If (like me) you have been waiting patiently for Australia to show the world how a progressive country can meld a competent and competitive economy with a fair and compassionate society, prepare yourself for further disappointment!

It's not that this goal is utopian: it is no more than what the major political parties have promised us in every election campaign for decades.

This excellent collection of essays on policy making in Australia is rich in insights into why governments invariably deliver much less than they promise. In many areas the high failure rates owe a lot to a pervasive ‘market liberalist’ (or ‘neoliberalist’) framework of thinking about policy choices – in short, to an ideology built upon faith in markets and distrust of governments.

A feature of the collection is the prominence it gives to all manner of social policies, and to longer-term ‘sustainability’ policies (notably population and climate change), as well as traditional economic policies. This mix is appropriate: as important as growing employment and containing inflation are, the ultimate test of government policies – by government's own benchmarks – is whether or not they help to build a prosperous, fair and caring society.

Markets do certain things well – like allocating resources efficiently – where self-interest is an obvious (and legitimate) driver. But it is not in their make-up to afford ordinary people access to quality health and education services (for example), to clean environments, or to reasonable safety nets if they happen to fall through the cracks. These and other community interests have to be driven largely through progressive government policies.

The essays provide informed analysis and commentary on the evolution of more than a dozen different policies in Australia over recent decades. They highlight shortcomings in several social policies that the authors believe are largely attributable to overzealous efforts to apply market liberalism (and to eschew government involvement) in the areas concerned.

These lessons should be heeded. They come at the very time the present government is gearing up for what is foreshadowed to be a particularly strident application of market liberalism.