Category: Politics

  • Rodney Tiffin. The university rankings no government wants to talk about.

    At a conference of university leaders in early 2013, Tony Abbott promised “relative policy stability” in higher education if he became prime minister. A year later, Universities Australia began its first Abbott-era budget submission by welcoming “the undertaking of the government to preserve funding arrangements for higher education, including the commitment not to make further cuts to the sector.”

    When it came, though, the Coalition’s first budget proposed cutting university funding by a breathtaking 20 per cent and removing the ceiling on university fees. Since then, the only stability in tertiary education policy has been education minister Christopher Pyne’s repeated attempts to have the Senate pass those measures. With the threat of financial catastrophe hanging over the sector, Universities Australia has supported the government’s proposals for deregulation, arguing rather coyly that the funding system is broken, but not indicating who broke it.

    Although the government’s continuing failure to get its way has brought great political embarrassment, the two most notable aspects of the funding controversy have been its insularity and its short-term focus. It is almost impossible to tell from the parliamentary debates and media reports that Australia’s public funding of universities is now so stingy that we have become an international outlier.

    In 2011, the last year for which full international data is available, Australia’s public funding of universities ranked thirty-third out of the thirty-four OECD member countries. Governments across the OECD spent an average of 1.1 per cent of GDP on universities; Australia devoted just 0.7 per cent. Six countries – including Canada, at 1.6 per cent – spent at least double Australia’s proportion of national income. Finland, at 1.9 per cent, tops the list.

    The Pyne proposals would make the share of tertiary funding derived from private sources even greater. At the moment, private funding constitutes 0.9 per cent of GDP in Australia, which is almost double the OECD average of 0.5 per cent and puts us among the most privatised group. The relationship between income inequality and private share of university funding is striking, with relatively equitable countries, such as the Nordic countries, having the lowest, while several of those near the top of the list (Chile, Colombia, the United States) tend towards greater inequality.

    It was not always thus. In 1975, at the end of the Whitlam government, Australian public spending on universities peaked at 1.5 per cent of GDP. Whitlam, whose government had made university education free, later said that this was the achievement for which he received the most expressions of personal and parental gratitude in the years after he left office. Under his Liberal predecessors, around 70 per cent of students had Commonwealth Scholarships, effectively making their tuition free. In The Whitlam Government, he cites survey data from the mid 1970s showing that, without his government’s changes, 20 per cent of university students and 25 per cent of college students would have been forced either to defer their enrolment or not enrol at all. Both the number of university students and, even more dramatically, the number of college students (in the binary tertiary sector of that time) increased during his government.

    The next big policy move came in 1989 under Hawke government education minister John Dawkins. Arguing that university students came disproportionately from affluent backgrounds and a degree was a ticket to much higher earnings, and faced with a perceived need for budget savings, Dawkins introduced student fees. The payment mechanism was HECS (the Higher Education Contribution Scheme), a relatively equitable loan system that only triggered repayments as students’ incomes increased.

    Dawkins also abolished the binary system, turning all the colleges of advanced education into universities. Government funding for the combined sector was set midway between the two previous systems, giving the old colleges a boost but essentially cutting 10 per cent per student from the budgets of existing universities.

    Because the Howard government didn’t attempt any major legislative changes, its policies towards the sector rarely received much attention. But this was the crucial era in driving universities towards their present plight. By 2010, federal government funding of universities was down to 42.3 per cent of institutional income, less than half of what it had been just twelve years earlier. Fee-paying international students were contributing 17.5 per cent of total university income, or one dollar in every six. For both the government and the universities, international students had much more to do with the bottom line than with the needs of the students themselves or the pedagogical challenges their presence posed.

    The 2008 Review of Australian Higher Education, instituted by the Rudd government, found that Australia was the only OECD country in which the real public contribution to tertiary education institutions in 2005 was no higher than it had been in 1995. In stark contrast, the average growth across the OECD was 49.4 per cent. The review also found that the amount of federal funding fell 12.4 per cent in real terms between 1989 and 2008, a period in which the costs of teaching and research rose sharply. The staff–student ratio in higher education, at 15.6 in 1996, had risen to 21.1 by 2008, a deterioration of about one-third in a dozen years. The real situation was even worse, because this figure takes no account of the increasing casualisation of the academic workforce.

    Kevin Rudd had promised to restore Australia’s international position on university funding, but eventually this proved another case of over-promising and under-delivering. The same review recommended an immediate 10 per cent increase in public funding, but the government instead set up a Base Funding Review to establish “enduring principles” for public investment in higher education. Far from enduring, the principles collapsed within two years. Although some advances in funding were made during Labor’s first years, a 3.5 per cent “efficiency dividend” in 2013 amounted to a substantial cut. To excuse its funding failures, the government argued that it needed to reorder spending priorities after the global financial crisis and to free up funds for the Gonski school reforms. Within Labor’s policy settings, according to higher education policy specialist Simon Marginson, public funding of universities would fall to just 0.54 per cent of GDP by 2016–17.

    The Labor government’s major policy change was to move to a demand-driven system, enabling Australian universities to admit as many qualified students as they wished. This essentially deregulated the volume, but not the costs, of university education, leaving institutions more able to compete against each other for more students. The result was that about 207,000 began in 2013, an increase of around 54,000 or 35.3 per cent on 2008. Ironically this surge in student numbers has been used to justify the need for further cuts to the sector.

    It should be stressed that no government has ever sought or secured a mandate for dramatically reducing public funding of universities. No party has ever gone to an election with a reduction in investment in tertiary education as part of its platform. Indeed, polling commissioned by Universities Australia shows public opinion strongly in the other direction: 82 per cent agreed that cutting public funding for universities could threaten Australia’s future; 87 per cent supported an increase in federal government funding for universities. But governments looking for ways to cut or redirect spending think that this is an electorally harmless area to trim, and then trim again. Prime minister John Howard is said to have once told a meeting of Fairfax editors that cuts to school education pose a danger to governments but cuts to university funding do not.

    Whatever the equity virtues of HECS, the private share of funding has significantly increased since its introduction. When it was launched, the private share of university funding was around 20 per cent. Now, although the figures are complicated by different formulas for different disciplines, it averages over 40 per cent. And if Pyne is successful it will dramatically increase again. For the past twenty-five years, the focus has been almost solely on the private benefits of a university degree, and this becomes an argument for demanding that students bear an ever-increasing proportion. The Grattan Institute’s 2012 report Graduate Winners: Assessing the Public and Private Benefits of Higher Education, for example, argued that graduates are such big winners that people would study even without public subsidies.

    Universities Australia cites several studies that seek to quantify the public benefits of university education. Modelling by the Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency in 2013 found that each extra $1 invested in tertiary education would generate, on average, $26 in economic activity in 2025 as a result of increased labour force participation and employment. The OECD estimated a real rate of return for Australia investing in tertiary education at 13.4 per cent. KPMG-Econtech put the figure at 14.1 per cent and estimated that if government raised its commitment from 0.7 per cent to 1 per cent of GDP, then productivity would be 3.8 per cent higher by 2040. The increased government investment in the university sector would have a net funding cost of 0.5 per cent of GDP, while the net gain in living standards over the longer term is 5.5 per cent. University graduates typically pay between $300,000 and $540,000 more in taxes over their lifetime, which is eight times higher than the upfront amount invested.

    Pyne’s proposals would make an already dire position much worse. But the current, prolonged impasse has put the crunch issue of funding clearly in the public spotlight. With luck it may become the moment when a generation’s drift towards ever-decreasing public support of universities is halted and reversed.

    No principle exists for determining the optimal private–public funding split, and any government would probably find it too expensive to reduce the private component radically. But political parties should commit to stopping the continual downward drift in public funding. An affordable and simple formula might be that students should contribute one-third of the cost of expensive degrees (medicine, agriculture and so on) and 40 per cent for all others.

    Political parties should promise to reverse the tendency of Australia – with public funding of universities at 0.7 per cent of GDP and falling – to be an international outlier. It may be too ambitious to more than double funds to match Canada’s 1.6 per cent; and an increase up to the OECD average (1.1 per cent) would mean increasing public funds to the sector by almost 50 per cent. Perhaps we’ll have to settle for the slogan “Let’s catch New Zealand.” Matching that country’s 1 per cent would mean increasing funds by around a third.

    Further cuts to the sector would be disastrous. It doesn’t matter how many Intergenerational Reports we have if we don’t have governments committed to building a viable future.

    Rodney Tiffin is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Sydney. This article first appeared in Inside Story on 24 March 2015.

  • Race Mathews    ‘Let Us Now Begin’

    The philosopher George Santayana wrote famously ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’.

    A case in point is failure by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) to remain mindful of the circumstances and shortcomings that denied it office from the middle -1950s federally until 1972 and until 1982 in Victoria.

