National Competition Policy

Documents

The following have simply been 'dumped' without any attempt to tidy up formats. They are for research use only as a source of references and ideas, and must not be cited.

Some Issues In Microeconomic Reform (July 1996) - the whole concept of what was being attempted seemed to have holes in it

Report of Commission of Audit (July 1996) - comments on a high profile report that suggested changes to more 'business-like' approach to organizing Queensland administration that had NCP parallels

Summary of Commission of Audit (July 1996) - outline of what it said in relation to NCP

NCP Guide (August 1996) - summary of Queensland's guidelines to agencies

Beyond Competition (August 1996) - commented on a seminal EPAC paper which had set the character of competition policy in Australia

Politics and Productivity (August 1996) - outlines issues raised in review of Japan's approach which was seen as fundamentally different

NCP: an outsider's view of some implementation issues (Sept 1996) - an initial assessment of complexities arising in attempting to implement NCP

Victoria: Contract State (Sept 1996) - outlines and reviews a critique of efforts by Kennett Government to change the character of public administration

NCP Documentary Sources (Oct 1996) - summary of available documents referring to NCP

Competition Policy: Implications from International Data (Oct 1996) - the goals of competition policy are radically different in other places

Competition Policy: Some Emerging International Aspects (Oct 1996) - issues that had not been considered in Australia

Competition Policy in Queensland (Jan 1997) - draft report from interdepartmental group suggesting how NCP implementation might be advanced

Some Competition Policy Issues (April 1997) - further changes in international perceptions

NCP Observations (March 1998) - outlined the then current state of play

Current Perspectives (2003)

The following perspectives might be considered in relation to the above documents:

• I was coming at the subject initially primarily from an economic strategy viewpoint;
• Australia's (and especially Queensland's) approach to competition policy was derivative (ie based on international precedents that were not well understood) and autocratically implemented partly to ensure passive public service compliance;
• key oversights were that
  • competitiveness (ie the ability to succeed) requires not only competition but also capabilities. Nothing was done about the latter (see Defects in Economic Tactics, Strategy and Outcomes);
  • attempting to apply 'business-like' methods to public administration (which was the effect of NCP) was often stupid because (a) the core business of government is 'governing', not providing goods and services efficiently (b) public goods and services tend to be unsuitable for business-like provision because of the complexity associated with the market failures that brought them into the public sector in the first place. However a broadly based Decay in Australian Public Administration resulted from attempting to do so (and from political action to eliminate professionalism). A more detailed account of how application of NCP principles (and a lack of professional competence in this process) led to a breakdown of important machinery is in Defects in Infrastructure Planning and Delivery in Queensland
• competition policy has implications in relation to international competitiveness. Attempts to insist on western style policies involved trying to constrain industry policies practiced in East Asia - where the goal of competition policy was to increase (not to constrain) the strength of national enterprises. This could not be separated from questions of general strategy (ie how does one position oneself to succeed). Some 1990s ideas about this were outlined in Strategy Development in Business and Government.
• Queensland's economic strategy has been amateurish - and its financial predicament is increasingly perilous;
• differences in international approaches to competition policies have close relationships with differences in preferred systems of political economy (see The Second Failure of Globalization?). The latter suggests that:
  • the view that a simple competitive market economy is adequate is a major factor in the emergence of economic failures and weak states that have contributed to the threat of international terrorism; and
  • failure to reach common agreement about what system of political economy should be preferred is presumably a factor in the breakdown of the US-led coalition against terror and the US's consequent preference for a unilateral stance in Iraq.