Suggested Machinery for Growth Management is Impractical

Proposed methods for administrative co-ordination would be a struggle:

• preparing regional structure plans would inevitably require the Regional Co-ordination Council (or its secretariat) to take a partisan position (as such plans 'require compliance of state and local bodies') while the acceptability of the Council (or its Secretariat) as coordinators depend on being seen to be neutral. The result could be non-co-operation, and 'coordinators' who became part of the problem;
• local authorities would see sub-regional strategies as coercive on their local strategic plans and corporate plans. Coercion would fail politically, quite apart from the difficulty of 'getting it right';
• adherence to a regional framework by state agencies is unlikely. The latter may exert greater influence in Cabinet than coordinating agencies, and produce better arguments about any given issue;
• placing the proposed Secretariat / Resources Unit in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Planning would not create the ability to gain real co-operation of other agencies (eg for regional service plans). Coordinative roles in Government must be connected with the Chief Executive or Treasurer because of questions of status, and access to the information needed to build credibility (Delion A. Administrative Problems of Co-ordination in Economic and Social Development, International Institute for Administrative Sciences, 1970);
• the numerous arrangements proposed for structure planning, consultation and so on, would soon become a major source of inflexibility when new problems arise which do not 'fit' those structures;
• the issues involved are too complex for 'planned' solutions and administrative coordination. This is already indicated by: RPAG's inability to define clear plans; public objections to perceived inaccuracies; and desire for local autonomy.

Despite protests to the contrary, the proposal for `growth management' would effectively introduce another level of government machinery in SE Queensland.

Can service costs be reduced by integrated plans? In Victoria in the 1980s somewhat similar sounding goals as RPAG suggests were actually followed by escalating costs and declining service quality, eg for transport (Murray R. and White K., The Fall of the House of Cain, Spectrum Publications). In recent years, deregulation has often been sought to reduce costs through greater efficiency outside centrally regulated / managed frameworks, and this has presumably been the purpose of the State Government's proposals for corporatisation. At issue are the questions of motivation and the feasibility of forming integrated plans for complex functions (where many issues and organisations are involved). Recent attempts at producing such plans in Queensland (eg for large integrated information systems) have taken 10 years to arrive at a fragile consensus. Both management and economic theorists have turned away from centrally planned solutions.

Principles for growth management lack credibility. Those principles were stated to be: building new arrangements on existing organisations where possible; promoting co-ordination and co-operation in services planning; linking land use and desired social outcomes; ensuring that sectional interests do not dominate over the general community interest; and ongoing monitoring of the process and the plan. An emphasis on coordination, cooperation and building on existing organisations was the philosophy underpinning the Coordinator General's reasonably successful role in Queensland in the 1970s. However such methods must be genuine if they are to work (based on respect for people; coordinators who are 'neutral' and rely on others' expertise; outcomes determined more by the logic of a situation, than by political preferences). (Craig J., Coordination as an Aspect of Government Planning and Administration, unpublished thesis, University of Queensland, 1978). Such sentiments are no longer genuine (eg recent public sector 'reforms' removed rather than redirecting the knowledge, skill and experience of existing organisations). Such attitudes are inconsistent with the suggested principles for growth management, and credibility could now be hard to regain (especially with an implied threat like 'where possible').

Queensland's administrative machinery could not produce desired efficiency gains. Public sector reform in both Victoria in the 1980s and Queensland in the 1990s seems to have involved: 'managerialist' emphasis on government being like a business; ill informed belief that the existing system was heavily politicised; and ignoring of prior reforms. The result in both cases was elimination of many senior administrators who had substantive understanding of the areas they were supposed to administer (based on the author's observations and on Murray and White, op cit). Whilst the changes were desirable on paper, the ability to give them real substance was replaced by unquestioned compliance and trendiness. Murray and White claimed this process led to many of the problems eventually experienced by the Cain Government, after ambitious programs had been attempted by defective organisations. Observers in Queensland identify: paralysis; long delays in approvals; lack of leadership; lack of realism; ignorance of business requirements; repetition of old mistakes; deskilling; growth of machinery; low morale; buckpassing to other levels of government; and reliance on public relations rather than performance. Staff attitudes are often provincial rather than international, and focused on political acceptance rather than performance, and on the redistributive concerns of a society which does not believe it has a future (social justice and environment unbalanced by concern for the hard and highly competitive task of building future prosperity). The serious consequences of failure to value practical knowledge and experience will be first demonstrated in Queensland, if the proposed machinery to implement SEQ 2001 is put into place.

Demand management might be 'captured' by special interests eg:

• service producers, resulting in over-supply of services (eg corrupt processes for defence procurement in USA, and for public works in Japan). Some of those companies operate in Queensland;
• idealists, resulting in adoption of unproven goals. For example, Creating Our Future asserts that reduced car usage will determine the livability of the region. However, this is not guaranteed, eg suppose lightweight silent solar powered cars were developed, which could also be handled on high speed interurban transit routes using solar powered magnetic-levitation. Such technologies are on the horizon (though not integrated or sufficiently effective). It would be foolish to assume that such technologies will be developed, but equally so to assume unnecessarily that they will not.

A consensus based on self interest or limited rationality is not a good method through which to decide the goals towards which services demand should be managed. Highlighting possibilities for altering demand, rather than forcing outcomes, might be a useful method to avoid such problems.

Talk and 'paper shuffling' could be the outcome of the proposed machinery for growth management. Rather than a clear policy agenda, the result could be no policy agenda. Rather than infrastructure efficiency, cost escalations seem more likely. Furthermore, proposals for major investments in SE Queensland could encounter a complex of inconsistent and almost unchangeable political goals for the region (ie 'red tape').

Red Tape: Proposed implementation arrangements might: prove unmanageable; be ignored by organisations whose cooperation is required; justify empire building by others; encourage lobbying to block desirable proposals; and encourage corruption to make anything happen. The `Pay TV' case show what can happen when political machinery attempts to manage a complex market situation (Mc Guinness P., `Pay TV Degenerates into Unworkable Mess', Australian, 3/3/94, p11). It is understood that some proposals have already been held up 'until we see what the regional outline plan says'.