    When I joined the ALP in 1956, it was in dire straits – reeling in the aftermath of the failed Santamaria Movement takeover of the Party and the subsequent splitting off of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), and in the grip already of yet another extremist and in this instance ostensibly Left external body, known variously as ‘The Trade Unionists’ Defence Committee’, ‘the Ticketing Committee’ or simply and succinctly, ‘the Junta’

    As noted by Gough Whitlam in an historic address to the 1967 Victorian State Conference:

    ‘The TUDC is not mentioned in the Constitution of the Party. There is no formal link between the TUDC and the handful which selects the Central Executive. It happens, however, that the membership of both bodies is predominantly the same. Thirteen years ago, few delegates at the Conference would have known of the Movement or Mr Santamaria. No one doubts the influence that they had on the Party’s affairs at the time. The Party’s controllers have swung from one extreme to another. ‘

    The TUDC’s domination of the Party was achieved through a ’democratic centralism’ that enabled it to dictate the composition of the Victorian Central Executive and Victoria’s representation on the Federal Conference and the Federal Executive.

    Prior to each Victorian conference, an initial meeting of representatives from thirteen TUDC-dominated unions compiled an ‘Official Ticket’ for all Central Executive, Federal Conference and Federal Executive vacancies.

    Subsequently, the ‘Official Ticket’ was endorsed at a further meeting, where representatives of up to twenty-eight more unions were added to the original thirteen.

    With the conference delegations from up to fifty unions thus locked in under caucus rules to support the ‘Official Ticket’, the winner-take-all’ voting system of the day delivered all the available vacancies to the TUDC nominees.

    Domination of the Party by the TUDC cost it an otherwise certain victory at the 1961 elections, together with a further probable electoral victory two years later.

    At the very least, it is likely that if Labor had done less badly at the1958 elections the breakaway DLP would have taken root less successfully and been shorter-lived.

    A Labor government elected in 1961 or 1963 would not have involved Australia in the Vietnam War, or failed so dismally as the Liberals to harness up behind programmes and projects of lasting national worth the great economic prosperity which Australian enjoyed between the middle nineteen-sixties and the oil price shock engendered tougher times of the following decade.

    Nor was this all. As Whitlam’s 1967 Victorian Conference speech also emphasised, the need for Party reform and renewal was no less acute.

    ‘We cannot convincingly oppose the conservatism of our political opponents with a conservatism of our own; we cannot stand as a Party of change when we fear change in our own structure. We cannot expect the people to trust us with the great decision-making processes of this nation, when we parade, by retaining an exclusive and unrepresentative Party structure, our manifest distrust of our own rank and file within the decision-making processes of the Party’.

    And again:

    ‘All organisations, including radical parties, have establishments which resist change; all have vested interests. All the arguments for and against for a national organisation, with a national conference directly representing Federal electorates and unions, boil down to this question: Is the Party to be organised in this last third of the 20th century on modern national lines representative of the whole membership of the Party, or is it to remain a committee or coterie composed chiefly of State Branch officers, a significant proportion of whom are paid servants of the Party?’

    By the early nineteen-sixties, frustration within the Party over the incompetence and authoritarianism of the TUDC was acute.

    The flash point was reached with the decision by the TUDC in 1965 that the provision for the election of three Central Executive members by and from Branch delegates to the Conference as adopted the previous year should be rescinded.

    An official Party body of which I was secretary, the Scoresby State Electorate Council, established a ‘Committee of Inquiry into Representation and Decision-making in the ALP’, which addressed to Branches throughout the state a letter seeking information about their memberships and fund-raising, on which a case for the restoration of their representation might be made.

    The State Secretary, Bill Hartley, thereupon issued instructions to Branch secretaries requiring that the committee’s letters should be returned to him immediately, without providing the opportunity for members to hear them read. Hartley wrote:

    ‘I have consulted on this matter with the state president, Mr W. Brown, and it is to be referred to the Executive Officers next week … Mr Brown has also suggested that all recipients of the correspondence should take no action on it other than endorsing it with the Branch, time and circumstances of receipt, and forwarding it to the Australian Labor Party as soon as possible.’ 

    Concurrently with the Scoresby Affair – and perhaps prompted by it – disaffected Party activists including John Cain, John Button, Dick McGarvie, Xavier Connor, Barney Williams, Michael Duffy, and Barney Cooney established ‘The Participants’, as a group seeking Party reform and democratisation through untiring grassroots advocacy and agitation around the widely circulated ‘Labour Comment’ newsletter, as edited by Bob Murray.

    Their efforts in conjunction with those of Whitlam and other nationally prominent allies including the National Secretary Mick Young and the Shadow Minister for Industrial Affairs Clyde Cameron succeeded ultimately in bringing about the 1970 Federal Intervention and dismissal of the TUDC dominated Victorian Executive.

    The subsequent comprehensive re-writing of the Party Rules and adoption of proportional representation voting for Party office cleared the way for the election of the Whitlam, Hawke and Keating governments.

    Internally, the Victorian Party experienced what is remembered by many as ‘a golden age’ of creative policy development and debate, culminating in 1982 with the election of the Cain government.

    Even so, the hard-won gains have proved to be ephemeral, and a new hegemony indistinguishable for all practical purposes from that of the TUDC has emerged.

    What were in the immediate aftermath of the 1970 Intervention the ideologically differentiated Socialist Left and rightist Labour Unity factions have merged in all but name, through a so-called ‘Stability Pact’ which enables them to divide between themselves the pre-selections for ‘winnable’ parliamentary seats.

    Concurrently the need for strict adherence to secret ballot criteria in the selection process is routinely ignored. ‘Democratic centralism’ is again as endemic as under the TUDC. The effect is to all but wholly exclude from pre-selection or party office members other than those who have factional endorsement.

    Frustrated on rare occasions in the achievement of their preferred outcomes, the factions routinely refer them to the party’s National Executive where their dominance is all but complete and uncontested, and inconvenient decisions can be overturned.

    It remains for the current generation of ALP members to secure the reinstatement of democracy and the rule of law within the Party, and ensure that it is passed on unimpaired to those who come after us.

    As Whitlam reminds us:

    ‘Those of us who were there have a duty to educate those who were not’

    ‘Let us now begin’.

     

    Race Mathews is a former Principal Private Secretary to Labor Leaders including Gough Whitlam, local government councillor, Federal MP, Victorian MP and minister and academic. He joined the ALP in 1956, and is a life member of fifty-eight years standing.

     

     

     

     

  •  John Menadue.  Improving health outside the health portfolio

    Ministers for Health in Australia are seen very largely as ministers in charge of health services rather than health. The fact is that some major issues causing poor health or which could be the means to improve health are outside the normal health portfolio.

    • Major health problems are caused by junk food, alcohol and tobacco. The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare tells us that tobacco smoking is the largest cause of preventable illness and death in Australia It estimated that in 2004/5 smoking related disease cost Australia $31.5 b. The AIHW also told us that in that year the consumption of alcohol was estimated to cost Australian society $15.3 b. The Director of the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation said that the economic and social cost of alcohol was estimated to be $36 b p a. He added that about 30% of harm to children is caused by alcohol. The scourge of alcohol, smoking and junk food are best addressed through taxation and restrictions on advertising, particularly directed at children and not through the health portfolio.  The action by the Rudd /Gillard governments on plain packaging of cigarettes was the most important health reform in years.
    • Health improvement is made very difficult when the major sponsors of sport in Australia are interests associated with alcohol and junk food. Channel Nine’s cricket coverage with slats, heals and tubby has saturation coverage of alcohol and junk food. Australian cricketers and footballers line their pockets with money from alcohol and junk food companies. There is not much leadership or role modelling here They are complicit in promoting bad health habits and undo a lot of the good work on prevention. How can our sporting codes discipline players for excessive alcohol consumption, when the main sponsors of the codes are liquor companies?
    • Improvement in the health of indigenous people will mainly occur outside the health portfolio in areas such as employment, better diet, housing and education of young people together with reduced consumption of alcohol and drugs.
    • We know that because of social and economic disadvantage, the death rate for those with the lowest socio-economic status is 13% higher than the Australian average, and for those living outside capital cities it is 8%. Poverty is the principal cause of poor health in Australia. And the health portfolio has only a limited role in the fight against poverty
    • Education, childcare, including pre-natal, spacial planning, housing, trade (particularly relating to intellectual property in pharmaceuticals), population, transport, particularly for country people, taxation and social security, employment, justice and the environment, all have direct impacts on the health of Australians.
    • We are coming to appreciate how electronic health and the national broadband network offer great opportunities for improved health services, particularly for people in remote areas. But the NBN is not within the health portfolio.

    In short, the health Minister and his department must have expertise beyond ‘health services’ and particularly economic expertise in a joined-up government approach.  Unfortunately they usually rank well down the ministerial and public service ladder.  There is reluctance by policy makers to look on healthcare as an industry and to apply the normal evaluative mechanisms which are applied to other industries. Such a blinkered view allows the development of an idea that health should be exempt from the normal economic considerations of efficiency and equity. It’s a notion that pushes economic thinking to one side, in the erroneous belief that economics is intrinsically illiberal and dismissive of human welfare.

