distribution that prioritised the citizenry.
During this 50 year period, those with vested interests and profits to make, did not sit idle. Instead they began laying the foundations for an ideological project that would entrench deep change to ensure that the state once again operated primarily in service of private profit. As early as the 1930s people like Friedrich von Hayek were working behind the scenes, backed by the uber wealthy, to refocus the purpose of the state. This thinking led to the gathering of the Mt Pelerin Society in the 1940s and the follow-up strategy of the Powell Memo in the early 1970s.
The neoliberal moment came in the 1970s with a series of financial shocks paving the way for vested interests and governments to question the welfare state approach. The ideological vacuum of the time was filled with the neoliberal ‘answer’ – a very careful and intentional plan to repurpose the state in favour of the market and private business.
While the contest for control of state purpose has never ceased (look at the anti-globalisation protests of the 1990s, the work of unions, the Occupy Movement, the climate strikes, etc) the successful embedding of neoliberalism and the normalising of the righteousness of ‘the market’ has fertilised the ground for vested interests to actively change the role of the state in key ways.
The central tenet of neoliberalism is that competition is the defining feature of humans and that our wellbeing is best recognised through economic rather than political choice. If it is held to be ‘truth’ that a competitive market approach delivers the best outcomes (the best outcomes for whom is never explicitly articulated), it makes sense that governments should shift themselves to operate in a way that is more business-like. As a result, the government becomes a pseudo-corporation, driven by returns and efficiency, and responsive to ‘the market’, while the citizen becomes the consumer. No longer a member of a society, as Margaret Thatcher so famously said, but instead an individual who must fight alone.
Not only does it individualise communities, neoliberalism also separates us from the state. As George Monbiot and Peter Hutchison write:
“When the thick mesh of interactions that binds us to the state – cherished and effective public services, laws that protect the weak as well as the strong, a sense of shared civic life and citizenship, mutual obligation and fair exchange – are stripped away, all that remains are the worst aspects of state power: coercion and oppression. The state becomes our enemy.”
Neoliberalism wasn’t just an ideological shift, it ushered in significant structural changes to the way the state operates, pulling business closer and locking out the citizen and the citizenry.
As Guinan and O’Neill write, “Rather than dismantling the state, neoliberalism repurposed it, whether as market-maker (via privatization), regulator, or as ameliorative manager of social relations.” The state became a tool of the market and the uber wealthy, rather than a vehicle for progressing and maintaining the public good for the citizenry.
There are many ways we could talk about the changing state. What follows are just three examples of how the state is changing and being changed: through the shifting of power, the shifting of wealth and ultimately the erasure of the institutions and structures that have held it in place.
We offer this not as a definitive categorisation, but as a way to see that the current trajectory of the state is not accidental or inevitable, but rather something that people are making happen.
SHIFTING POWER from the citizenry to private vested interests
The first example of the state being repurposed is the shift from the state as a vehicle for facilitating the democratic power of the citizenry, to a vehicle used to enhance private and corporate power.
One way this occurs is via state capture.
In very simple terms, state capture is the (currently) legal way that vested interests can gain disproportionate power over government decisions. The World Bank explains it as “the exercise of power by private actors – through control over resources, threats of violence, or other forms of influence – to shape policies or implementation in service of their narrow interest.
The Australian Democracy Network (ADN) steps out exactly how various industries engage in state capture; from the power wielded by fossil fuel giants shaping climate policy, to the insertion of advertising and display of weapons by manufacturers inside one of Australia’s iconic cultural institutions: the Australian War Memorial. We recommend reading their report.
State capture takes many forms in Australia from lobby groups buying political access, revolving door appointments, and selection to high-level decision-making bodies allowing undue influence on contested matters. Importantly, although legal, the details are usually invisible to the public.
What is happening here is a clear repurposing of the state. The infrastructure of the state looks the same on the outside, but the purpose is being shifted from a democratic rule by the people, to one driven by the profit-seeking interests of uber wealthy individuals and corporations.
As ex-Senator and co-author of the ADN report, Scott Ludlam writes, “State capture is so dangerous because society’s rule-making machinery is the prize, including the ability to define what constitutes corrupt or illicit behaviour in the first place.”
SHIFTING WEALTH from the citizenry to private vested interests
The shift from state as a vehicle for the redistribution of resources across the citizenry, to a vehicle focussed on enhancing and concentrating private wealth and power is the second example of the intentional repurposing of the state.
This is done by creating the conditions for private wealth to thrive, transferring resources from the state to private business (what Monbiot and Hutchison call ‘legalised theft from the public realm’) and the creation of new markets and opportunities for private profit. All of this is of course made more possible by processes of state capture and neoliberal ideology and infrastructure.
Shifting wealth by creating the conditions for private wealth accumulation
New opportunities for enhanced commerce and profit making corresponds with the withdrawal of the state. This has not been a sudden withdrawal, nor a neat one, but rather:
a slow starvation of resourcing and implementation of austerity measures (e.g. reduced spending on health and education);
a changing of regulations (e.g. approval for private mining companies to access public land); and
an ongoing undermining of the public value of government provided services (e.g. both vocal disparagement about quality and value of publicly-provided services, and misattribution of services provided with the placement of corporate logos on publicly-funded services such as rescue helicopters).
Where public provision of goods and services is withdrawn and/or degraded, it becomes easy and ‘natural’ for business to step in to fill the breach.
Shifting wealth by transferring public resources to the private realm
Vacating space and providing a sympathetic context for the creation of private wealth from public needs is one thing, actively transferring public resources to the private realm is another.
