18 July 2006

Mr. Matthew Condon
c/- qweekend,
Courier Mail

High & Dry: Paying the Price of Ineffectual Public Administration

I should like to congratulate you on your useful account of the history of Brisbane's current water supply crisis ('High & Dry', Courier Mail QWeekend, 15-16/7/06). I have posted an outline of this on my web-site.

On the basis of long term involvement in and study of Queensland's machinery for developing infrastructure, I should like to provide some feedback about the context in which this debacle has unfolded.

Your article identified the Goss Government's 1989 decision to abandon Wolffdene Dam and a subsequent lack of serious planning activity as the core of the problem. However this is only one example of the effect of serious constraints that have existed and remain on the effectiveness of all government organizations. In seeking historical explanations of current problems, I submit that attention should also be given to:

• the traditional reliance of Queensland's political establishment on lightweight advice and the self-interested arguments of private investors, because of the lack of independent institutions able to provide well-informed and practical inputs to public policy debates;
• the erosion of the ability of states to take responsibility for their nominal functions which resulted from federal fiscal imbalances and in particular the escalation of special purpose federal funding by the Whitlam Government in the mid 1970s;
• the decision by the Bjelke Peterson Government in about 1978 to abandon efforts that had been being made to systematically develop public administration machinery in favour of central government support for major resource investment projects;
• the abuse of the professional Public Service and the complex new institutional arrangements set up by the 'reformist' Goss Government, which created machinery that was so centralized and politicized that it could not be relied upon to develop realistic (as compared with idealistic) public policy or infrastructure proposals.

The situation does not seem to have improved since that time partly because of attempts that have been made to improve efficiency in service delivery by the application of business-like methods to what are often the fundamentally non-business-like functions of government.

Thus there are solid grounds for the suggestion recorded in your article - ie that rushed action to resolve the water crisis could well result in very bad decisions.

The above argument is presented in more detail on my web-site - see High & Dry: Paying the Price of Ineffectual Public Administration

Regards

John Craig