Policy by committee

One of the worst legacies of the pandemic is the dismal trend of outsourcing decisions to faceless bureaucrats. Expect to see more of it if Labor wins. By Nick Cater.

Anthony Albanese may yet be sworn in as our 31st prime minister, even though he can’t tell you the unemployment rate or five of the things in his six-point NDIS plan. Why waste time absorbing the details when you have review panels to do that for you?

An Albanese government will follow the dismal trend of outsourcing decisions to experts. Policymaking will be done by committees and when things go wrong the PM will avoid the blame by claiming he was acting on expert advice.

Albanese will “hit the ground reviewing”, as Scott Morrison dryly pointed out in last Sunday’s leaders debate. Labor is promising 53 reviews, roundtables or inquiries and will create 18 new public service offices, agencies or expert panels, none of which is ever likely to be abolished, since that is how bureaucracy grows. There’ll be a jobs summit where the unions will detail the bits of Albanese’s first-term agenda they’ve been busily working out.

The Productivity Commission will be asked to review the intellectual property rights of Indigenous artists, childcare and the not-for-profit sector and there’ll be a root-and-branch review of the Productivity Commission itself.

Decisions on defence will be made not by ministers but by a Defence Force Posture Review. There will be posturing by review committees on various forms of discrimination and then of the discrimination laws themselves.

Finding the lazy billion or so to run the reviews is the easy part. Funding the recommendations will be a burden on taxpayers for years, since the principal recommendation of almost every inquiry is to spend more money.

The normalisation of this unfortunate way of governing is one of the worst legacies of Covid-19. If it’s OK to close state borders and confine citizens to homes citing expert advice that is seldom put in writing, let alone shared with the public, then it’s OK to run the entire country that way.

If it’s OK to make street protests illegal or arrest people for their Facebook posts on the advice of public health officials, why bother running anything past the party room or subjecting it to parliamentary scrutiny? Debate is easily foreclosed, since anyone who disputes the verdict of the experts is, by definition, not an expert and probably a dangerous nutbag.

Outsourcing decisions to the expert class has proved to be a great way to evade ministerial responsibility, one of the more awkward parts of the Westminster tradition. Having successfully persuaded the public that they no longer need to do the job they were elected to do, that is to say making tough decisions and wearing the consequences, it is hard to blame voters if they decide to vote none-of-the-above. If the big decisions are going to be made by faceless men and women, the only power voters have is to pick candidates who might give the system a shake.

That is why the primary vote for both parties is low and why 55 per cent of Australians think a hung parliament would be a good thing, according to a survey last week by Compass Polling. It is not just independent and minor-party voters who think that way. Well over half of those intending to vote Labor (56 per cent) are in favour of minority government and almost a third (32 per cent) of Coalition voters agree. A third of voters believe a hung parliament would make the government more accountable and another third favour the idea because “it would send a strong message to either or both of the parties”.

Outsourcing policy decisions is not unique to Labor governments, but they are undoubtedly better at it, since they are broadly sympathetic to bureaucracy and the bureaucrats are broadly in sympathy with them. It is not by chance that 60 per cent of voters in the ACT voted for either Labor or the Greens in 2019. Even more may do so on Saturday when Liberal volunteers will stand outside the national capital’s polling booths with the sole aim of saving Zed Seselja’s seat in the Senate.

Annastacia Palaszczuk and Dan Andrews have turned shirking into an artform during the pandemic, forcing bureaucrats before the cameras to take responsibility for unpopular determinations and blaming everything else on Canberra.

Without a hint of embarrassment, Labor’s federal campaign has portrayed Morrison as the decision dodger who tries to blame others for his mistakes. The unscrupulous “it’s not my job” advertisement has been revealed to be a dishonest cut-and-paste job. Unremarkable and sometimes admirable statements by Morrison have been cobbled together and stripped of their context. The damage has been done, and he is facing the brunt of frustration at the states’ pandemic mishandling.

That’s what you get for treating the premiers like adults, convening a national cabinet and observing the principle of cabinet solidarity in the face of extreme provocation. Morrison and Greg Hunt went out of their way to avoid blaming the premiers for their many mistakes while shouldering responsibility for their own. In today’s confrontational politics, civilised play is for losers.

The sidelining of parliamentary process during Covid-19, and the censorship of contrary arguments, have damaged the trust between the populace and the polity. Consequential decisions have been made in which they have been given no say nor even the power to object. It is not by coincidence the barbecue stopper of this campaign, transgender rights, was not an issue either party intended to be part of it.

Best to leave those things to the review committee Labor has pledged to make it easier for transgender people to amend their birth certificates and alter the regulations quietly, based of course on the very best advice.