    For a country reviewing its healthcare industry, it is useful to take a broad view and consider the whole industry and not just that part of concern to the health portfolio…

    We keep pouring money into hospitals. We never seem to appreciate that like the family refrigerator hospitals will always be kept full. Health problems are best addressed first in primary care, prevention and often outside the health portfolio

     

     

  • Andrew Wilson. More hospitals, more hospitals, more hospitals.

    As Andrew Wilson points out, all major parties are obsessed with hospitals as the answer to our health problems. The three major shortcomings in health in Australia are mental health, indigenous health and rural health.  These problems are best addressed outside hospitals. But ministers, the media and the community seldom think beyond hospitals. For ministers they have an iconic status. Ministers can put their name on the plaque for a new wing or refurbishment. The media thinks that health and hospitals are the same thing. They are not. Reform of our health system must focus on primary care and not on hospitals. The community and the taxpayer would be better served if we can avoid people needing to go to hospital.  

    Hospitals should be a last resort. The first resort should be addressing such issues as junk foods, alcoholism, smoking and drug addiction. The response to these problems must be in the community.  It is not in hospitals.

    Andrew Wilson addresses several of these issues below. John Menadue. 

    The real health issues facing NSW, without the spin. 

    What happens when you bring a state health minister face-to-face with her two main challengers, fronting a roomful of health experts, without any TV cameras or dictaphones to leap on any “gaffes” or stumbles?

    What you can get is a genuinely informative debate, largely free of three-second soundbites. I saw this late last month at a public debate sponsored by the Public Health Association of Australia, the Health Promotion Association of Australia and the Menzies Centre for Health Policy.

    Watching the debate, I couldn’t help wondering: if our political debates were like this a little more often, how much more could we achieve for informed voting on health matters in Australia?

    Health in the NSW election

    The NSW election campaign is in its last furious week, ahead of polling day on March 28.

    Like building better roads or stronger law and order, some state election issues are hardy perennials – and health always ranks highly with voters. Promises to build or upgrade public hospitals, to shorten elective surgical waiting lists, and employ more nurses are all part of the theatre of every state election.

    Of course, new health infrastructure is essential. But lost in the promises of buildings is a more fundamental issue: the necessary recurrent cost of every new hospital bed or operating theatre. Every new hospital bed costs more than A$220,000 a year just to accommodate the patient before the costs of the medical treatment; and every intensive care bed is more than twice as much.

    Given the states and territories have limited capacity to increase their revenue, funding new hospital beds will potentially come at the expense of some other health service, such as improved community care. And every recurrent dollar committed to health care comes at the expense of funding some other public services.

    This is a political issue and therefore should be an issue voters should get a say on.

    Neglected issues

    All too often, other substantive health care issues, such as access to speech therapy and community mental health care, get lost in promises to swinging electorates or populist themes.

    Serious public health issues – such as taxing soft drinks to prevent obesity, or limiting on the number of packaged alcohol outlets, or the health impacts of motorway tunnels – get a dismissive mention, at best.

    That’s why I was so struck by what I heard at the pre-election health debate involving the NSW health minister, Jillian Skinner, and the Labor and Greens spokespeople, Walt Secord and John Kaye.

    Aside from the few digs you would expect at the minister on government policy, refreshingly, it was not full of the usual populist promises. What each of the NSW MPs chose to speak about revealed something about themselves and the parties they represent.

    The health minister spoke about the importance of integrated care, of joining up the health system for people with chronic and complex conditions, and the importance of community-based services for drug and alcohol dependency, palliative care and chronic pain.

    Speaking for Labor, Secord shared a telling insight into his personal perspective on health disadvantage and the importance of universality in access to health care and public education. He noted that these were critical to addressing the poor health of the Aboriginal community along with housing and employment.

    And for the Greens, Kaye spoke about the need for governments to intervene when there was market failure. He identified the promotion and over-consumption of fatty foods, sugar-sweetened products and hidden calories, which resulted in ill-health as something that required government regulation.

    Their presentations and banter were followed by lively interaction with the audience. Questions ranged from access to treatment for hepatitis B, and alcohol-control measures including banning the number of packaged alcohol outlets, to the importance of nurse-patient ratios for safe care.

    A question about the importance of expert health assessments to decisions about motorway tunnels led to a discussion of the health impacts of coal mining and concerns about new mines in the Hunter Valley.

    These are all important health issues. Yet how much have you seen them reported on or debated in this state election campaign?

    Community-driven health policy

    It is possible to engage the community in informed discussion of health options. Several Australian research groups have used deliberative techniques such as citizen juries to examine community preferences around areas as diverse as responses to options for emergency medical care, management of obesity, “fat” taxes, and emerging infectious diseases threats.

    The general approach involves providing information and perspectives from experts to groups selected to represent particular communities. The late health economist Gavin Mooney believed that “informed citizens do not have a great enough say in how health services are funded, run and planned” and produced a free guide to their use.

    In the world of broadband connectivity, such approaches could be available to the whole electorate.

    Given we are repeatedly told we can’t have everything in health care, the broader community is entitled to an informed debate about things that will make substantive differences to their community – and not just promises of local infrastructure and resources that should be decided on measured need and equity.

     

    Andrew Wilson is Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy at University of Sydney. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 24 March 2015.

     

  • Andrea Carson. Heed Fraser’s warning on Australian media concentration – it’s getting worse.

    The passing of former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser last Friday prompted me to recall his warning about the state of Australian media ownership in an interview I did with him during the last federal election.

    He said: “In my term, there were seven print proprietors. Now there is one and a bit. We have the most concentrated media in any democratic country, anywhere in the entire damn world. That is dangerous.”

    Malcolm Fraser for The Conversation: Does it matter who owns our papers? Yes it does

    Malcolm Fraser’s warning is one we should take seriously. As Fairfax Media finalises union talks this week to cut 80 local jobs across its regional newspapers, and federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull is again flagging relaxing media ownership laws, local news is particularly under threat in the global media environment where large audience reach matters.

    More regional cuts

    In Victoria, to remain competitive in this environment, Fairfax has proposed cutting 62 editorial jobs among the 80 full-time positions earmarked for redundancy across 13 regional mastheads including Albury Wondonga’s Border Mail, The Ballarat Courier, Bendigo Advertiser and The Warrnambool Standard.

    Local MPs and city councillors in these regions have spoken out against the cuts with independent MP Cathy McGowan telling the Federal Parliament last week that regional newspapers such as the Border Mail play an important role providing local news and any job cuts could impact on this service.

    The union representing local reporters, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, will meet Fairfax in Sydney today to discuss the cuts. It is understood that the Border Mail will lose up to 23 staff, the Wimmera Mail will lose 40% of its workforce, the Ballarat Courier will lose some reporting staff and its news director, and most of the newspapers will lose some photographers and sub-editors.

    Diversity being squeezed

    Fairfax’s regional publishing business Australian Community Media (ACM) is also proposing a common newspaper template with opportunities for content sharing. Journalists spared from the sackings will be required to do more with less including taking photographs, sub-editing their stories and uploading them online.

    The implications of these changes are concerning for the diversity of local reporting, its accuracy and future print circulation figures, which until now have remained buoyant compared to their city cousins. A well-functioning democracy requires an informed citizenry and, to do this, journalists find and verify information in the public interest, rather than just selecting information from press releases. Citizen journalists can fulfil some of this local news gathering role, but subject coverage can be patchy and lacking editorial authority.

    The all-too-soon forgotten Finkelstein media inquiry in 2012 reminds us that some local communities are already the poorer for losing local news outlets.

    There is some evidence that both regional radio and television stations and newspapers have cut back substantially on their news gathering, leaving some communities poorly served for local news. This may require particular support in the immediate future, and I recommend that this issue be investigated by the government as a matter of some urgency.

    Changes mooted for media laws

    Yet, Malcolm Turnbull, photographed last year standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the nation’s media executives and flagging changes to media laws, has this month again raised the prospect of such reforms in a submission to the Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Turnbull’s argument essentially is that the internet has lowered the barriers to entry and enabled greater competition and more media diversity. At face value this sounds promising. Yet, such changes would make possible further media mergers and acquisitions and what such reforms would mean for local news reporting requires careful consideration.

    Veteran journalists can readily recall the days when Canadian Conrad Black divested his stake in Fairfax because foreign ownership laws in 1996 prevented his company owning more than a 25% share of an Australian media outlet.

    Today, among Australia’s top 10 news websites, all are digital iterations of traditional media outlets. The only new entrants to this list are not new Australian start-ups but large, foreign-owned companies such as Britain’s Daily Mail (fourth) and the Australian version of the British-owned Guardian (sixth).

    Foreign arrivals

    Foreign-owned media companies are reaching out to Australian shores as never before — not only do we have Australian versions of the Guardian and Daily Mail, but BuzzFeed, and very soon the Huffington Post (in a 51-49 partnership with Fairfax). In the broadcast media sphere US-owned Netflix announced it will undercut local competitors — Presto, jointly owned by Foxtel and Seven West Media; and Stan, a Fairfax and Nice Entertainment Co. partnership — to stream video content to Australian subscribers for $8.99 a month.

