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privatisation

Parasites in the care economy

Dear friends,

I've been reflecting on some often theorised yet under-discussed elements of capitalism, which I believe warrant further discussion. Parasitism, or privatisation, is a vampiric process which has driven a great deal of expansionism and exploitation[1]. It also draws wealth from the proletariat, and concentrates it in the bourgeoisie. Working class people, through taxes, payments for goods and services, and other forms of revenue generation, subsidise private corporations who extract 'surplus' from the revenue stream, this repeats all the way down. In some spaces, this exploitation is particularly obvious, and multiplies layers of extraction and wealth skimming. Surplus value that was once retained in the public sector (and theoretically benefiting society collectively) is now extracted as private profit. Joy.

Over time we see this process expanding, subsuming public moneys into bourgeoisie wealth. This creates a contradiction where taxpayers pay more for the same service because we are now funding both the actual work and the profit margins of the private company[2]. Meanwhile, these workers experience more immiseration as conditions worsen despite their labour remaining equally productive and costing more. The broader pattern, where this underpaid worker experiences a chain of privatised services throughout their own life, illustrates how working class folks become trapped in a web of capitalist relations (and we'll look at an example of this in the context of disability services below). We are exploited as workers, then exploited again as consumers of privatised utilities, healthcare, transport, and so on. Each privatised service extracts profit while delivering what were once public goods – yet the same service is delivered – often for less pay for the worker.

We have seen that capitalism holds a strong tendency to expand into all spheres of social life, transforming public goods into commodities and creating new avenues for surplus value extraction. Concentrating vast wealth amongst the wealthy. The state facilitates this process by transferring publicly-owned assets and services to private capital, subsidising capital accumulation with public resources while workers bear the costs through reduced wages and higher prices for essential services. And have you met Woolworths and Coles?

Continuing in this same examination, this morning some news about vital public services flashed briefly across a fast moving news live blog. I'm intrigued by this format for the news, too, where counter-hegemonic observers actually stand a chance at critical analysis because the live blog is not subject to as much editorial and political review as regular articles (thereby exposing casual observers to a more realistic feed of politics).

This post about public service design also had me questioning the propagandist rubbish that the Labor party progress as "good government". The NDIS is a terribly managed service which exemplifies the behaviours above we just discussed the extreme[3]. Parasitic companies skim wealth out of the NDIS and provide subpar or underdeliver promised services to already exploited people with a disability. We see the capitalist state prioritising profit, again, over supporting social reproduction. Yet the Labor government wonders why no one is having babies... But let's spend a moment analysing the supposed overspend of the NDIS in the way the propagandists have advanced it. Taking a step back, we should have a look at the word from the horses mouth[4].

Grattan has spent more time evaluating how to reform Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Reportedly, the scheme has become financially unsustainable and has failed to deliver "optimal" outcomes for people with a disability. The NDIS, introduced in 2013, provides individualised funding packages to people with permanent disabilities. Because of systematic mismanagement and large scale privatisation (oops am I editorialising myself?) costs have skyrocketed from around $2.4 billion to over $41 billion annually, growing at roughly 24% per year. Their report proposes a "rebalancing" of the system by creating stronger "foundational supports" (general disability services available to all people) while making individualised funding "more targeted" (harder to attain) for those with the "most severe needs". They argue this can be achieved by redirecting existing NDIS funds rather than requiring new government spending - essentially moving about 10% of current individualised payments into commissioned services(!!!).

The report reveals the contradictions in the "support" of social reproduction under capitalism through market mechanisms. The NDIS was designed as a market where people act as consumers purchasing services with government-allocated budgets. However, this commodification of care has created exactly the problems we expect in unchecked market capitalism: inefficiency, inequality, and unsustainable cost growth as private providers extract extreme "surplus" value while people with a disability navigate a complex marketplace[5]. Grattan's "rebalancing" could be a partial recognition that market-based individual consumption cannot efficiently organise social care. Jackpot? Not by a long shot. Their answer, moving toward commissioned services and reducing reliance on individualised purchasing, could move toward socialised provision, except we're dealing with a Labor government. The fundamental issue remains: disability support is still conceived as a cost to be managed rather than a collective social responsibility, with the reforms primarily motivated by fiscal sustainability rather than human need.

