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Email sent 5/1/08
Mr Dennis Atkins
Courier Mail
'One big Labor party': Great
Fun but there will be a Hangover
Might I
respectfully suggest that the new approach to federal / state relationships
through COAG should probably be a cause of public concern.
My interpretation of your article:
COAG meeting recently was the first with
all ALP governments. Seven working groups were established (on health and
aging; productivity; climate change and water; infrastructure; business
regulation; housing and indigenous reform). The productivity group
(for example) will focus on: better vocational education; digital tools at
schools; trade training centres at schools; promoting Asian languages; early
childhood education; national curriculum; and increasing year 12 retention
rates. There are also proposals for changing special purpose Commonwealth
funding for states - perhaps rebranding them as 'partnership agreements', which
will have incentives for states if specified outcomes are met. Rudd wants
funding based on outcomes and outputs that are identifiable and
quantifiable. State officials and governments are understood to be excited
about the new approach (Atkins D.,
'One big Labor party', Courier Mail,
22-23/12/07).
The problem is that the proposed process,
despite the enthusiasm of those involved, is more likely to produce
ideologically appealing reform options than any that would be practically
effective.
Firstly, it seems that
direction to COAG working groups is mainly to be given politically.
COAG will in future meet 4 times annually,
and will involve working groups of ministers. In the past working groups
have involved public officials (Phillips M., and Breusch J., 'Minister to
drive COAG reforms', Financial Review, 21-27/12/07).
Secondly, though it is
unlikely that COAG will be entirely politically-driven because of the
complexity of the issues involved, it is not clear where
more-than-ideologically-appealing reform options are likely to come from,
because:
-
state administrations are generally
perceived to be anything but sparkling successes. They seem to
suffer structural weaknesses similar to those outlined (in relation to the
case of Queensland in):
Structural
Incompetence and SE Queensland's Water Crisis;
Intended
Submission to Health System Royal Commission;
Failure in Queensland's Electricity Distribution Network etc. Such
dysfunctions are
by no means confined to Queensland. To restore competency, reforms
similar to those it needs are likely to be essential -see
Improving Public Sector Performance in Queensland;
-
the agenda for which the federal government
gained a mandate (and which seems foundational to COAG's new agenda) was
populist and insubstantial - see
Populism
Trumps Electoral Victory;
-
the
federal Public Service seems just as badly politicised (ie dominated by
'yes men' and lacking in real professional competencies) as state
governments - because it was subjected to a very similar politically-driven
'reform' process in recent years (see
Decay
of Australian Public Administration);
-
while reform of federal / state financial
relationships are critical to enabling state governments to become effective,
the proposed 'partnership agreement' option to replace special purpose
funding suffers essentially the same defects. It would continue to be
impossible for states to take real responsibility for their nominal
functions, or the necessary initiatives (see
Federalism:
Why 'Control Freaks' Don't Achieve Real Results). An emphasis on
outcomes and outputs that were identifiable and quantifiable characterised
the machinery of government established in Queensland by the Goss
Government. This resulted in such tight enforcement of central government
agendas that those with specialised / local knowledge could not take the
initiatives needed to prevent the failures mentioned above (in electricity,
hospitals and water supplies). There seems to be no recognition that a
fundamental feature of the legitimate functions governments undertake is
that they are difficult to identify and quantify and thus
require decentralised initiative and professional judgment (see
Governing is not Just Running a Large Business). The latter refers to
the fact that attempts were apparently made several years ago to identify
and quantify federal government outputs in accordance with 'new public
management' theory - but abandoned as impractical in 2002;
-
the focus of the 'productivity' group (the
only example quoted in the above article) strongly suggests that politically
idealised, rather than realistic, outcomes are most likely. Improving
productivity is important, but this is more likely to require an emphasis
on: economic flexibility /
change; responsiveness to market
and technological change; entrepreneurship; investment; innovation;
and well developed industry clusters.
The 'productivity' groups' focus seems to be elsewhere.
The politicised
machinery of state and federal governments won't magically gain the ability to
come up with the concrete reform proposals just because competition between
competing political agendas has been eliminated. The COAG meeting in June
2005, which focussed on pressing problems in health systems and
infrastructure, was like that of December 2007 in that it did nothing except
establish committees because there were no concrete proposals about what to do
(see Taylor L., 'Love is in the air, not
crisis, in Canberra', Financial Review, 4-5/6/05). Doing more than
this requires much stronger professional support to governments (both
externally and internally) than they currently have available.
Regards
John Craig
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