    The arrival of foreign-owned media is interesting in the context that we once had specific laws to guard against it in the name of protecting Australian news content and its democratic function. Oddly, in 2015 when local newspapers are experiencing financial duress, there is little examination about what these offshore arrivals mean for Australian audiences and Australian news content, particularly in terms of local news.

    Start-ups struggling to survive

    Perhaps, the important question arising out of this global media environment is not how to limit competition and potential sources of news diversity; but rather, what can be done to encourage growth in Australian news media start-ups? The current environment makes it very difficult for them to succeed long-term, as Wendy Harmer identified yesterday when announcing her online outlet The Hoopla will close. In the US, start-up news reporting entities are tax-exempt non-profits recognised by the IRS under section 501©(3) of the tax code.

    Australia’s Finkelstein media review also included suggestions for tax breaks for non-profit news outlets. Another idea was to allocate a proportion of Australia’s multi-million dollar government advertising and public notices expenditure for new news ventures.

    Of course, the ABC plays a unique role delivering local Australian news across the nation’s states, but it too has suffered recent substantial funding cuts and journalism job losses.

    The right formula to preserve the diversity of Australian local reporting might lie elsewhere, but shouldn’t we at least engage in the conversation?

  • Walter Hamilton.  Lee Kuan Yew and Australia

    Lee Kuan Yew ran the island-state of Singapore, someone said, with a mixture of charisma and fear. Having worked there as a correspondent for the ABC in the mid-1980s, the remark seems apposite to me.

    Lee’s brilliance as a politician and statesman is undisputed, but the country he forged, improbably, out of a remnant of the British Empire in Asia was a place that seemed to miss some essential inner purpose. Others have suggested that––mirroring Lee himself––it lacked a sense of humour, a sense of fun. There is something in this, although in my recollection Lee knew how to smile (usually as he skewered less talented opponents).

    Actually I think the aspect of Lee (and Singapore) that’s often missed is the “big fish in a small pond” phenomenon. While Singapore’s international profile, under his leadership, went far beyond its physical size and natural endowments (aside from a hard-working population), it could never be a pond big enough for Lee’s personality.

    Which is why, in part, he enjoyed his visits to Australia, where he made a habit of handing out gratuitous––albeit generous and sincere­­––advice about Australian lackadaisicalness. Our taste for irony, I sense, matched his (irony is not an abundant commodity in Singaporean discourse, in my experience); our willingness to indulge mediocrity, in the hope that it might turn up a nugget, on the other hand, was a sinful luxury for a man of his temperament.

    Lee used to say, “We don’t go in for any –ology in Singapore. We try something: if it works we keep it; if it doesn’t, we drop it.” The big question left begging in this exposition of the politics of pragmatism is: Who decides whether the something works? Not the Singaporean voter, in a virtual one-party state. Not the Singaporean fourth estate, where press freedom is rated among the lowest in the developed world. Not the Singaporean judiciary, where… I had better not go on, given that a Lee (his son) is still in charge there.

    Lee undoubtedly enjoyed the freedom of the bigger Australian pond of public opinion.

    I remember attending a press conference he gave in Sydney ahead of the 1978 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (the CHOGM made infamous by the Hilton Hotel bombing). He was in one of those moods that day, handing Australia and Australians a right serve. Lee had a habit of punctuating his remarks with long pauses, giving the impression he had come to the end, before launching forth again. Our ABC cameraman mistook one of these pauses for an opportunity to change the film magazine on his camera. As he did, Lee delivered the most quotable part of his tirade, and we missed it.

    Now Lee was not a person to interrupt or contradict, if you wanted to get out of the room with your skin intact. There was only one thing for it. When he finished, I piped up: “Prime Minister, what exactly did you mean when you said…” Lee immediately rose to the bait and obligingly (though unknowingly) covered our mishap. My ears are still burning.

    Later, as a correspondent in Singapore, I made just one visit to observe parliamentary proceedings (once was enough). In those days, the sole Opposition MP was the aging leader of the Workers’ Party, J. B. Jeyaretnam. Arrayed against this lonely voice of dissent, on the other side of the chamber, were the cookie-cut-out MPs of the ruling People’s Action Party: chips (small, small chips) off the Lee Kuan Yew block. Question Time consisted of a stream of “Dorothy Dixers” to ministers whose words would be reproduced, as though holy writ, in next day’s Straits Times.

    Then came Jeyaretnam’s turn. His question was to the Prime Minister. I don’t remember the substance of it, but Jeyaretnam was no sabre-tooth tiger, just a nagging Tamil lawyer who got under Lee’s skin. It was a quaint piece of theatre, a voice drowned out by its own irrelevance. But for Lee Kuan Yew, the mosquito had to be squashed. Here was the “big fish” arrogance in purple display, as Lee launched into a savage and personal attack on the old man. It went on, and on, and on. It was painful to watch and listen to. Crush the insect.

    (Jeyaretnam lost his seat in parliament because of a conviction for allegedly falsifying party accounts. The Privy Council in London overturned the conviction––one of the few occasions a Lee opponent has obtained victory in the courts––notably, outside Singapore.)

    Sometimes Singapore, under Lee, imagined it could be a bigger pond––until it considered the implications. A campaign was launched with much fanfare to make it the “Communications Hub of Asia”. The ABC was sufficiently excited by the slogan to envisage using Singapore as a clearing-house for news stories from its bureaus all over Asia: flying them in and then sending them on to Sydney by satellite. “OK,” said the Singapore government, “but first you must deposit $250,000 (1980s dollars) with us as a bond, which, of course, would be forfeited if we found you were moving unhelpful news reports.” The communications hub was more like a speed hump (our office telephones, we knew, were habitually tapped.). The ABC no longer supports any presence in Singapore.

    But the “big fish” of Asia paid a price for his confinement in this small pond of  his own creation. I wonder whether he was not, at times, a very lonely man.

    This thought goes back to the day I attended Singapore’s foundation day celebrations. As a foreign correspondent, I was invited to watch the parades and fireworks from the VIP area in the national stadium. Once the show was over, the guests, clutching cool drinks and finger food, milled around making the usual polite conversation. My ABC colleague and I caught sight of Lee and his wife standing in the middle of the room completely isolated from the throng. Occasionally a daring guest (presumably someone from out of town) would dart up and snap a photograph of the couple, before retreating. Nobody approached within two metres of the Lee presence; an invisible cordon sanitaire surrounded them.

    We decided this “un-Australian” situation should not be allowed to continue, so we walked up and introduced ourselves. They were, it seemed, pleased to rejoin the human race for a moment––even if it meant talking to Australian journalists. “You put on quite a show,” my colleague remarked, referring to the night’s festivities.

    “Umm,” said Lee wearily. “They pale after you’ve seen as many as I have.”

    I somehow failed to find the obvious headline in the Straits Times the next day: “PM Considers National Fete Boring”. Obviously their reporter had been out of earshot. But Lee knew we Australians would understand, and find his honesty refreshing. For a brief moment, the bubble was broken, and he was swimming free: the acne-scarred countenance; the severe crew cut; the lowered eyes; the leaping shoulders; the darting eyes; the ordinary man; the extraordinary man: the salmon poking out of the teapot.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Singapore for the ABC in 1985-86.

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. More problems with the Department of Health and Ageing.

    On 16 March, I drew attention to a Capability Review of the Department of Health and Ageing by the Australian Public Service Commission. It set out a very worrying analysis of the overall performance of DHA.

    We now have a report by the Australian National Audit Office of DHA’s administration of the Fifth Community Pharmacy Agreement (5CPA). The 5CPA is the fifth agreement which the Commonwealth Government has made to provide subsidised medicines to Australians who are eligible through the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). This agreement is with community pharmacies across Australia.

    The Australian National Audit office points to major concerns about DHA’s administration of this 5CPA.

    It says ‘Six broad principles and objectives were included in the 5CPA. Limited departmental information plus shortcomings in DHA’s performance reporting and 5CPA evaluation framework mean that the department is not well positioned to assess whether the commonwealth is receiving value for money from the agreement overall, or performance against the six principles and objectives.’

    The report adds ‘Administration of 5CPA has been mixed … A number of key government negotiating objectives for the 5CPA were only partially realised and there have been shortcomings in key aspects of DHA’s administration at the development, negotiation and implementation phases. …’

    The report refers to shortcomings in the Department’s estimation methodology and that a number of the government’s strategic negotiating objectives were only partially realised.

    Like the Capability Review by the Australian Public Service Commission, this report by the Australian National Audit Office points again to the extremely worrying performance of the Department of Health and Ageing.

    The performance of the department on co-payments should not be a surprise to anyone.

    The long-time secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing has been promoted to become the Secretary of Finance.  John Menadue.

    See link below for full report.