The institute places emphasis on "foundational supports" essentially acknowledging that "the market" cannot, will not, and could never provide the basic infrastructure of care that people require[6]. Yet the solution remains trapped within neoliberal logic. They seek to reorganise service delivery to be more cost-effective rather than questioning why our obligation to support people with a disability should be subject to budget constraints at all – or even conceived as a cost in the first place. The report's proposed success is that reforms could be achieved "without spending more money" this shows the fundamental ideological limitation: improved care is only acceptable if it doesn't threaten capital accumulation elsewhere in the economy. And certainly, under these same broken logics, reform is not appropriate if it affects private provider wealth skimming.

Labor's panic over the NDIS growing "too big" is a manufactured crisis to distract from the fundamental wealth redirection from public to private. Under capitalism, care for people with a disability is treated as a cost to be minimised rather than a social necessity[7]. The framing of disability support as an unsustainable financial burden shows both capital's logic, and the inhumanity of the Labor party: only labour that produces surplus value is valued, while the costs of maintaining those who cannot be fully exploited for profit are seen as drains on accumulation. Neoliberal capitalism has systematically defunded universal public services where they existed. Research here shows that market mechanisms and commodification only entrench disadvantages faced by people with a disability[8]. The push of the 1970s and 80s towards socialising care, support, and other vital social reproduction services is long gone, and Labor has long been twisted by greed and exploitation and forgotten their working class roots. What we see now is artificial scarcity, and not just in the NDIS, people are forced to compete for individualised underfunded packages, purchase private health care, or languish in underfunded emergency care services because collective, comprehensive support systems have been dismantled. This has happened under Labor and Liberal leadership. And this only serves capital's interests by keeping support costs highly visible and therefore "contestable" – the source of panic in propaganda, rather than embedded in universal, collective, social infrastructure.

This is a key part of capitalism's contradictory relationship with social reproduction[9]. Capital needs a healthy, educated workforce, but doesn't want to pay for maintaining those who may not be able to contribute as much (even temporarily) to surplus value extraction. The NDIS individualises what should be collective social responsibility, making each person's needs appear as separate cost items rather than part of society's obligation to care for all members. Importantly, though, it is maintained in this way because it funds another parasitic industry – providers and service coordinators who exploit all in their care and employment. Deserving and important people coordinate care, provide care, and seek care. All these people offer great value to society, and yet are depicted in media and discourse as a drain. This is exemplary of capital's consistent dehumanisation and the stripping of human values from civil society (in Gramscian terms). The proposed "foundational supports" will move toward ever more more "means-tested", residual welfare - providing minimal support while maintaining the pressure on individuals to prove their worthiness for assistance. This keeps the focus on managing costs rather than addressing the systemic exclusion that capitalism breeds.

Ultimately, this reflects capitalism's fundamental inability to adequately provide for human needs that don't generate profit. Let's not even get started on housing, real estate companies, and tenancy authorities – parasitic rent seekers. Deep breaths, folks.

Rather than "managing" disability through state bureaucracy and boundless layers of private rent seekers, an indigenist approach could centre our concepts of collective responsibility and kinship [10]. Care might then be organised through community collectives based on Country and recognising that colonial capitalist structures created many disabling conditions through dispossession, cultural destruction, and environmental degradation. Disability support would be understood as a healing of collective trauma while recognising the validity of may diverse ways of being, contributing, and behaving. No more would we need to medicalise and pathologise difference. Alongside this, a Marxist transformation could eliminate the entire market apparatus. No more purchasing services, provider profits, or competitive tendering. Instead, we might see care organised as freely associated labour where communities directly organise to meet each other's needs[11]. People with a disability wouldn't be consumers or clients but participants in democratic planning of support systems. Care workers would be community members rather than employees, with work organised around social need not profit extraction. Resources could then flow based on principles of reciprocity, relationship and (feminist) ethics of care, recognising how racism, sexism, transphobia, and ableism intersect[12]. Rather than individual assessments and budgets, communities might collectively determine support based on relationships and protocols. Queer and trans disabled people, disabled women of colour, and Indigenous disabled peoples would have their experiences centred in how care is organised, moving beyond normative assumptions embedded in current systems. These normative assumptions would be dismantled – not centring (manual) labour in conceptions of wellness.

