The case for reform in Australian public policy - food prices and Australian primary production 1

Sunday Essay - food prices and Australian primary production, a post on my personal blog, is a very simple analysis of the discussion generated by the apparent fact that Australian food prices  have been rising at the fastest rate among major developed economies.

Outside shock-horror elements, the discussion generated by the OECD report has been one-dimensional, generally centred on competition policy and the Woolworths/Coles duopoly. There has been very little discussion of the broader contextual issues.

I am not unbiased on this matter. My personal support for the rural sector and the country will be clear from my writing. That said, the broader issues do bear upon some of the points I have begun to develop in this series.

As I write, the Liberal Party has been imploding over the Government's emission trading scheme. In Australian responses to climate change - a background briefing, I made a distinction between problem (climate change) and response. I also pointed to the way that climate change was being used to justify a whole series of decisions: if a (climate change), then b (stop irrigation or whatever), creating a growing wave of opposition in the bush.

Policy does not develop in isolation. To a degree, one of the causes of policy failures lies in the way that Governments feel obliged to respond to what they perceive to be popular opinion. I will deal with the institutional factors - the rise of the "stakeholder" in a later post.

I am not saying that Governments should not consider public opinion. However, real problems arise where there is a disconnect between those arguing for a policy change and those who will be affected by a policy change. Simply put, it is easy to support something if there is no apparent cost to you. This problem is compounded by the existence of policy silos.

The question of the gap between Australia's indigenous people and the remainder of the Australian community has been a topic of much discussion. You have a range of initiatives intended to bridge that gap. However, very little of the discussion addresses a single key issue: many Aboriginal people live in country areas that have been in economic decline. Action to address the gap is likely to fail if you cannot address that decline.

Consider the case of Tooralee Station (here and here), a major irrigation property purchased and turned into to a national park to release water for the Darling River. Leaving aside the question of whether or not the purchase was value for money, something that I doubted based on rough back of envelope calculations, the purchase took something like 100 full and part time jobs out of the local Bourke economy.

At the same time, the Federal and NSW State Governments who funded the purchase of Tooralee Station are trying to address Aboriginal disadvantage in Bourke through measures such as new houses and coordinated service delivery. The obvious inconsistency between the action on Tooralee Station and the improvement in Aboriginal conditions in Bourke was not recognised or, at least, not discussed. I doubt that it was recognised.  

I will continue this argument in my next post.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration. Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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The case for reform in Australian public policy – measurement and child welfare

In The case for reform in Australian public policy – introducing measurement I referred to the rise of the modern obession with measurement.

All Government policies and programs now come with cascading and generally very simple numeric perfomance measures. It seems so reasonable: if we don't measure, how can we assess perfomance?

As it happened, yesterday's Age carried an example of  the type of problem that can arise. I quote:

A scathing Ombudsman's report has identified gross deficiencies in Victoria's child protection service, with workers manipulating figures to cover up children neglected by the system.

The problem is that the performance measures become an end in themselves. Where, as is often the case, the figures are simplistic or even unachievable, then manipulation of results to meet targets or conceal the failure to meet targets can and does occur.

To my mind, this has now become something of a cancer eating away at the heart of Australia's system of public administration. Sounds extreme? Perhaps, but there is an increasing volume of evidence to support my position.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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A continued apology for slow posting

Sorry for the absence of posts. Normal service will resume shortly. I have just been heavily tied up on day to day issues.

Ramblings

No major post today, time is very short, just a few ramblings.

The bringing of a twelve year old Aboriginal child to court on the charge of receiving a stolen Freddo Frog (an Australian chocolate) plus sign makes an apparent mockery of the justice system. I say apparent because there may be things that I simply do not know. See Charged with receiving chocolate frog for details. See a news report here.

I cannot report on the accuracy of the following story because I have not investigated it. It was told to me by an Aboriginal colleague.