     

     

    http://www.anao.gov.au/Publications/Audit-Reports/2014-2015/Administration-of-the-Fifth-Community-Pharmacy-Agreement/Audit-summary

  • Tributes to Malcolm Fraser.

    See below, tributes from Fred Chaney and Robert Manne on Malcolm Fraser’s achievements in public life. John Mendue.

    Fred Chaney in The Guardian.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/malcolm-fraser-a-leader-who-believed-there-is-a-moral-compass-in-our-nations-life

    Robert Manne in The Guardian.

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/20/frasers-great-conservative-achievement-cementing-whitlams-progress-on-race

  • Ian Macphee. Personal memories of Malcolm Fraser.

    I first met Malcolm in 1973 when he was shadow minister for Industrial Relations in the Coalition opposition. I was Director of the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures and intensely involved in industrial relations. Malcolm had just been given that responsibility and wished to explore issues seriously. We did so for over two hours. I told him that I would always be happy to advise him and that I felt sure that he would form a harmonious working relationship with Clyde Cameron, Minister for Industrial Relations in the Whitlam government. He soon did. And Malcolm and I continued contact. With the advice of Malcolm’s close friend, Peter Nixon, I entered federal parliament as Member for Balaclava for the Liberal Party at the 1974 election and formed an increasingly deep friendship with Malcolm and Peter. That bond continued ever after.

    The Australian industrial relations system was exceedingly complex then and few in the coalition understood it. Malcolm soon did and in 1982, when I was Minister for Industrial Relations we negotiated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions and employer organisations to try to ensure that a sensible process of dispute settlement could be agreed upon. The March 1983 election was called as we were on the cusp of agreement and the Hawke government soon completed it as the Accord. That greatly transformed industrial relations.

    In 1976 Malcolm had the foresight to create a Department of Productivity to incorporate human resource management, quality control, innovation, skill enhancement and enterprise bargaining. A vast range of departmental activities were merged to enable Australians to understand the nature of productivity, a word rarely used in Australia then. Unions and employers were engaged where possible with scientists and others trying to set an example for cost reduction and increased efficiency and job satisfaction. Research and development was a major part of the interaction. It was during this period that I encountered Graeme Clark who was inventing the bionic ear. Despite the oil crisis and the inherited deficit Malcolm, Peter and Doug Anthony persuaded cabinet to fund further research for what became the cochlear ear implant. There were other achievements but that is one of the most notable.  Employees in the department exchanged jobs with some in the private sector so that each sector could understand the role of the other better. That was an initiative with which Malcolm agreed.

    From 1976-79 I was also minister assisting the Prime Minister on what was then termed “Womens’ Affairs”. Later it was more aptly named the Status of Women. In those three years I realised how strongly liberal Malcolm was on all socially progressive issues. We had many discussions on racial and gender equality and the need for specific policies that would ensure Australia lived up to its boast as an egalitarian society. Malcolm’s support ensured that many reforms were implemented.  Today’s research students are exploring how such progress was made then.

    In 1979 Malcolm was keen to extend reforms begun while Michael McKellar was Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs and he encouraged my subsequent work in that role.   Students are continuing to document our refugee programs especially the handling of the large scale settlement of Vietnamese boat people!.  The policy was implemented with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and our neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia and embraced the humanity that was the essence of Malcolm Fraser’s ethics and an Aussie “fair go”. The Hawke government continued that but the contrast with policies of later years could not be greater.

    In my final ministerial year Malcolm again revealed his humanity as we strove to reform our constitutionally impeded industrial relations system. We continued to try to encourage enterprise bargaining, increased skill formation and productivity.

    My friendship with Malcolm deepened each year. The first resolution proposed by the Hawke government in the new Parliament House in 1988 stressed non-discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity in particular. The words in that resolution were consistent with those given by Malcolm and I in many speeches. Yet the opposition coalition led by John Howard opposed it. As we conversed on the telephone I told Malcolm that I would vote with the government. He was delighted to hear that and flew to Canberra to witness that. Fortunately for me the Deputy Opposition leader, Charles Blunt, was late in arriving in the chamber and I was given the right to speak. I did so with the conviction Malcolm and I shared about equality. With Phillip Ruddock and Steele Hall I then voted with the Hawke government. That effectively ended my political career but deepened even more the bond that Malcolm and I shared.

    Malcolm then devoted his extraordinary intellect and energy to so many humane causes. He was Chairman of CARE Australia (and placed me on its board for five years) and for the next twenty years I joined hundreds of others in trying to devise a return to humane refugee policies. Sadly all that work was to little avail. Neither major political party would listen. Malcolm’s quest for humanity and equality never ceased. His latest book, Dangerous Allies, also revealed his wise vision for Australian foreign policy. We must be a part of the Asia Pacific region and not Deputy Sheriff to the United States of America. That vision is what drove me into Australian politics in the first place and it was a joy to share it with Malcolm over so many years.

    There are so many things I will not forget about Malcolm but the outstanding one is his refusal to dwell in the past. Having analysed the past he devised strategies for the future.  Many of us are prepared to continue that reform to honour his memory.

    While I shall never forget Malcolm I will also cherish so many memories of Tamie who was the most loving, considerate and wise companion he could have had.   Many of us admired the dedicated work of Julie Gleeson and others in Malcolm’s office over many years.

    My condolences to you all

    Ian Macphee was Minister for Industrial Relations and Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in the Fraser Governments.

  • Laurie Patton. The ‘metadata’ Bill.

    The House of Representatives has passed, with amendments, the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014.

    The Bill requires telcos and Internet Service Providers to store certain information (called “metadata”) for a period of two years. Metadata is essentially the information that reveals the parties to phone and email communications and other things such as the time and duration of a communication. It does not include the content of the communication.

    When collected by law enforcement agencies this information will be analysed by sophisticated software using algorithms that have been developed over many years and shared by international security agencies. The output of this analysis will allow the agency to identify people or organisations of interest. The nature of that interest could be anything from terrorism to far less significant activities that might concern the authorities.

    Once an individual or organisation has been identified and targeted for further investigation the agency can use a range of existing law enforcement practices to gain access to anything else they need to secure a conviction or to facilitate whatever other action they deem appropriate.

    The Government and the Opposition both support the need for data retention. They cite advice from our law enforcement agencies and security services.

    However, overseas there is a growing movement away from this form of government surveillance. The European Court of Justice recently overturned a ‘universal directive’ designed to harmonise data retention schemes in all EU member countries. The Court said “the directive interferes in a particularly serious manner with the fundamental rights to respect for private life and the protection of personal data”. It argued that the benefits did not outweigh the risks.

    When you look at high profile incidents such as Sydney’s Lindt Cafe hostage taking, the Charlie Hebdo attack or when British soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death in 2013, there is one common factor. The perpetrators were already known to the authorities. They were not identified as the result of a data retention scheme. The Internet Society*has noted that the Bill has not been subjected to a cost/benefit analysis.

    Another concern is the security of the metadata once collected. Speaking at an industry event this week, Telstra executive Mike Burgess observed that the scheme would create a “honeypot” of private information that could be actively targeted by cybercriminals.

    The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (“PJCIS”) scrutinised the Bill and recommended 38 amendments, all which have been accepted by the Government and the Opposition. The amendments include removing the ability of the Attorney-General to unilaterally add to the list of agencies able to access metadata and placing the definition of the metadata (the “data set”) in the primary legislation rather than the Bill’s accompanying regulations, where it would be easier for the Government to make subsequent changes.

    This week a belated campaign by media companies, supported by Labor, resulted in another amendment that will see a Public Interest Advocate (“PIA”) appointed to address concerns that the legislation will be used to search for the identify of journalists’ sources. Law enforcement agencies will be required to obtain a warrant to investigate journalists’ activities and the PIA will be able to argue that it is not in the public interest for a warrant to be granted.

    The implications for journalists and their sources also apply to others. Lawyers, doctors, whistle-blowers and anyone running an issues-based campaign could be targeted. It is also arguable that trade unions could be targeted if they are engaged in industrial action.

    Then there’s the cost. The Government has put a $400 million price tag on the scheme. Is that a one-off charge? It can’t be. The cost of having the data collected and retained will be ongoing. It will be passed on through higher phone and Internet charges or it will have to be borne by taxpayers.

    The PJCIS recommended that the Government make a contribution to industry costs. This is still to be negotiated. The Internet Society has offered the Government its technical expertise to assist in designing a model delivering an effective and equitable outcome.

    It is thought that there are between 250 and 400 ISP’s of varying sizes. Some are owned by large corporations with deep financial pockets but others are small businesses providing a competitive service but with limited financial resources. Unless the proposed Government funded financial assistance package is structured to take this into account we could see a reduction in the number of ISP’s as some simply go out of business.

    The costs of operating the data retention scheme that will be incurred by the law enforcement agencies have not been revealed. They will be significant.

    Laurie Patton is Chief Executive Officer, Internet Society of Australia

    * www.internet.org.au

  • John Menadue. Cars are killing our cities.