Our goal should not be "independence" or fuller economic participation. We should strive toward social conditions where all bodies and minds can flourish. Work itself should be transformed: shorter hours, meaningful activity, accommodation as default rather than exception. Technology would be developed cooperatively to enhance autonomy rather than increase surveillance. The artificial separation between "disabled" and "non-disabled" would dissolve as society reorganises around collective interdependence rather than individual productivity[13]. We should also draw on indigenist approaches which recognise disability as part of natural human diversity while also addressing how environmental destruction creates disabling conditions. Care should be integrated with restoration of Country, sustainable food systems, and healing damaged relationships. Away from anthropocentric capitalism towards connecting personal healing and healing Country.

Just a casual restructuring of society. And you know what? The only barriers are human: greed and hate.

Brain and body work,

Aidan

  1. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X16689085 ↩︎
  2. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203119600 ↩︎
  3. https://theconversation.com/understanding-the-ndis-the-challenges-disability-service-providers-face-in-a-market-based-system-57737 and https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2023.2263629 ↩︎
  4. https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Saving-the-NDIS-Grattan-Institute-Report.pdf ↩︎
  5. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2020.1782173 and https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12607 amongst many others ↩︎
  6. Joseph makes sound arguments on this here https://openjournals.library.sydney.edu.au/index.php/SWPS/article/view/14059 ↩︎
  7. Campbell looks at how ableness is produced and maintained, which sits well with our discussion of disability as social/political construct under capitalism https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230245181 ↩︎
  8. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v4i2.211 ↩︎
  9. cf., https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2023.1305301 ↩︎
  10. See https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115047 https://doi.org/10.1017/elr.2025.14 https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.14040 for indigenist perspectives – just three amidst many. ↩︎
  11. Again https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.14040 ↩︎
  12. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243218801523 ↩︎
  13. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726715612901 ↩︎
,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
capitalism, NDIS, disability, privatisation, extractivism, parasitism, reproduction, health care

The postal service

Dear friends,

In an almost bourgeois fugue state today I felt rising rage at the para-privatisation of the postal service in this country. Yeah, oddly specific trigger for today’s writing, ey. This, in particular, after being scorned dozens of times for deliveries by “express post” that almost feel like spite come 3-4 business days later than their estimate with an accompanying gaslighting green sign saying “Updated”. Ugh. Okay, but let’s think about the motivations of the company behind all this, because as we know, Australia Post is technically a government body, but with absolutely none of the benefits of nationalisation – just like almost all our other services which have been sold to the lowest bidder to extract maximum profit for shareholders and screw consumers everywhere.

Australia Post operates, fairly uniquely, as a corporate entity. However, unlike privatised utilities, such as water and electricity, which are run for a profit subject to “government regulators” (a genius invention that allows the government to take credit for any semblance of good work done by corpo operators, while ensuring that billionaires accumulate more skimmed wealth back from consumers forced into monopoly “markets”), it remains a corporate entity of the government. The government is the only shareholder. So the profits extracted by the postal service flow to highly paid leadership and government pockets, with no reciprocal investment from government back into the postal service. Simply put, the postal service in this country is a business owned by and beholden to the government, who wants it run like a business. The worst of both worlds. Anyway, enough whinging, let’s analyse it.

The corporatisation of public entities in Australia, which, obviously, is exemplified by Australia Post, represents another form of twisted neoliberal transformation – one that maintains a facade of “public ownership” while implementing private sector logic and extractive practices. This hybrid model, where government enterprises are restructured to operate as corporations while remaining technically state-owned, serves as a transitional phase in the broader project of privatisation. The transformation of Australia Post from a public service focused on universal mail delivery to a “government business enterprise” obsessed with profit metrics and market share epitomises this process. Under this model, essential public services are forced to operate according to market principles, leading to branch closures in “unprofitable” (read: poorer) areas, workforce casualisation, and the prioritisation of (late) parcel delivery (where competition enables price gouging) over basic mail services. This corporatisation sees the gradual absorption of public institutions into capitalist logic without the political resistance that outright privatisation might generate. Sneaky, and effective.