In the NSW juvenile justice system there are apparently mechanisms for avoiding the formal court process. These are designed to make the system quicker, fairer and more humane. The only problem is that they are time limited. Many Aboriginal people live in regional Australia in smaller settlements and do not have easy access to lawyers. By the time they can contact Aboriginal legal age and get a lawyer involved, the time for alternative procedures has passed. So they end before the courts where they are far more likely to go to jail.

Mr Rudd's apology to the forgotten children created very mixed feelings. You see, as part of my PhD thesis I investigated the history of NSW child welfare. I did so because my grandfather was a ward of the state who suffered at the Pokolbin Farm Home. Later when he became NSW Minister for Education and Child Welfare he had to suffer through the troubles and injustices at his beloved Yanco Farm Home.

I wrote a little of this in David Henry Drummond and the Importance of Compassion because the single most important thing that Drummond's experiences gave him was a sense of compassion. He never forgot what had been done to him.

When I investigated the NSW child welfare system, I did not do so from any perspective of right or wrong. The thought never occurred to me. Shit happens. Rather, I was concerned to understand what happened and why, how it influenced my grandfather.

I do not doubt Mr Rudd's sincerity, nor the hurt that has been imposed on people by past systems. I just think that responses are out of kilter. Of course we must try to improve. Yet the tensions in our current society are manifest.

My grandfather wrote that the phrase the child is the father of the man is one of the cruellest phrases in the English language because it condemned the child to suffer as an adult from youthful mistakes. How many children, he said, had committed suicide alone and in despair?

Modern Australian society stands condemned at two levels.

It is condemned because Prime Minister Rudd can apologise to the forgotten generation at the same time as a child is brought before the courts for receiving a Freddo frog. It is condemned because in its desire for law and order and for quick solutions. It brings in things such as three strikes and you are out. Then it wonders at exploding prison numbers.

Most important, and this is the second level, modern Australian society stands condemned because it is censorious and hypocritical, moralistic. It is prone to harsh and simplistic judgements without recognising the conflict between those judgements and its own stated fundamental values.

I am not negative about the future in the way some are. I still believe in progress and the possibility of change. I still see the history in part as a record of progress. Still, I do struggle sometimes.        

The case for reform in Australian public policy – introducing measurement

Think of this post as clearing a little ground.

So far in this series I have focused on unforeseen consequences flowing from policy changes. I now want to broaden the focus a little to bring in the current obsession with measurement.

Back in March 2007 in Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on the Development of Public Policy 2 - Notes on Major Trends I briefly discussed the rise of standards, the quality movement and the Importance of measurement. Then in another post, Changes in Public Administration and their Impact on Public Policy 3 - Publish or Perish Case Study, I looked at the rise of the citation index as an example of the rise of measurement.

Don't get me wrong. I am a great believer in the importance of measurement. Without it, you cannot assess progress. It's just that the whole thing has got out of kilter.

Over the next few posts I want to use a mixture of case studies and analysis to sketch out in a preliminary way the problems that we have created for ourselves though our obsession with measurement.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up.

Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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The case for reform in Australian public policy – a methodological note

Now that I have started this series, I have been thinking about the difficulties involved in demonstrating beyond doubt the need for change in approaches to public administration and public policy. We can see this if we look at my preliminary posts.

My focus to this point has been on unforeseen consequences, although other issues are already creeping in.

Consider the NSW child welfare case.

I have no doubt that the near collapse of the system as a consequence of mandatory reporting was unforeseen. No Government in its right mind would deliberately inflict such pain on itself. But could the result have been foreseen? After all, unforeseen results are common in public policy. I actually think that it could have been checked through the normal practical operational analysis that should be done in advance of such changes.

Whether this case was unforeseeable or simply unforeseen does not, of itself, support my case that there is a systemic problem that crosses Australian jurisdictions and requires major change to overcome. A few case studies does not make a case. They may be isolated examples of failure. Rather, I have to show that there is a pattern of behaviour and of results.