    At almost every election, we are being wooed with stories of more freeways to accommodated more and more cars. It is self-defeating. In our public infrastructure we waste more money on roads than on anything else. As I have argued in my re-post below, there are a whole range of policy issues that we must address to curb the growing volume of cars and the damage that they are doing to our cities.  We refuse to embrace it, but we will be forced to consider congestion taxes to limit road use.

    In the current NSW state election, the Liberal Party is proposing as a centrepiece of its policy, a WestConnex Stage 3 development, a toll road in western Sydney. The NSW government claims that this toll road will carry 120,000 each day by 2031. Unfortunately, Australia has a history of over-predicting the usage of toll roads. As Michiel Bliemer in The Conversation … see following link … points out that ‘The patronage of the Sydney cross-city tunnel was estimated to be almost 90,000 cars per day by June 2006. The actual number of cars using this tunnel was only 34,000 per day. Toll revenues were therefore much lower than predicted, leading to a bankruptcy after 16 months. Similar over optimistic predictions were made for the Lane Cove tunnel in Sydney and for Brisbane’s Clem7 tunnel and the Airport Link, which also had financial problems’.

    Governments and road builders have a direct interest in over-stating the value of toll roads and investment in roads. See link to Michiel Bliemer’s article in The Conversation below.

    http://theconversation.com/why-fewer-drivers-are-likely-to-use-westconnex-than-predicted-38286

    Re-post from 20/11/2013.

    Congestion and pollution are killing our cities. The automobile is so convenient for all of us that we put aside the enormous problems that the automobile is creating. This is not just a problem for the industrialised and wealthy western countries. It is a problem for developing countries as they upgrade from bicycles to motor cycles and then to cars.

    A constant message that we all generally endorse is that public transport, particularly trains in various forms, are the answer. But it is likely to be only a partial answer. Cities like London and Paris have excellent metros or underground public transport systems, but road congestion is still horrific and it is getting worse.

    Some hard-headed political decisions will have to be made about automobile congestion and that will involve decisions to curb the use of cars in our cities. This will not please the very powerful motoring lobby. It won’t please Tony Abbott who wants to build more roads as a major plank in upgrading infra-structure.

    One inevitable decision would be severely restrict any more new freeways… Such an approach would have to be accompanied by a congestion tax with the revenue hypothecated to public transport. With a congestion tax system the higher the level of congestion the higher the rate of tax. It would provide a clear incentive/penalty for motorists not to travel at peak times.

    I just cannot see our cities surviving without congestion taxes to limit the number of cars. With such congestion taxes, we will all be forced to make decisions whether our use of the car/van is worth it, whether for private or business purposes.

    We will also need to address other options to reduce the number of cars on the road including increased sales taxes, registration fees and the fuel excise. In almost every respect these imposts are much lower in Australia. In Denmark the sales tax on motor vehicles is 143%, in Finland 53%, the Netherlands 48% and Sweden 30%.  In Australia it is 10%

    One feature of most European cities is that their cars are much smaller than ours. That reduces both congestion and pollution. To take a local example, a Toyota Hilux 4×4 emits on average 4.6 tonnes of CO2 each year compared with a Toyota Corolla of 2.3 tonnes of CO2 each year. These larger cars not only pollute more and congest our roads, but also dominate parking facilities.

    We can’t keep putting off the debate about limiting the growth of cars in our cities. They are making city life more and more difficult and unsustainable. Public transport is only part of the solution. We have to limit cars on the road. Only in quite exceptional reasons should any more freeways be built. It is a vicious circle with more freeways encouraging more car use and really only shifting the bottlenecks.

    We need to break free from our own addiction to the car and the power of the vested interests in the motor lobby.

    We need to limit cars on the roads at peak times as well as building public metro systems. Paris and London show us that we need to do both

    When the Mayor of London directly tackled the gridlock on London’s roads many years ago he gained wide support.

  • Joseph Stiglitz on the Trans Pacific Partnership.

    At a community meeting in New York Joseph Stiglitz drew attention to the risks of TPP. He referred to the secrecy about the whole proposal. He said that TPP ‘is much worse than a blank cheque about trade’. He added that TPP ‘would not only become the law of the land, but every other law would have to adapt to it … and our Congress would have given up all authority in those areas – the environment, worker safety, consumer safety, and even the economy’. For full report of this meeting, see link below.  John Menadue

    In The Times

     

  • John Quiggin. The Trans-Pacific partnership: it might be about trade, but it’s far from free.

    There can be few topics as eye-glazingly dull as international trade agreements. Endless hours of negotiation on such arcane topics as rules of origin and most favoured nation status combine with an alphabet soup of acronyms to produce a barely readable text hundreds of pages long. But unless you were actually involved in exporting or importing goods, or faced import competition, it used to be safe enough to leave the details to diplomats and trade bureaucrats.

    That all changed with the emergence of “new generation” agreements, of which the most ambitious so far is the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, or TPP, which is on course to be completed in May this year. Depending on the content of the final deal, it could affect almost everything we do, from buying a secondhand book to campaigning to protect a local park from development.

    Although the new generation agreements are described as trade agreements, this is quite misleading. Except for restrictions on imports of agricultural commodities (which are unlikely to go away any time soon), tariffs, quotas and other restrictions on trade have largely disappeared in our region. The new generation agreements are primarily about imposing a particular model of global capitalism, with the United States as the model and multinational corporations as the main engines of economic activity. It’s already clear that the TPP will fit this pattern.

    But what exactly do we know about the deal? If it were not for an embarrassing leak of the negotiated draft text of the intellectual property and environment chapters, released by WikiLeaks in late 2013 and early 2014, ordinary Australians would know nothing more than the barest details, namely that the TPP has been the subject of more than a decade of negotiations involving twelve countries, and that it builds on a web of bilateral deals with the United States at the centre.

    Given the lack of public information, the negotiations are often described as secret, but this is not quite correct. While citizens in general have been kept in the dark, corporate lobbyists have been actively involved, apparently to the point of drafting much of the text as it affects their corporate interests.

    By the time we do see the final text it will probably be too late to do much about it. So we have to make an educated guess, based on the WikiLeaks material and on previous new generation agreements, of which the most important were the (failed) Multilateral Agreement on Investment, or MAI, the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights, or TRIPS, and the Australia–US Free Trade Agreement, or AUSFTA.

    These agreements are primarily concerned with protecting the rights of multinational corporations. This fact was clearest in relation to the MAI, which proposed to give these corporations the right to sue governments over legislation on issues such as environmental protection, cultural policy and labour market standards. These investor–state dispute settlement procedures have become a standard demand of US negotiators in bilateral trade agreements. They bypass normal courts, and are only available to corporations, with no corresponding right for states to sue investors.

    The MAI would have made them a core part of the structure of global trade managed by the World Trade Organization. But the agreement was abandoned after a string of governments, beginning with France, withdrew from negotiations in the light of public concerns about its implications. Attempts to implement it by other means have continued, with the TPP being the most recent example.

    The TRIPS agreement dealt with “intellectual property,” a term that refers to government-granted monopoly rights such as patents and copyright. As such, it is the direct opposite of a free trade policy. The idea of granting inventors and creators of cultural material a temporary right to control the use of their ideas is an old one and, within limits, generally a good one. But as valuable rights have fallen into the hands of corporations, pressure has increased to make them more permanent and to expand their scope.

    When the US copyright system was established in 1790, writers and other creators enjoyed a copyright term of fourteen years, which could be extended for a further fourteen years if the author were still alive. This provided the chance to make a living out of writing while ensuring that the vast majority of literature and other cultural material was in the public domain. Over time, the term of copyright was extended to the author’s life and then beyond, and the scope was expanded to material that would not have been considered worthy of protection in the past. The result was to build up corporate interests centred on the exploitation of the system.

    The archetypal example is the Disney Corporation, which derives a huge income from the character of Mickey Mouse. Under the legislation prevailing when Mickey was created in 1928, his copyright would have expired in 1984. Whenever Mickey’s copyright has come close to expiry, though, Disney has succeeded in inducing Congress to legislate for longer terms.

    Another Disney property, Winnie the Pooh, is an even more egregious case. Mickey Mouse is at least a Disney product, but the rights to Winnie the Pooh were acquired in 1961, five years after the death of his creator A.A. Milne. Again, if it were not for repeated extensions of copyright, Winnie would be in the public domain.

    Restrictions on the use of cartoon characters aren’t of great importance. But the expansion of copyright has had a chilling effect on creative activity of all kinds. Even such a simple act as singing the song “Happy Birthday,” composed over a hundred years ago using an even older tune, can potentially attract copyright action from the global conglomerate Warner/Chappell (which has a dubious claim to own the rights). This possibility becomes a certainty if the song is sung as part of a film or play.

    If the copyright situation is bad, that of patents is even worse. The patent system for pharmaceuticals has been abused in various ways, from “me too” products with little additional benefit to “evergreening,” involving marginal changes to extend patent life beyond the legally intended period. Then there is the extension of patent protection to things that were never intended to be covered, from business methods to human genes. The result is to stifle the natural tendency of information to flow freely and contribute to new and unexpected innovations.

