Realistic Public Administration is the Key

There has been public disquiet and debate about the management of urban growth and infrastructure development in southeast Queensland. These concerns have focused on: the region's rapid population growth; urban sprawl; the loss of green-space; the adequacy and funding of infrastructure; and the arrangements for integrating land use and infrastructure planning.

In response the Queensland Government announced in the lead-up to the 2004 state elections that an Office of Urban Development and Infrastructure Coordination would be established, reporting to the Treasurer (Ludlow M., 'Labor placates developers', Australian Financial Review, 28/1/04). The Office was apparently to undertake such functions as:

• setting out a blue-print to ensure that developers meet minimum standards;
• preventing councils approving projects that do not meet environmental goals - though without acting as 'planning police' for local councils;
• redrafting the Integrated Planning Act to ensure that councils adhere to a state government regional plan - so that the big-picture is reflected in their micro-planning;
• ensuring that planning is done at regional level - eg to define where development goes and where environmental areas are preserved;
• ensuring that government infrastructure programs and natural resource management schemes are compatible with urban management objectives.

However the most important requirement for effective growth management and infrastructure development outcomes - in southeast Queensland and elsewhere - is not being addressed.

Ineffectual Public Administration

Queensland is burdened with a 'constipated' system of public administration which impedes everything government tries to do.  This is revealed by practical indicators ^[9] such as:

• a perception that government has been only 'pretending' to plan;
• arrangements for developing infrastructure, which involve (a) uncertainty about the responsibilities of departments, commercialized / corporatised entities, central agencies, and regional planning machinery ^[6] and (b) a complex Public Private Partnership scheme ^[7];
• cost over-runs on major projects (of which the South Coast Motorway, Suncorp Stadium and the Goodwill Bridge appear to be prominent examples); 
• administrative breakdown (eg in the Families Department and potentially in Queensland Health);
• the 'Net-Bet affair', in which following correct procedures (as revealed by independent inquiries) could result in a clearly unwise decision in awarding a valuable license;
• plausible external suggestions that policy in various areas is substandard;
• staff and union perceptions of a bullying management style; and
• widespread suggestions about a lack of full accountability.

In particular the effectiveness of state government functions in southeast Queensland, which accounts for over 50% of Queensland's population and economic activity, is limited.

What went wrong

This predicament is a product of Queensland's history. 

The state's economy was long dependent on natural resources, complemented by small businesses and branch offices.  This has not led the Queensland community to support independent institutions able to provide competent high-level advice about economic or public policy. Instead it has relied on external investors to take most important economic initiatives, and on a reasonably capable Public Service to support government ^[12].

The problem now is that in the early 1990s the Public Service was de-skilled by poorly conceived and politically driven 'reform' of Queensland's machinery of government ^[14]. This 'reform' involved an attempt to implement both the findings of the Fitzgerald Inquiry into problems in police and political systems, and new public management theories that envisaged making government more business-like. For reasons outlined below the latter was based on a poor understanding of the nature of government. This laid the basis for Queensland's current administrative 'constipation'.

In the course of 'reform' there was blank refusal to listen to the Public Service. Instead the Westminster tradition of an independent professional Public Service was demolished by across the board restructuring and re-staffing under a government controlled by the ALP's AWU faction which (according to evidence to the 2000 Shepherdon inquiry) had a rorting tradition in filling important political positions.  Legislation was passed to prevent appeals against senior appointments. Corporate memory was lost. Initiative was repressed in the name of 'accountability'. Understanding of public policy issues was often set back several years. 'Wheels' had to be reinvented (and many turned out 'square'). Ineffective policy procedures were instituted on the basis of the theories of inexperienced political insiders, and under-informed policy / strategy groups sprouted like weeds. The 'wheels fell off' the practical delivery of key functions such as education, health and infrastructure. Eventually the electorate (particularly the Public Service), protested at the administrative failures they were exposed to - a reaction which baffled political and media champions of 'reform' ^[10].

Thus the widespread community and Public Service support that had existed for progressive change was fritted away in a  'reform' process that was described by independent observers in terms such as: lacking a proper philosophy; putting in a political fix; installing less capable senior officials; and creating the most complex system of government in the Western world ^[15].

Subsequent governments have done nothing that is effective to rectify the problem. They have continued the process of politicisation - and by the late 1990s politicisation apparently had bi-partisan political support (see Franklin M., 'Only four survive Beattie's reshuffle', Courier Mail, 17/4/99).

Why politicisation matters

A critical role of the senior Public Service is to complement the focus that elected representatives have on the popularity of policy, by providing advice and implementation support to ensure that government policy is likely to be effective in practice.

Serious problems must arise where the Public Service is subjected to political manipulation and is thus unable to fulfill this role. Moreover:

• it is as hard for non-experts (including ministers' political advisers) to assess how competent a senior public servant is likely to be in providing such support as it is for those non-experts to assess an aeronautical engineer or doctor. Such support requires both experience and a great depth and breadth of knowledge. Government is not really like a business. A business produces and distributes specific goods and services. Governments also do this, but their primary function is governing - ie creating a framework for a community's social and economic activities. And success in 'governing' requires knowledge, experience and wisdom about the functioning of complex social, economic, environmental and legal systems - not just about the operational effectiveness of an organization. Such capabilities take many years to gain - and there are few non-governmental organizations in Queensland in which they can be acquired;
• it is hard / impossible for even capable professionals in the Public Service to act professionally where they are employed on contracts and thus unable realistically to tell ministers anything that could create political difficulties for ministers;

De-skilling the Public Service (and undermining its professionalism) increases the rate of errors that government makes. The effects of this in Queensland have gone much deeper than the administrative dysfunctions that eventually become obvious to the community. For example:

