Senator MARGETTS(10.28 a.m.) —I would like to put a viewpoint based on a heretical standpoint in relation to economic modelling. My standpoint comes from studying most of my economics at the University of East Anglia. The advisers seem to think that is funny. The University of East Anglia looked at economics from the viewpoint that it is not a science—and it is not. It is not even a social science. It is actually a theoretical construct, and it actually also is very much based on what philosophical viewpoint you come from.

In terms of development studies, economics could be looked at from a variety of different viewpoints depending on where you start in your assumption. You could actually have, and we did have, an economics text which was written in three columns which looked at three different theories of economics. Every issue that is brought up with an economic theory can be looked at depending on what your basic assumption is—what the causal factor is and what the outcome is.

If you assume that there is only one model, you are actually saying that economics is some sort of science. As far as I am concerned, it is a science only in terms of the science of alchemy. You can have the old story about light bulbs and economists. You have as many theories, in reality, as you have economists—and sometimes more. The reality is we cannot put into legislation some assumption that there is one theory and one way and that somehow or other economics is a mathematical science. It is not. There are some ways of describing what we know. There are never ways of proving what we know within economics. It is not that kind of study.

I think if we assume that there ever can be a situation where there is only one way of modelling, it is the assumption that classical economics is the only way of looking at things. A number of years ago I was talking to a lecturer in economics at the University of Western Australia. I said, `Look, it is extraordinary to me that those people who have never been out of the system teach Keynesian economics as if it is a branch of classical economics.' This chap never had been out of the system. He looked at me and said, `It is, isn't it?'

That is what we are suggesting here today: that somehow or other, economics is something that can tell us what to do; that it is some sort of science that can be put into a mathematical formula and that there is a right formula—that there can be a right formula that applies to a particular situation. I would firmly and vociferously say that it is always a theoretical construct and your assumptions will differ depending on which angle you take it from. On the cost of production, do you take classical economics, Marxist or Keynesian economics? Depending on which angle you come from, the causes and outcomes will differ; and to assume anything else is alchemy.