The Australia Post case is particularly interesting, to me right now as I wait for a package, as it demonstrates how corporatisation functions as a mechanism for transferring wealth from workers and communities to capital while maintaining the illusion of public ownership. CEO salaries skyrocket while front-line postal workers face increasing precarity and intensified exploitation. Regional communities lose services deemed “inefficient” while executive bonuses (remember that watch?) are justified through metrics that privilege profit over public good. The corporate structure enables the worst aspects of private sector management - obsession with metrics, worker surveillance, and continuous cost-cutting – while the government connection provides convenient cover for exploitative practices. Harvey called this process “accumulation by dispossession”, operating through institutional transformation rather than outright privatisation, the slow bleeding of public value into private hands through the imposition of corporate logic on public services.

The broader implications of this corporatisation trend reveal how neoliberal ideology has thoroughly infected Australian governance – as though we didn’t know this already. Even nominally public institutions are now expected to operate as if they were private businesses, with “commercial returns” taking precedence over social benefit (hmm, this feels awfully familiar in the context of universities). This creates a twisted form of exploitation where public assets, built through generations of collective investment and labour, are transformed into extractive enterprises that operate against the interests of the very communities they’re meant to serve. The ALP’s embrace of this model demonstrates their complete capitulation to neoliberal logic – maintaining technical public ownership while gutting the actual public service mission of these institutions. The result is a form of privatisation-by-stealth that could actually be more damaging than outright privatisation, as it corrupts the very notion of public service while providing political cover for continued exploitation.

So, obviously, I decided to have a look at the strategic priorities and KPIs of Australia Post which, naturally, show us how corporatisation transforms public services into engines of capitalist accumulation under the guise of “modernisation” and “efficiency” – literally, using these words. The focus on “winning in eCommerce” and “market leading digital experiences” reveals how thoroughly market logic has colonised what was once a public service mission [1]. From these priorities, Marx might have suggested, we see the subordination of use value (delivering mail to all Australians) to exchange value (maximising profitable [i.e., not to consumers, but B2B] parcel delivery services). The language used in their strategic framework – with its emphasis on “customer-centric” decisions rather than public service [2] – shows again how discourses of neoliberal capitalist ideology have thoroughly gripped once public institutions [3].

While the government “transparency portal” hosts the reports, the name must be ironic because, the absence of genuine public service metrics from their Enterprise Scorecard and the complete inaccessibility of internal success metrics show an opaque postal corporation, not a public good. From what we can see, there are KPIs focused entirely on commercial performance and market competition – a framework that would be indistinguishable from any private logistics company. With reports obscene executive compensation packages (again, luxury watches, anyone?), including multi-million dollar payouts even during periods of loss, reveal how corporatisation enables private sector wealth extraction while maintaining the facade of public ownership.

The Post26 Strategy [4], with its technocratic emphasis on “digital transformation” and “customer experience”, serves as ideological cover for the continued dismantling of universal service obligations. As mentioned, when they discuss “reimagining the Post Office network”, what they really mean is closing “unprofitable” branches in working class and regional communities while investing in premium services for wealthy urban areas. This strategic direction demonstrates passive revolution, toward neoliberalism, the gradual transformation of public institutions through the implementation of market logic and corporate governance structures. The result is a publicly-owned institution that actively works against public interests while generating private profits through executive compensation and contractor arrangements – precisely the outcome intended by neoliberal restructuring. And I, for one, find that incredibly sad.