There are myriad different ways that this transfer occurs via different types of privatisation. For example:
the selling off of state owned utility companies (e.g.the sale of publicly owned Telecom in the 1990s);
the outsourcing of the provision and administration of welfare to profit driven outfits (e.g. the breakup of the Commonwealth Employment Service and its replacement by not-for-profit and for profit employment services); and
limiting access to various parts of National Parks only to those with the cash to pay for luxury accommodation and access (e.g. the Three Capes walking track in Tasmania).
For a more detailed look at privatisation in Australia and for more examples of the ways it occurs please read our previous paper Unravelling Privatisation.
Shifting wealth by creating new opportunities for private profit
The state is also being used by those with vested interest to create new markets for private wealth generation and accumulation. It becomes ‘natural’ for problems or issues to be solved by the corporation in pursuit of profit, rather than by the government. This plays out in various ways, such as:
the huge amounts of money paid to consulting firms to advise public servants,
the vision of a National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) built on a ‘competitive and contestable marketplace’; and
the cavalier way the climate crisis is thrown to the market as if the very systems that created the crisis can be the solution.
These strategies for shifting wealth accumulate and reinforce the ongoing transfer of power away from the citizenry. And, as with state capture, this transfer of wealth is often intentionally invisible, subtly eroding power, reducing trust and undermining perceived government effectiveness.
ERASURE: The state as a relic
The third example of the state being repurposed is actually not a repurposing at all – rather we are witnessing the logical extension of the concentration of private power and wealth – the replacement and the erasure of the state.
Traditionally, states have been territorially based and bounded by geographies and recognised by other nation states. What we are seeing now is the potential replacement of nation states with ultra wealthy individuals and corporations – not just because of their ability to manipulate state infrastructure, but for the capacity of their power to supersede it.
Corporations now have “an amount of power and influence that meaningfully competes with states’ ability to manage and shape economic life”. Multinational corporations are not just too big to fail, they are the ones bailing out failing states.
For example in 2021, asset management firm BlackRock controlled $9 trillion in investments (enough to own every company listed on the stock exchange four times over). As the US economy began to tank in the context of the global pandemic, the Federal Reserve enlisted BlackRock to “prop up the entire corporate bond market by purchasing, on the central bank’s behalf, what could become a $750 billion portfolio of debt.” Indeed, BlackRock has so much power that academic William Birdthistle has referred to it as the “fourth branch of government”.
This change in control is also evident in the shift in power from the United Nations (UN) to the World Economic Forum (WEF). Post WWII the UN was considered the place for nation states to come together to maintain peace and make agreements and have discussions at a global level. Now, the UN is being sidelined for the WEF, where businesses are given an equal space alongside governments at round tables, making decisions on behalf of peoples around the world. The private sector is now at the centre of global public governance.
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor describe this as:
“Retooling and rebranding the old ambitions and privileges of empires, they [the mega rich billionaires] dream of splintering governments and carving up the world into hyper-capitalist, democracy-free havens under the sole control of the supremely wealthy, protected by private mercenaries, serviced by AI robots and financed by cryptocurrencies.”
Key activities of the state as we have known it are being replaced by a globalised corporate power.
The result is state erasure.
Ex tech-executive Mike Brock writes, “DOGE is not about efficiency. It is about erasure. Democracy is being deleted in slow motion, replaced by proprietary technology and AI models. It is a coup, executed not with guns, but with backend migrations and database wipes”. This is a part of what Muirhead and Rosenblum call “ungoverning”, the “wilful sabotage of the institutions that do the work of government”.
The events of 2025 in the US show that when private power has unlimited access to public institutions, the very foundations of democracy can be erased and power transferred to vested interests. This power transfer is in some cases a literal transfer of data and knowledge from public servers to private servers – ensuring control of people and populations can be held by a very few with no democratic checks or balances. As investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr writes, “the real point of DOGE is not to save American taxpayers money. It’s a fundamental re-writing of the social contract, the relationship of US citizens to the state, and the state to private enterprise”.
It is time to reMAKE the state
Whether we like it or not the state is being repurposed and replaced by those with vested interests in hoarding money and power. There is some strange comfort to be had that the changes occurring are not inevitable, but rather the result of an intentional and strategic manipulation of both citizen and state. Understanding this is the first step to being able to change it.
When it comes to talking about change at a systems level there is often a tension between those who seek to reform the state from within, and those who seek to abolish it entirely. It’s an age-old tussle.
We believe that these times call for both centralised power (the state) and community agency (the citizenry). Both of these things must be oriented towards the public good and an infrastructure that enables all of us to care and be cared for, to connect with people and place, and to contribute locally and nationally for a fair, liveable and democratic world (see our reports Reclaiming our Purpose: It’s time to talk about the public good, Care through Disaster and Wise, Warm and Willing: A public service for the public good?).
It is time to finally leap off that precipice towards possibility.
To help us land safely we need to do three things:
Recognise the state is undergoing an ongoing process of change which is moving further and further from the reach of citizen influence.
Recognise and call out the three processes – state facilitated power shifts, state facilitated wealth shifts and state erasure.
Begin the work of re-imagining what a state focussed on delivering the public good might look like.
Now is the time for us to draw closer to one other, to not just breathe in the air of bushfire and disease, but to exhale and breathe life into new ways of acting and living together. It is the time to reimagine and remake a new social contract between the citizen and the state and to put money and power on the periphery where it belongs.