    At the bottom of the heap are “patent trolls,” companies that file patents on trivially obvious activities, such as using a scanner attached to a network. These patents are invariably granted by the intellectual property authorities, whose job it is to decide whether a novel process has been identified. The trolls then send out letters demanding money from anyone who infringes their supposed patent. In many cases it is cheaper to settle than to fight.

    The abuse of the patent system has become so bad that some studies conclude we would be better off abolishing patents altogether. Courts and policy-makers have responded to some extent, for example by finding against patent trolls. Unfortunately, trade negotiators haven’t got the message and are still pushing the most extreme version of the intellectual property agenda.

    The implications of intellectual property deals and investor–state dispute mechanisms are best illustrated by the dispute over Australia’s legislation for plain packaging of cigarettes. The tobacco companies fought this legislation through the political process and lost. They took their case to the High Court, claiming that the legislation was an unconstitutional “taking” of their branding rights, a claim rejected by a 6–1 majority.

    If it were not for the new generation trade deals, that would have been that. But these deals gave Big Tobacco many more venues for litigation. First, the tobacco companies ginned up such major cigarette producers as Ukraine and Honduras to bring disputes under the TRIPS agreement. Next, Philip Morris undertook a corporate restructure to reinvent itself as a Hong Kong company, taking advantage of a 1993 deal with Australia that incorporated investor–state dispute settlement provisions.

    It goes without saying that these cases have no merit. But while they drag on, they deter other countries from following the Australian example. And, should the unaccountable tribunals established under these agreements rule in favour of the tobacco companies (for whatever reason), Australia has access to absolutely no redress.

    The emergence of plain packaging legislation as a test case may perhaps prove to be a blessing in disguise. There are few litigants less sympathetic than Big Tobacco, reliant on a deadly and addictive product and marked by a long history of dishonesty, criminality and political corruption. The fact that the countries notionally bringing the dispute have no genuine interest makes the case even more unappealing.

    Despite their trappings of legality, the tribunals of the World Trade Organization and similar bodies are political bodies. The WTO in particular has been badly burned by the political reaction against its decision that US policies requiring “dolphin safe” labelling of tuna represent an improper restriction of trade. As a result, it recently reversed its previous stance and upheld EU restrictions on the importation of skins from Canadian seals killed in the infamous clubbing hunt.

    The political fallout from a decision in favour of Big Tobacco would be far worse than anything the pseudo-courts of international trade have experienced before. It would instantly confirm the most dire predictions of critics of investor–state dispute procedures and intellectual property rules. Precisely for this reason, it seems likely that the tobacco lawsuits will fail, setting precedents that will constrain future abuses of these provisions. But that doesn’t change the obviously undemocratic nature of agreements under which Australian health policy can potentially be overturned by the machinations of corporate lobbyists.

    Given our recent experience with such deals, would an Australian government be willing to expose us to more such action? The Labor government responded to the plain packaging dispute by announcing that it would discontinue the practice of seeking to include investor–state dispute provisions in trade agreements with developing countries. More generally, there was some movement away from strong intellectual property policies in areas such as fair use of copyright materials.

    But this shift has been reversed under the Abbott government, with its recent rush of bilateral agreements. Unsurprisingly, political journalists pay hardly any attention to the actual content of these agreements, and their signing is almost invariably treated as a political win for the government of the day.

    This uncritical attitude is reflected in the generally favourable press received by trade minister Andrew Robb for the signing of agreements with Korea, Japan and China, bringing a rapid conclusion to negotiations that had proceeded at a glacial pace under Labor. No one in the normally hardbitten press gallery, it seemed, was cynical enough to suggest that the easiest way to conclude a negotiation is to accede to the demands of the other party while withdrawing any sticking points of your own.

    In the case of the agreement with Japan, for example, Australia secured some modest concessions regarding tariffs on beef, which will be reduced from 38.5 per cent to 19 per cent over a period of fifteen years. In return, our government accepted the total exclusion of rice from the deal, and the maintenance of most restrictions on dairy products.

    The Korean agreement, KAFTA, was arguably even worse. Reversing our previous position, the government agreed to the inclusion of investor–state dispute provisions. This was apparently done not in response to Korean demands but because US negotiators were pushing the provision in the parallel negotiations for the TPP.

    It seems certain that the final agreement will involve a substantial loss of Australian sovereignty and an acceptance of economically damaging intellectual property rules. In return, Australia will receive marginal and long-drawn-out improvements in market access for agricultural commodities. While a Labor government might perhaps have held out for a better deal, it seems unlikely that the opposition will reject legislation implementing the agreement.

    Ironically, our best hope lies in the United States. The Obama administration, backed by the Republican congressional leadership, is seeking approval to push the TPP through on a “fast track” basis, which would not permit any amendments. But it is facing stiff opposition both from Republicans (concerned about sovereignty and unwilling to grant any additional power to Obama) and from liberal Democrats, who reject the key provisions of the deal. In the current congressional atmosphere, inaction is the most likely result of any contentious process. So, it may be that the deal will fail at this crucial hurdle. We can only hope.

    John Quiggin is Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland.

    This article first appeared in Inside Story on 15 March 2015.

     

  • Kerry Goulston. Two health reform issues.

    Instead of tinkering around the edges of Health Reform in Australia,and dodging meaningful revision of the Medical Benefits and Pharmaceutical  Benefits Schemes,  all Federal politicians and leading clinicians could be debating two issues which would have significant effects over the next 20 years.  Currently thousands of clinicians (doctors, nurses, allied health and other healthcare providers) are despairing of meaningful healthcare and workforce reform  by our Federal and State politicians.

    Remuneration

    It appears that, over recent years,  other countries have been looking at widening the choices of remuneration to healthcare providers.  Why is Australia not doing so?

    The US Secretary of Health and Human Services wrote an article earlier this month in the New England Journal of Medicine on “ Setting Value-Based Payment Goals “ .  She was building on  health reform initiatives  suggested by clinicians and health economists.   They stressed that the current US system was too expensive and out of date.  She put forward a plan to have 90% of all Medicare  fee-for service  payments  and  50% of Medicare payments tied to quality or value through alternative payment models by the end of 2018.   Suggested alternative payment models included accountable care organizations and bundled-payment arrangements.  She outlined three strategies. First incentives  to reward hospitals and healthcare providers  for delivering high-quality  patient care with  advanced primary care medical-home models and introducing new models of  bundled pay for episodes of care .    Second, greater integration of practices and greater co-ordination among providers with more attention to population health. Third, a greater adoption of electronic health records (EHR)—although she states that in the US  78% of physicians and 94% of hospitals  now use them.  She also stresses a greater commitment to transparency  of data on costs of healthcare services to enable consumers to make  better informed choices when selecting providers.

    New Zealand has, for some years, moved away from fee-for-service alone to include universal capitated funding, patient co-payments and targeted fee-for-service for specific items.

    The French Minister of Social Affairs and Health writing last year in the Lancet talked of remuneration reform.   She wrote that because of evidence of substantial and increasing health inequalities, the payment system to providers had been reformed, inter-disciplinary team practice fostered  and health information strengthened to help consumer choice. Alternative models to FFS included  capitation and incentives to providers to avoid unnecessary care and higher valued services.

    Who would look at these options in Australia?  Our politicians and health bureaucrats  have singularly failed to do so.  Perhaps we need an independent body?

    Healthcare Reform Commission

    Increasingly there are calls to establish an independent, professional and ongoing body to advise the Australian community  on long- term  issues in healthcare reform.  Such a healthcare reform commission  would need to be completely independent like  the Reserve bank. It could look at  and advise on many major health problems.  John Menadue  suggests a pilot joint Commonwealth/State initiative  to end the dichotomy of funding  between the two administrations which  encourages cost-shifting.

    In Australia  we are blessed with outstanding  public health academics, health economists and leading clinicians. They could lead us  into a sustainable future, gaining the support of clinicians and the public.

    Kerry Goulston is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Sydney University.

  • John Menadue. Private health insurance and funding a Medicare Dental Scheme.

    In this blog I have written extensively about the damage that private health insurance (PHI) is doing in Australia. We are sleep-walking into a US style health disaster.

    If people want private health insurance, that is their right, but I see no reason why the taxpayer should subsidise a socially divisive and nationally damaging subsidy.

    The damage of PHI is increasing year on year. In my most recent blog on the subject at the time of the last annual increase in PHI premiums, I pointed out that since 1999 when John Howard introduced the subsidy on PHI, overall prices have risen by only 50% but PHI premiums have risen by over 150%.