The subterfuge of “almost privatisation” here is sick, particularly after decades of privatisation in the country. Under successive Labor and Liberal governments, Australia has witnessed the systematic dismantling of public services through privatisation: the continued expansion of capital into previously uncommodified spheres of social life. From telecommunications (Telstra) to energy infrastructure to healthcare, this transformation represents both a transfer of ownership and a fundamental shift in how these essential services are conceptualised – from public goods to sources of private profit extraction. Could it get any more gross? Yeah. The privatisation playbook follows a familiar pattern: first, public services are deliberately underfunded and undermined, creating artificial crises that justify private sector intervention. Then, public assets built through generations of collective labour are sold off at bargain prices to private interests. This process has been particularly aggressive in Australia, where neoliberal ideology’s grip on both major parties has resulted in bipartisan support for privatisation despite clear evidence of negative outcomes for workers and service users.

The ideological justification for this “privatisation”, in all its forms, relies on manufactured consent, the carefully cultivated belief that private sector “efficiency” naturally leads to better services and lower costs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Yet this mythology serves to mask the fundamental contradiction at the heart of privatised essential services, and the Australian public falls for it every single time. The incompatibility between the profit motive and the social necessity of these services is rendered invisible. When basic human needs like healthcare, energy, and transportation are subjected to market logic, the result is inevitably the prioritisation of shareholder returns over public good. The ALP’s role in this process is, as always, insidious using its historical connection to the labour movement to provide progressive cover for fundamentally regressive policies that transfer wealth and power from workers to capital. But let’s not get started on the Labor party right now.

The deliberate degradation of public services in Australia shows progressive neoliberalism (borrowing from Fraser), the coupling of regressive economic policies with a superficial veneer of social progress. This deterioration has hit marginalised communities with particular force, creating compounded exploitation at the intersections of class, race, disability and gender. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, for instance, face both the withdrawal of culturally appropriate services and the imposition of privatised alternatives that fail to meet community needs. The disabled community confronts an NDIS increasingly shaped by market logic rather than care requirements. These kinds of targeted impact reveals how the degradation of public services functions as a mechanism for reinforcing existing social hierarchies while creating new forms of dispossession. And damn its pernicious.

However, within this bleak landscape of corporatisation and privatisation, spaces for resistance and transformation continue to emerge. Honestly, all the time, opportunities for resistance and assertion of new ways of working abound. The contradictions that make Australia Post’s “hybrid” model so exploitative also create opportunities for worker and community organising. When postal workers face intensified exploitation, when communities lose vital services, when the gap between executive compensation and front-line working conditions becomes too grotesque to ignore, the potential for collective action grows. The union movement, despite decades of neoliberal attacks, retains significant strength in the postal sector – and the public’s growing frustration (okay, maybe just “my growing frustration”) with deteriorating services creates natural allies for workers’ struggles.

More broadly, the failure of privatisation and corporatisation to deliver on their promises of
“efficiency” and “improved services” has created cracks in the neoliberal consensus. So much so that their CEOs are being exterminated. Each time an “express” parcel arrives days late (lol, sorry I can’t help but whinge), each time a rural community loses its post office, each time workers face intensified surveillance and exploitation, the mythology of market superiority becomes harder to maintain. These contradictions provide openings for advancing alternative visions. Ones that reconnect public services with their original mission of serving human needs rather than generating profit. The future of truly public services depends on our ability to imagine and fight for alternatives to both outright privatisation and the cynical half-measure of corporatisation.

In solidarity,

Aidan

  1. https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/documents/statement-of-corporate-intent-2023-24-to-2026-27.pdf ↩︎

  2. https://auspost.com.au/content/dam/auspost_corp/media/documents/2023-australia-post-annual-report.pdf ↩︎

  3. https://www.transparency.gov.au/publications/communications-and-the-arts/australian-postal-corporation/australian-postal-corporation-annual-report-2023-24/overview/our-strategic-priorities ↩︎

  4. https://stest.npe.ourpost.com.au/about-us/our-business-and-purpose/post26-strategy I mean, really, for how long can a company lean on “COVID impacts” as an excuse for poor domestic shipping strategies? ↩︎

,   &  Aidan Cornelius-Bell
post, privatisation, neoliberalism, capitalist realism, australia post, corporatisation