Rudd Government's problems with green policies

Nick Perry had an interesting post on New Matilda, Another Rudd Green Plan Bites The Dust?, that gives some further examples of the type of thing I have been talking about in my reforming Australian public policy series. A post on my personal blog, Education and Australian skilled migration: a policy catastrophe? gives a further example.

Oddly since it is such a big failure, I am a little cautious about arguing that the skilled migration example necessarily supports my case that we have a pattern of systemic failure in Australian public policy and administration. I suppose I say this because as a former senior public service manager, I am not sure that I would have spotted the particular outcome from the 2005 expansion of  MODL, the Migration Occupations in Demand List, while I might well have argued for hard responses in dealing with the problem.

To the degree that I might use this example in future, then I will be looking at three things:

• the nature of and reasons for the lag in recognising that a major problem was emerging.
• the wording of this announcement and the way this affected events.
• the extent to which the Government has plans in place to respond to the problems likely to emerge from this decision.