THE Instruction Manual for the British Civil Service (which is used extensively by its Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and even US counterparts) has quite a few instructions in several chapters on what to do when an incoming government proposes to “cut through the red tape”. I was reminded of the chapters this week when Opposition Leader Tony Abbott announced he was going to set up a “Deregulation Unit” within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The manual, which is one of the very few documents on public administration that has not been annotated, re-written, expanded, contracted or otherwise mashed beyond it original meaning, was written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, and is otherwise known as “Yes, Minister”.
The chapters on Open Government and the Economy Drive have the Minister for Administrative Affairs, Jim Hacker, being pasted by the public servants.
Some of the tactics listed in the manual are:
Ensure that the priority of cuts is ordered so that they inconvenience the Minister immediately.
Make the Minister look mean-spirited so the cuts lose public support – going for the jugular.
Change the method of counting public servants so the numbers go down on paper but stay the same in reality.
Organise new priorities for the new government which require more public servants, even if they are in different departments.
Make the Minister look inept (though most Ministers are perfectly capable of doing this without any help from the Public Service).
The first “cut the red tape” campaign in Australia was that of Malcolm Fraser in 1976. The cutely named Expenditure Review Committee was immediately dubbed the “Razor Gang” by the media.
The ministerial car fleet was the first victim of the cuts and ministers were left slumming it with the public in taxis at capital city airports.
A superb example of going for the jugular was the proposal by the Australian War Memorial to seek sponsorship for the sounding of the Last Post each evening as the setting sun glowed upon the sandstone blocks of that hallowed place.
The retired colonels bellowed at the prospect of the McDonalds Last Post as the public servants rubbed their hands in glee at the embarrassment of the politicians who had put the institution in such a parlous state.
Never had so little saving (a few hundred dollars per bugle blast in a Budget of millions) gainsayed so much political territory.
Several attempts by Hawke, Keating and Howard at demanding “efficiency dividends” were met superbly by the bureaucracy. The number of full-time public servants fell as the number of part-timers increased.
Then the politicians demanded figures based on “full-time equivalents”, and also demanded out-sourcing. The bureaucrats outsourced – mainly to retrenched former public servants. The official public service shrank, but the number of bureaucrats swelled unabated.
John Howard inherited a public service of about 115,000 in 1995, and culled it to 100,000 by 1998. Canberra like Washington was the target of populist attacks.
There was only a slight respite from the metonymy of Canberra equals bureaucracy.
For a few days after the bushfires in 2003 the Australian public understood that if you prick us do we not bleed. But it did not take long for the old sentiment of “Let those pricks in Canberra bleed” to resume its hold in the public mind.
It seems such an easy target for a populist politician: cut red tape; cull the power of Canberra to interfere with people’s lives; decentralise; New Federalism; states’ rights and so on.
But invariably the bureaucrats win. The Howard Government was the most determined to cull the federal bureaucracy. And it did so until 1998. Then the bureaucracy grew back. New bureaucrats were needed to supervise the out-sourcing and then the gun buy-back and in final triumph even more were employed to fight the war on terror after 2001.
The public service, culled to 100,000 in 1998 grew to 145,000 in less than 10 years, it largest expansion in our history – from the party that prides itself on lean government.
As the manual said – new priorities for new governments require new bureaucracies.
I call it the paspalum effect. You can weed, poison or burn a lawn of its paspalum – but it will always grow back.
The pollies really do not have a chance. Experience counts. Public servants see governments come and go, but an incoming Prime Minister gets only one crack at it. By the time the second term comes it is too late to talk about cutting red tape because voters quite reasonably ask – why did you let all this waste go unchecked for the whole of your first term?
But the matter is more profound than that. The voters lap up populist politicians’ calls for cutting red tape. It is easy stuff. However, deep down the voters like bureaucracy.
As Rousseau said, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The chains are the rules and regulations which make civil society work. We need and want the chains. For without the red tape, the corrupt, the inept and the charlatans will rape the public purse. They will inflict cost, injury and even death, as the pink batts episode and any number of other poorly administered schemes clearly illustrate.
Even the most basic things require detailed rules: is an imported cowboy suit a toy attracting a 10 per cent duty or clothing attracting only 5? Without a bureaucracy the customs revenue would shrivel.
It is no good having a charity, for example, that promises to spend less than 10 per cent on administration (red tape) if the grain gets put on the wrong trucks and gets delivered to the wrong people. Better to spend 50 per cent on red tape to make sure that the other 50 per cent makes it, than to spend just 10 per cent on red tape and cause the lot to be lost.
You cannot be free without law, regulation, and, if you like, red tape because without it the lawless and the opportunists will engulf you.
The British Civil Services Instruction Manual put it facetiously, but it had more than a grain of truth:
“Bernard Woolley: What about a publicity campaign, Minister. You know ADMINISTRATION SAVES THE NATION, RED TAPE IS FUN. Full-page ads in . . . . in. . . . Just an idea.
“Jim Hacker: Red tape is fun?
“Bernard: Well what about RED TAPE HOLDS THE NATION TOGETHER.”
Alas, it does.
CRISPIN HULL
This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on 13 July 2013.