We have just drifted too far right under the Thatcherism idea.
+1
Labor today is further to the right than the Liberals were a generation ago, the whole political paradigm has moved in that direction at least so far as parties realistically capable of forming majority government (or the dominant partner in any coalition) are concerned.
There's a proper place for finance and there's a proper place for capitalism. But we live in a society, not an economy, and there's a need for balance.
Something's seriously wrong when as a country we've had a lot of growth in GDP and yet we're apparently struggling to afford health, education, infrastructure and welfare for those who genuinely need it. Things that we had no real trouble affording in the past when we were supposedly poorer overall and yet they're increasingly unaffordable today. That's not what I call progress from a broad perspective.
Management of businesses has a lot to do with it as does politics. Slowly but surely the engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs and other "doers" have been removed and replaced by those with a background in finance or at best law. We've gone from being a leader to a follower in anything scientific or technical with managers hiding behind the mantra of "risk". In the past we pioneered or at least were right up front with everything from power generation to medical procedures but such things are inevitably seen as too risky today, the current crop of "leaders" preferring to simply buy something off the shelf from overseas long after others have developed and gained the majority benefits from it. In less than half a century we've gone from leaders to followers in practically everything.
The NBN is a classic case in point. One party wants to send us broke to build it, the other wants to go broke half building it. Neither would likely contemplate just letting the "doers" get on and build it without handing money under the table to the rent seekers. Had that thinking persisted in the past, we'd never have built everything from the power grid through to public transport through to the copper phone network. Waiting until we're behind practically everyone, then paying unnecessarily high costs when we finally act, is stifling our nation's productivity far more than anything else.