In doing so, I have to disentangle, categorise and simplify, a variety of interacting variables.

Staying with the unforeseen case, there is a difference between an unforeseen and an adverse effect. An unforeseen effect could in fact be positive. An adverse effect may not be really unforeseen. A Government may argue that you cannot make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, that the illegal detention of Australian citizens is a price worth paying to protect our borders. In this event, we have a new set of arguments. Did we in fact want an omelet? Did we have to break the eggs? Could we have achieved the same result in a different way?

I also have a problem in explaining how things work to a lay reader who does not understand the system and may indeed be part of the problem!

In demanding that the Tasmanian Government link drivers licenses to school attendance, the Tasmanian opposition obviously felt that it was playing to public opinion. The rise of issues politics, the increasing tendency to play too often short term public reactions, is one of the core reasons why we now have a systemic public policy problem.

I will be discussing this a little later in the series, again using case studies to illustrate my points. For the moment, I simply note that it adds to the difficulties in bringing about real change.

Postscript on drivers licenses

Just a personal postscript on the drivers license issue.

Youngest is working part time at the airport in Sydney, starting at 5.30am. This morning she drove.

Both daughters started to learn to drive under the fifty hour regime. When the NSW Government changed the rules from 50 to 120 hours, those who already had their learner's permits stayed on the old regime, but had to acquire their license within a certain time frame.

Eldest busy with university, sport and an active social life let her permit lapse. With parents, public transport and boyfriends with licenses, she did not need to drive herself. Now she is on the 120 hour regime, regrets not moving forward, but is kind of stuck for the present.

There is still a boy thing about cars in that boys are more likely to make the effort. In a very odd way, this has reinforced an old gender stereotype, boys who drive, girls who are driven.

On the way to the airport I asked youngest how many hours she now had up. She said twenty two. She has to get to fifty and her provisional license by 21 December or go onto the 120 hours. So there is now a fair bit of pressure.

At twenty two hours and expressed in skill terms, youngest is not ready yet to get her license. She can drive without turning my already grey hair greyer, but the skills aren't automatic.

Part of her problem is that her driving practice has been sporadic. As she said, you have to do it in solid blocks. A second problem is that she is learning on a manual.

On the way to the airport, I told her about the attempted car-jacking that failed because those doing it could not drive a manual - see A problem with gears. She laughed, and said that she must tell her friends, all of whom are learning on automatics.

Under the old regime, you got your license and then drove without restriction. There were a lot of crashes in my age group because people could drive, but actually pushed outside the envelope set by their skill sets and judgement. We now have quite restrictive provisional license requirements intended to address this problem.

In theory, the whole system was meant to be output (skills) focused. Once you got to a certain skills point, then you got you license. However, there were then restrictions on what you could do for a period to allow skills to build through practice.

In practice, the whole system has become quite rigidly time and input based. It is now actually easier and a lot quicker to get an unrestricted pilots license than a NSW drivers license.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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The case for reform in Australian public policy – a few straws in the wind

In the last few posts in this series I have looked at the unforeseen consequences of policy decisions, starting with rivers of grog in the Northern Territory, then looking at two NSW cases, mandatory reporting of child abuse and the extended hours required to get a NSW driving license

In this post I simply want to provide a few more straws in the wind.

One problem we face is the tendency to load unrelated things togther.

Back in July, the opposition in Tasmania was suggesting that young people should be prevented from getting a drivers' license if their school attendance was not good. How dumb can you get? School attendance has nothing to do with the question of how well can you drive. Those who most need their license for things like work also tend to be poorer school attendees.

A second tendency in a spin dominated world is to claim success for a single event or action.

Again in July, the headline of a NSW a story read P-Plate crashes down 45 per cent. The first paragraph said:

Following the introduction of no-tolerance law reforms in New South Wales, over 88,000 P-Plate drivers have been taken off the roads.