• administrative machinery has become 'politically idealistic' rather than realistic ^[14]. It seems currently to suffer from hidden symptoms such as: complex processes which constrain initiative; information bottlenecks; discouragement of debate or access to external information which leads to intellectual sterilization; unrealistic strategic planning / budgeting arrangements ^[13], fragmentation of responsibilities to play 'commercialization' games; and an overriding priority of concealing problems so as to protect ministers politically;
• the strategy to achieve the (ironic) 'Smart' State goal has been amateurish (eg it involves investing heavily in 'smart' inputs to an economic system that remains ill-equipped to use them), and Queensland has still not achieved the vital transition from the rapid growth of low productivity industries to those with higher value-added ^[5]. Thus, because of the weakness of its tax base, Queensland continues to rely on a large revenue subsidy at the expense of taxpayers in other states under the Grants Commissions' horizontal equalization arrangements ^[8] - a fact which those other states are increasingly labeling as a subsidy for mediocrity. Moreover the state may lack the capacity to finance the infrastructure investment needed to support its rapid growth ^[3];
• the early-1990's SEQ 2001 process to develop ways to manage growth in southeast Queensland resulted in the creation of unrealistic, complex, politically-driven and public sector centered machinery ^[16] - which later appeared to become the basis for the Integrated Planning Act.

While a loss of essential knowledge and experience has been an unwanted consequence of seeking to make government more accountable and business-like, it is noteworthy that similar problems have affected private firms where they have pursued overly simplistic top-level perceptions (such as financial market criteria) of what is required for business success ^[9].

The proposed Office can not work

The problem is now that little can be achieved by superimposing an Office for Urban Management and Infrastructure Coordination on an under-skilled public sector which has lacked effective professional accountability at senior levels for more than a decade ^[1] and which suffers from both 'politically idealistic' administrative machinery (as above) and increasingly severe budgetary constraints ^[3].

The proposed Office must also encounter difficulties because:

• it is apparently expected to provide 'teeth' to enforce something like the SEQ 2021 plan. However the information incorporated in SEQ 2021 can not yet be adequate to fully and realistically define the region's architecture. Thus to complete the plan, the Office needs access to information which is held by private and public entities. The problem is that the latter will lose their enthusiasm for volunteering information, if they are obliged as a result to do anything which they see as not being in their own interest (ie if the Office or government shows any 'teeth'). Thus (unless the Office is prepared to act as their puppet) it will tend to make demonstrably poor decisions and conflict with entities (such as state agencies, local authorities, or large property developers) whose operational responsibilities gives them access to detailed information about practical land use / infrastructure issues. Queensland's prior experience with a Bureau of Regional Development, which reported to the Treasurer under the Goss Government, clearly showed - though its mission was somewhat different - how 'babes in the bureaucratic woods' quickly lose credibility in internal policy debates;
• the Office's infrastructure coordination responsibilities appear identical to the existing legislatively-defined responsibilities of the state Coordinator General. The latter's long experience suggests that coordination must be based on cooperation rather than on showing 'teeth' and is best achieved by developing effective machinery, rather than by trying to dictate outcomes centrally;
• Commonwealth efforts to assume responsibility for coordination amongst different modes of transport, under the Department of Transport's emerging Auslink program ^[4], will ensure that effective coordination between land use and transport - a task which is arguably the most important the proposed Office would need to address - is unachievable.

Making realistic progress

There seem to be five priority requirements for making more realistic progress in land use planning and infrastructure development in southeast Queensland.

First, 'give a laxative' to Queensland's system of public administration. This could be achieved by creating a serious process for professional accountability for senior public servants and reviewing the realism of key administrative processes. The latter would include those related to: cabinet; strategic planning and budgeting; infrastructure planning; and the corporatisation / commercialization of service and infrastructure delivery.

Second, pay particular attention in this process to the machinery related to land use planning and infrastructure development (eg to the provisions of the Integrated Planning Act).

Third, evolve a shared understanding of south-east Queensland's future architecture - so that there is widespread awareness amongst public and private entities involved in planning aspects of the region of what they are working to create.

Fourth, review the position of Queensland's public finances, and options for infrastructure financing. It may well be that a far more serious approach to economic strategy [5] is essential to create a tax base which is strong enough to support the high levels of infrastructure investment now required.

Finally the most difficult goal which needs to be addressed in the medium term is the imbalance in federal-state financial capabilities - under which states have most spending requirements while the Commonwealth gains most tax revenues. This has long made it extremely difficult for states to take their infrastructure and service responsibilities seriously, or to be held accountable for their performances. It is increasingly leading to conflict and buck-passing in areas such as health, education and transport. Until this situation is resolved, progress will necessarily remain limited ^[4].

References

Detailed accounts of the issues outlined here, with supporting references, are in the following documents on the CPDS website (http://cpds.apana.org.au/index.html) -

[1] Accountability of Queensland's senior public servants (February 2004);

[2] Growth Management in SE Queensland (November 2003);

[3] Queensland's Budgets (June 2003);

[4]  'Federal-state financial imbalances' in Australia's Governance Crisis (May 2003);

[5] Queensland's Economic Strategy (October 2002);

[6] Defects in Infrastructure Planning and Delivery in Queensland (May 2002);

[7] Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure (February 2002);

[8] Review of Grants Commission Arrangements (December 2001);

[9] The Growing Case for a Professional Public Service (July 2001);

[10] The Origin and Spread of the Queensland Effect (July 2001);

[11] Queensland's Challenge (February 2001);

[12] Queensland's Weak Parliament (March 1999);

[13] Evaluation of Managing for Outcomes (September 1997);

[14] Towards Good Government in Queensland (August 1995);

[15] Attachment A to [14]

[16] SEQ2001: A Plan for an Underdeveloped Economy (March 1994)