WHAT a contrast. I used to think that state and territory level governments were inept, prone to corruption, stupid, and generally worse than the Feds every time. I used to think that the smaller the government, the worse it got.
Well, look at the difference between the ACT and Federal Government’s approach to review and big change.
The Feds made a complete hash of its reviews into climate change and tax. The ACT, on the other hand, seems to have learned from past folly.
On Christmas Eve 2009 the Feds got the Henry report on its review into tax. What did it do? Kept it secret for several months until its response and the spin doctors were ready. What was that response? A mealy mouthed pathetic acceptance of three of four recommendations out of a total of a couple of hundred. And even those have faltered.
And the Feds’ response to the findings and recommendations of economist Ross Garnaut on climate change was contemptuous and negligent verging on the culpable.
Compare that to the ACT Government’s dealing with public-sector reform. Like the Feds, it commissioned a wide-ranging full-on review, to be done by a top bureaucrat — former Defence Secretary, High Commissioner to NZ and ANU Chancellor Dr Allan Hawke. There the similarity ended.
When Hawke delivered this week, the ACT Government did not hide the report away to media-manage its response — the bits it would accept and the bits it would reject. To the contrary, it banged the whole thing on the internet the day it was delivered.
One presumes, given the ACT Government’s new approach to freedom of information, that it will do the same thing when it gets former ACT Treasurer Ted Quinlan’s report on territory taxation.
Incidentally, the Government might need to give Ted a bit of poke in the ribs to get on with it. Hawke began later and has reported earlier.
Anyway, back to the soundness of the ACT’s approach. How much more sensible to push the whole thing out to the public without any commitment to specific proposals but a general statement of overall support.
It showed confidence in the maturity of the electorate and an acknowledgement that informed and concerned people public might produce some valid objections to, or at least some sensible tweaking of, the proposals.
The ACT Government, having made the thing public, is in a better position to make modifications, instead of painting itself into a politically unsustainable corner in the way the Feds did with the Henry report.
The behaviour of the Federal Government since, say, 2000 is almost beyond explanation. How is it that governments served by an army of bureaucrats (indeed the public service is bigger than the army) with vast experience, knowledge and understanding could have delivered such a litany of poor policy, especially on tax and environment? Sure, there was a lot a good policy, but that does not excuse the one-after-the-other policy lemons, nearly all of which have been poorly executed or put out of their misery before they got off the ground.
Why the difference? It seems Federal Labor is in the grip of the 24-hour news cycle and focus groups. Also, it has much tougher opposition than its ACT counterpart. But more importantly, ACT Labor got its lesson earlier and has taken heed of it.
Go back to 2006. Then ActewAGL managing director Michael Costello delivered his functional review of the ACT public sector to the Government. The Government kept it under wraps. It refused all requests for its publication, claiming it was privileged.
Eventually, in 2009, former NSW Chief Justice Laurence Street upheld that assertion, and we will now have to wait until 2016 until it sees the light of day.
That review, we deduce, spawned the school closures and savage public-sector cuts.
Remember, also around the same time, the secrecy over the location of the data centre and the gas turbines to produce the electricity to run it?
It was not so much the ultimate decisions made by the Government, but the secretive and contemptuous way it came to its conclusion that offended the public.
But no Government can continually offend the public. In the 2008 election, ACT Labor lost its majority.
It appears it has learned from that, with Hawke and with reviews into festivals and arts, but we will have to wait for the treatment of the Quinlan review before we can be sure. That review is likely to contain more nasties than the Hawke review.
But it is even more important with nasties to lay out the reasons and have a discussion before acting. The ACT Government had to engage in some efficiencies in 2006 and 2007, but it would have come out better electorally if it had engaged in more discussion before imposing them.
Interestingly, political trends often manifest themselves in the ACT before they appear federally. The 2010 federal election scenario, with its swing away from Labor’s control mentality, micromanagement and secrecy and a boost for the Greens, happened in the ACT in 2008.
Could the feds now follow the ACT approach on information and policy formation.
As it happens, the “new” ACT approach is in fact quite old. In pre-freedom of information days a similar approach was fairly standard proceduce in the Westminster system: Green Paper; White Paper; draft legislation; Act of Parliament.
Maybe modern politicians will see it in their long-term interests to place less reliance on media management, the 24-hour news cycle and focus groups, instead concentrating on getting long-term policy right.
To do that sensible debate among self-selecting contributors is bound to produce a better result than huddling more or less randomly selected people into a room to talk about things they know little about or care about even less. They say they want pizza one day and fish and chips the next, and it takes a long time for them to realise they need salad and a balanced diet. By then, though, with the 24-hour news cycle and media management, it is too late. The pizza and fish and chips have already been ordered.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 19 February 2011.