Fair enough you might say. What a good result, crashes down 45%.

A fact first. There has been a decline in the road toll for young drivers in NSW; 38 17 to 20-year-olds died in 2006, while 20 died in 2007.

So there have been over 88,000 license suspensions over two years for a saving of 18 deaths. I wonder where the extra time for a driving license fits?

Staying in NSW, there have always been fines for the growing volume of traffic offences. Then demerit points were added for each offence, so many points and you lose your license. Then demerit points for offences were increased. Suddenly so many ordinary middle class people were suffering license suspension for minor offences that the Government has been forced to back-off.

NSW locks up in jail four times as many young people relative to population size than Victoria. Seventy per cent of these re-offend within twelve months. In July, the NSW Government commissioned a study to find out why the State jails so many.

Part of the answer simply lies in criminal justice rules introduced to get tough on crime. Another reason lies (I think) in the increased numbers of people spending time for non-payment of fines.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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The case for reform in Australian public policy – NSW driving licenses

Continuing my analysis of the impact of unforeseen side effects on public policy, this post looks at the continuing impact of the NSW decision to increase the hours required to get a driving license from 50 to 120.

Again, this was one of those decisions that seemed like a good idea at the time. It also attracted public support because it was seen as a way of reducing the road toll on young drivers.

I first wrote on this issue back in May 2008 in Saturday Morning Musings - the burden of compliance, using it to illustrate a broader point. Leaving aside social and equity issues, my concerns were cost (at least $350 million annually to NSW parents or trainee drivers on my rough back-of-envelope calculations) compared to benefits. I wondered whether the same objective might not be achieved in better ways.

Twelve months later in The continuing insanity of NSW's approach to driving licenses I complained of the way that the extra hours were creating a growing social inequity (poor people could not afford the costs involved), together with a growing tendency of young people to falsify their hours.

All the anecdotal evidence is that both trends have continued.A further trend has also emerged.

Any trainer knows that concentrated practice is required to obtain a skill. The problem with the new rules on NSW driver licenses is that the sheer length of time involved means that kids are doing it in bits with gaps. Those sometimes lengthy gaps reduce the value of the practice.

Postscript:

The NSW Government has finally bowed to the inevitable and introduced two changes to the NSW driving license system.

Drivers over 25 will no longer need to keep log books. The practical effect is that the 120 hours no longer applies to them.

For drivers under 25, every hour of practice with a licensed driving instructor will now count as three up to a limit of ten hours. This means that middle class kids with access to a bit of money will now need to do only 100 hours, including ten hours of licensed instruction, to get to 120 hours.

Kids who do not have access to the money are still stuck with 120 hours. Mind you, if they wait until they are 25, then they do not need any hours at all.    

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming Australian public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.
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The case for reform in Australian public policy - NSW child welfare

In my last post in this series, The case for reform in Australian public policy - rivers of grog, I used a post by Bob Gosford to introduce the concept of unforeseen side effects. This post provides the next example.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

NSW had a problem with child abuse. To help overcome this, the NSW Government introduced rules making it mandatory for professionals such as doctors to report suspected child abuse.

Such a sensible idea. The only problem is that no one foresaw that the consequent volume of calls would bring the NSW child welfare system to its knees.

You see, there was no effective way of triaging the volume of calls to allow for effective follow up. Just as bad, the resource demands and pressures created actually reduced the capacity of the NSW Department to do its ordinary job.

The end result was scandal and a commission of inquiry.

Those interested can find further information in the following posts.

