Let me tell you about the Indian Step Ladder. It is a bit like the Indian Rope Trick.It comes to mind because the newly appointed Air Services Australia board has come under immediate fire because none of its members know anything about electronics. Electronics is the key to air traffic control, which is the board’s main concern.
It is not new for government board appointments to come under fire for knowing little or nothing about the things they are supposed to be supervising. It happened for a long time and happens at the state and territory level, too.
I am not picking on the ASA. The new board members probably have all sorts of other skills that make each appointment respectable, worthwhile and defendable, but the most of the Acts of Parliament that create boards and authorities and give Ministers the power to make appointments to them are very short on qualifications and process to ensure appointments are good ones.
A scan of federal legislation reveals that in Australia power does not come from the barrel of a gun but from the pork barrel of the power of appointment.
I counted more than 150 board, committee and authority appointable by Ministers in a scan of just the Federal statutes beginning with A. It makes it so easy for a Minister to appoint the federal secretary of the Horse, Carriage and Saddlery Union or the director of the White Shoes Company to a cosy $25,000 part-time position on a board which meets monthly. It makes it easy for a Minister to make an appointment more with an eye to the Old Mates Act than the Potted Plants Advisory Authority Act.
That said, statutory authorities are a worthwhile way of bringing expert supervision over government functions. Part-time appointees usually have most to give. Their full-time jobs usually give them management and professional expertise that would not available to the organisations they advise at the same cost if at all.
The trouble is appointments are made by ministerial fiat. Sometimes criticisms are made publicly, as in the case of the ASA board, and I recall one of those yapping writers at The Canberra Times having a few stern words at a Horse, Carriage and Saddlery-type appointment to the board of the ACT TAB a couple of years ago _ it fell on deaf ears. That was a few months before the Vitab debacle.
This brings me to the Indian Step Ladder. The Indian Rope Trick is notorious. Someone throws the rope into thin air and starts climbing Everyone wonders how the rope is supported. With the Indian Step Ladder, someone is appointed, with little or no merit, to some small-time board. And that is the first step to another bigger and more lucrative board position and so it goes on. Unlike the rope trick, however, no-one wonders what ground is supporting the base of the step ladder. Each earlier step justifies the subsequent step.
Most appointments are fairly sound, but there are still too many Indian Step Ladder, the Old Mates Act, the Horse and Carriage and White Shoes appointments.
Independent MLA Michael has tried to eliminate them in the ACT by making many appointments disallowable by the Assembly. But it is a heavy-handed process because it has to undo what is already done.
It might be better if all statutory appointments were opened to the public. All would be advertised and anyone could nominate publicly. The Minister could still pick anyone, even if they did not nominate. That is a proper executive prerogative. However, in that face of a number of public nominees, the Minister would have to justify why an Old Mates Act appointment was made instead of, say, a public nominee with better formal qualifications and experience.
A public nominee process would widen the field of appointees; keep the process open; and make Ministers think twice about appointing mate or a mate of mate. Equally, it would be good for appointees too. They would not have to put up with unjustified criticism if they gain their positions in the face of a list of public nominees.
Incidentally, I searched my CD of Federal statutes for “member” and “consist” and hundreds of boards with ministerial patronage fell out _ small wonder the ACT is slow on putting its Acts on CD.
And yes Minister, I will accept the part-time chairmanship of the Statutory Authorities Statutory Board of Review Board.