For every Lawyers’ or logicians’ Latin phrase there is a quick English translation.
Logicians talk of the “”post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. It means “”after this therefore because of this”. Many people in the ACT have fallen into this fallacy. They think that just because standards fell after self-government, the fall of standards was due to self-government. They point to grass not being cut; the misdiagnosis of a footballer; school closures; the resealing of roads with stones; cracks in cycles paths and other manifestations of Canberra falling into a Third World abyss. It only happened since 1989, so it must be because of self-government.
But one did not cause the other. Rather they were both caused by the same thing: a determination by the Federal Government to make the ACT pay its own way. The Federal Government, both its advisers and members, were not only determined that the people of Canberra pay their own way, but that when the cut in funding came, they would also have their very own politicians to blame for it, so they could escape the blame themselves.
This was a Labor Government remember. And a previous Labor Government had lost the seat of Canberra to the Liberals in 1974 because it was seen to mistreat the town. In 1989, with three Labor seats, the Federal Government had to devise a way of escaping the blame. (Though, to be fair, there were some idealistic democrats who thought the people of the city should run their own affairs.)
So we got self-government and the Feds started to hack.
By 1995-96 the 1988-89 general-purpose funding of $617 million (adjusted for inflation) had been slashed to $291 million. Moreover, there were some local politicians to blame and the people of Canberra were too stupid to see where the real cause lay. We fell into the “”post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy.
We really got duped.
Worse, we even blamed the comparatively very paltry amount spent to set up the system of self-government as the cause for less money being available for health, education and roads. In fact, the ACT spends far less per head on governance that other states and territories.
The danger has been that the anger and apathy ital caused end ital by budget cuts and blamed on self-government has generated popular demand for wholesale change, as manifested in the calls for a town-council non-adversary approach.
Fortunately, this was seen off last week with the publication of Professor Philip Pettit’s Review of the Governance of the ACT.
Pettit has praised the ACT’s hybrid Westminster-Washington model of governance. (Dare we call it the Washminster system?)
It is Washminster because the executive realistically can never get a majority in the legislature, so it like the US; but the Chief Executive is appointed from the legislature like the British system and there is an official Opposition in the legislature.
Several very interested parties sought to persuade Pettit to make recommendations that suited them.
Independent Michael Moore wanted the inquiry to sanction him getting a ministry. Pettit deftly side-stepped this by saying the present system already allowed for an independent to be a minister. All he had to do was negotiate it with the Chief Minister. There was no need for a structural arrangement. Pettit also rejected another of Moore’s ideas that would increase the power of independents — that is abandoning the position of Leader of Opposition.
Chief Minster Kate Carnell wanted at least to be seen to be doing something about “”the system” to appease the “”town-council” people. The mere fact of holding the inquiry was enough for that, even if the Assembly, in setting the terms of reference, specifically discounted any wholesale down-sizing.
She also saw an opportunity to lessen the legislature’s role in overseeing the executive, while at the same time giving lip-service to the calls for less adversary politics. One idea was that of executive committees. The chair of these committees would get even sit in Cabinet on occasions. They would get extra pay, as well. They would be quite close to the executive. Pettit rightly sent this off. These committees wold inevitably become captive of the executive.
Instead, he proposed that the committees would shadow the various portfolio areas: chief minister’s; health; justice; urban services; education and administration and procedures. They would look at the policies in each portfolio area.
Sounds fine, but the big trouble with this is that it could be the end of the Public Accounts Committee and the Scrutiny of Bills and Subordinate Legislation Committee.
These two scrutiny committees take overall approaches. The policy-shadowing committees look at what policies might be put into effect in the future. The two scrutiny committees look at what was done in the past and how the laws on the table in the present. Governments are happy to talk about the future; the are less loquacious about the present and past.
The Public Accounts Committee has (or should have) a broad expertise in accounting and efficiency. Is the public getting value for money? The test for this question ranges across all policy areas. Assets registries; contracting; fraud control; risk control and so on. Was the money spent properly? Did the public get a good result? Governments (and their public servants) would prefer not to have such scrutiny.
The Scrutiny of Bills Committee looks at all proposed Bills and regulations and asks whether they respect human rights; give too much power to the Minister and so on. This committee has (or should have) a broad legal expertise running across all portfolios. Governments (and their public servants) would prefer not to have such scrutiny.
At present, these are the two big-ticket committees. Their chairs get an extra $4500 a year. Chair of other committees get only $2250.
I don’t imagine that the chairs of the six Pettit-recommended committees would get the lower amount if they come into being.
Even if we have the policy-shadowing committees, we must keep the public accounts and scrutiny of bills committees. The Executive gets away with enough now.
The trouble is, though, that you need a reasonable number of MLAs to cover all the committees and do constituency work. We need a few more. This is a very unpopular call in the ACT where people wrongly blame self-government and the self-government structure on all the city’s financial woes.
You can make a good argument that we have too few MLAs. A certain foreign-aid charity used to skite that it paid less than 10 per cent in administration and everything else went to aid, whereas other aid agencies spent a much higher percentage. But the small-spending agency got itself into all sorts of strife. It became a victim of fraud and it misapplied funds to inappropriate uses (like buying the wrong sort of trucks so the aid did not get through) through lack of spending on administration.
At self-government we had one MLA per 10,000. That is a modest ratio. It would mean 21 MLAs now, whichis what Pettit recommends.
(Incidentally, governance in the ACT costs a lot less than 10 per cent of the ACT revenue, more like 1 per cent).
But if we are to increase the number we must keep up the accountability, both of the executive through a strong committee system, and of the MLAs themselves through fixed elections every three years. Pettit recommends four-year terms. That has been the call in the federal sphere, but the call was strongest when prime ministers kept calling early elections. You cannot do that in the ACT. We have fixed terms, so the longer term is unnecessary.
They should have nothign to fear from greater scrutiny and we have much to gain.