• 11 November 2007. NSW - Problems in Child Welfare looks at problems and a history of the early evolution of the NSW child welfare system.
• 2 January 2008. Australia - failures in public policy points to some of the reasons why child welfare had become a mess.
• 12 February 2008. Musings - Inflation, Volunteering, Child Welfare and Educational Standards includes a discussion of child welfare issues.
• 4 October 2008. Child abuse in Australia - a case of misused numbers? looks at the abuse of child protection statistics.
• 26 November 2008, Wood Commission Report into the NSW Child Welfare System provides a link through the report itself.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming public administration on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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The case for reform in Australian public policy - rivers of grog

Yesterday in We need to reform Australia's approach to public policy I said that I was going to dedicate writing on this blog for one month to just one topic, the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure. You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

My first piece of evidence is Bob Gosford's How Canberra keeps the NT’s “rivers of grog” flowing. Bob lives in the small township of Yuendumu, 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs on the southern fringes of the Tanami Desert on land owned by people of the Warlpiri and Anmatyerre language groups.

In considering this piece of evidence, look at the way in which policies designed to be "tough" have in fact had the opposite effect.

This is an example of what are called unforeseen side effects. To some degree these are inevitable in public policy. The challenge is to find ways of minimising them, or of identifying and correcting them once they do occur.

Note to readers:

This is one of a month long series on the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration.

Consider yourself the judge or jury as I present the evidence. Most posts will be short, introductions to other writing. My argument is that we now have a systemic pattern of failure.

You have to decide whether or not I am right and, if so, what you think that we should do about it.

If you want to follow the whole series through, you can click reforming public policy on the side bar. This will bring the whole series up. Alternatively, if you want to follow the whole series through from the first post, click here and then click next at the end of each post.

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We need to reform Australia's approach to public policy

Back in September Economic planning for the longer term - introduction was meant to be the start of a new series. Two months later and I have still to get going, although I have written a fair bit of related material in the meantime.

So much has been happening.

In The Rudd Government's longer term success or failure - straws in the wind I tried to set out some of the process challenges that I thought the Australian Rudd Government had to meet. In a very short post, Ken Henry inspires Ross Gittins' four big bugs, I reported on a senior Australian economic commentator's deeply pessimistic view of the future.

In Saturday Morning Musings - a change in writing direction I provided an initial report on the thinking that I had been doing about my own writing. As part of this, I have decided to dedicate writing on this blog for one month to just one topic, the need for reform in Australia's approach to public policy and administration. This will give me a chance to pull together past writing, as well as set out new ideas.

This is quite a complicated topic, in part because so many people are locked into current thinking.

I hope that you will find the series at least interesting.

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Winton Bates' Freedom and Flourishing

One of the most thoughtful blogs around is Winton Bates' Freedom and Flourishing.It's not always easy to read. That's not a criticism, simply a refection of the subject matter.

Winton's most recent posts ( How do preferences relate to well-being? and Should we expect the rules of a good society to be good for everyone?) bear upon a topic that has worried me, the increasing tendency of Governments to make decisions "for our own good."  This is creating something of a policy and administrative mess.   

Australia increases official interest rates - again!

Today's official interest rate increase by Australia's Reserve Bank has received global coverage. Who would have thought it? We are just not used to this focus! 

Australia's remarkable economic performance

It's really very interesting, and it's also very unusual, for the Australian economy to decouple in the way it has from the developed world. It's also interesting to look back at previous forecasts.

The chart shows official Australian forecasts of GDP at the start of last November. At that stage, Australia was expected to be the only developed country other than Canada to stay in positive growth territory.

Following these forecasts,the global outlook worsened and Australian pessimism set in, something that I tried to fight against. All the forecasts went quite negative.

In recent times, Australia has been clawing back. Interest rates have started to rise, the Australian Government is looking to trim stimulus, and house prices have boomed.

The attached chart shows the latest Australian Treasury forecasts for GDP growth. Australian GDP growth in 2009 is now expected to be greater than that projected in November.

Australia is unusual as the only developed country now expected to show positive GDP growth in calendar 2009.

How real is all this?

It's real enough, although in Australia as in other countries Government stimulus packages played a major role in countering the downturn.

The issue that Australia now faces is what's next. And here there are some interesting variables indeed.