    PHI has many damaging consequences and risks

    • It threatens our universal health system through seriously weakening the ability of Medicare as a single funder to control costs. We have seen the enormous damage that PHI has wrought in the US. We are steadily going down the same dangerous path. On present trends, we will have a divided healthcare system. One system will be for the wealthy with a safety net system for the indigent.
    • Private health insurance not only weakens Medicare, but in itself it does not have the market power to match the power of health providers who hold all the cards.
    • It favours the wealthy who can jump the public hospital queue by going to private hospitals.
    • It penalises country people who have limited access to private hospitals.
    • It has administrative costs three times higher than Medicare.
    • It has made it extremely difficult for public hospitals to retain specialists who are attracted to remuneration which is often at least three times higher in private practice and private hospitals.
    • There are government-supported trials in Queensland to extend coverage of PHI to general practice.
    • Medibank Private is pressing for PHI holders to get preference in emergency departments.

    I could go on, but I have said much of it before. We are really sleep-walking into an American style health disaster.  The future of Medicare is at stake, but the ALP which was the proud founder of Medibank/Medicare doesn’t seem to care.

    And the cost of the taxpayer subsidy which I had previously estimated at $7 billion p.a. is now approaching $10 billion p.a.  This is middle-class welfare writ large.

    Let me explain how this figure of $10 billion is calculated:

    The cost of PHI.

    Direct outlays on PHI from Budget Paper 1, 2014-15

    2013-14               $5.977 b.
    2014-15               $6.302 b.
    2015-16               $6.565 b.
    2017-18               $7.187 b.

    But there’s more! The rebate is essentially tax-free income for those who get it.  So, under the tax expenditures statement in Budget Paper 1 is the line item:

    “Exemption of the private health insurance rebate, including expense equivalent”:

    2014-15               $1.510 b.
    2015-16               $1.600 b.
    2016-17               $1.650 b.
    2017-18               $1.690 b.

    Adding these together you get:

    2014-15               $7.812 b.
    2015-16               $8.165 b.
    2016-17               $8.523 b.
    2017-18               $8.877 b.

    To this should be added the benefit of exemption from the Medicare Levy Surcharge.  That calculation, based on ATO tax tables takes some time to do and requires some assumptions to be made.  Last time I looked, quite a few years ago, it was more than $1 billion.

    We get up to about $10 billion, and that’s before looking at the inflationary effect of PHI which, if the experience of USA (and other countries) is any guide, dwarfs such budgetary expense.

    A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation using Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) figures illustrates the point:

    In 2012-13 Australia’s total health expenditure was $147 billion.
    This was 9.7$ of GDP.
    In the USA (in 2012) it was 16.9% of GDP.
    Add another 7.2% of our GDP ($1.583 trillion in 2013-14), and
    You get an additional $114 billion.

    We are talking big money.

    It’s hard to get health ministers or health department public servants to think this way, however. The former minister, when questioned about total expenditure (government and non-government) on services within his portfolio couldn’t even give a rough answer.  I suspect the same would go for any minister. The concern of ministers is only what passes through their own budgets.  Public attention is directed from the public purpose to fiscal performance – ‘a triumph of finance over economics’.

    A MEDICARE DENTAL HEALTH SCHEME

    I am usually reluctant to propose cuts in one area of government expenditure to finance a new area. But I do believe that the future of Medicare is at stake if the expansion of taxpayer-subsidised PHI continues.

    Abolishing this $10 billion middle-class subsidy would carry risks considering the powerful PHI lobby and the associated private hospitals that are large donors to the Liberal Party, like Ramsay Healthcare. For this reason I propose that the PHI subsidy currently of $10 billion p.a. and growing should be abolished and the savings used to fund a Medicare Dental Scheme.

    Dental Costs

    I have assembled the table below from the latest AIHW data.

    Recurrent expenditure on dental services 2012-13

    Commonwealth
    Department of Veterans Affairs                  $100 m.
    Other                                                                        $843 m.
    PHI premium rebates                                     $606 m.

    Total Commonwealth                                   $1549m

    Total State                                                       $657 m.

    Total government                                                                       $2.206 b.

    Non-government
    PHI net of rebates                                          $1.396 m.
    Individuals                                                          $5.066 m.
    Other                                                                     $73 m.

    Total non-government                                                              $6.499 b.

    TOTAL expenditure                                                                                         $8.705 b.

    Those figures are a couple of years older than budget figures.  But, as a rough estimate, the Commonwealth government’s expenditure on PHI and the individual expenditure on dentistry would about balance.

    Would it result in increased demand – probably, to the extent that there is a price elasticity effect?  I doubt if there would be much by the way of “supplier induced demand” however. Unlike other health services in that regard, dentistry is different but there would need to be some constraints on public expenditure for example on cosmetic dental work.  The introduction of a dental scheme would need to be carefully phased in to take into account the availability od dentists and support facilities.

    Abolition of the $10 billion tax-payer funded subsidy to PHI would clearly be enough to fund a Medicare Dental Scheme.  To me that would make very good policy and perhaps even some political sense.

    I assume that Bill Shorten is keen to preserve the great Labor monument, Medicare. If he also wants to differentiate his health policy from that of the Coalition, the abolition of the PHI taxpayer subsidy to fund a Medicare Dental Scheme could be just what he needs.

  • John Menadue. A capability review of the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing (DHA)

    In this blog I have raised many times my concerns about the major shortcomings of DHA and the barrier it presents to improved  health policy and programs… We saw it most recently over the GP co-payment. I  argue that the ministerial/departmental model in health has failed and needs review…

    Since 2011 the Australian Public Service Commission ( APSC) has conducted  a series of capability reviews of Commonwealth agencies. Late last year it  released its capability review of DHA.  It highlighted many problems in the Department. These include

    • The department is ‘hierarchical and siloed’.
    • ‘The department does not have a high level strategic policy framework to support the development of coherent policies and programs …’
    • ‘The department needs to better connect sources of evidence across the organisation to support the development of a high-level whole of health system view to inform and guide the department’s advice … Policy discussions are largely constrained within work siloes.’
    • There is ‘a sense of reluctance from the department to consider new or changed policy direction … It seems likely that the department’s lack of high-level strategic policy direction is hampering policy and program agility.’
    • ‘Decision making within the department has been largely centralised at senior levels’ … ‘The department’s governance arrangements appear disconnected.’
    • ‘External stakeholders, including agencies across the APS reported they have experienced the department as increasingly insular and often outwardly defensive.’
    • ‘Some senior departmental employees noted the need to ensure that junior officers are not captured by stakeholders.’

     

    THE SUMMARY ASSESSMENT of DHA by the APSC follows

    The Commonwealth Department of Health plays an integral role in the development of health policies and the administration and delivery of health programs, to support improved Australian health outcomes.

    Over time the department’s role has changed, with functions such as sport and ageing moving in and out of the organisation through successive Machinery-of-Government changes. Nevertheless, the department’s core purpose of responding to national health trends, risks and emergencies has remained fairly consistent since it was established in 1921.

    Australia’s health delivery responsibilities are distributed between the Commonwealth, state and territory jurisdictions and the private sector. By necessity, the department regularly interacts with its state and territory counterparts, industry and the non-government sector in its pursuit of health outcomes. The significant involvement of the private sector in the health system requires a high level of commercial acumen in the department in order to understand the business drivers and market forces that influence decisions made by the private sector.

    The department operates in a complex and fluid environment, both because of its role in the health system and as an agency within the broader APS. In this context, the review team found that the department needs transformational change to develop the agility and capability required to operate strategically and contemporaneously.

    The department takes pride in its record of delivery, with 94 per cent of key performance indicators reported as met in its annual report. However, in the context of shifting roles and relationships in the federal health system, combined with a policy of smaller government, it is highly feasible in the future that the department will be less engaged in service delivery and more in health-system strategy. This will require a shift in the department’s capability profile and in the way people work together.

    In recognising the department’s capability strengths the review team also identified the following five overarching themes for capability improvement:

    • prioritise focus on organisational culture and people leadership
    • develop a high-level organisational and policy strategic capability
    • address inadequate governance arrangements and delivery frameworks
    • foster a culture that appropriately embraces and manages risks within defined tolerances
    • Lead purposeful engagement and partnership with external stakeholders.

    These themes are consistent with the almost 1500 free-form suggestions for change made by departmental employees in the 2014 APS Employee Census (the Census). These suggestions focused on the need for improved leadership and management, communication, training, skills, change and performance management.

    The following sub-sections provide further explanation of the review’s overarching findings.

    The department’s strengths

    Most employees interviewed during this review expressed deep sense of pride in, and commitment to, helping improve Australian health outcomes. They also expressed strong motivation and alignment with the department’s vision of ‘creating better health and wellbeing for all Australians’. The review team heard that the department’s high level of employee commitment has served it well in its pursuit of what has often been a voluminous policy agenda.

    The department has many highly capable employees, with deep subject matter expertise and a well-educated workforce (67 per cent of employees have university qualifications compared to 60 per cent across the APS). The department employs highly credentialed medical officers and other professionals with relevant health qualifications to help inform internal policy and program decisions. It has access to rich data repositories, is developing an Enterprise Data Warehouse and is working on a broad e-Health program which has the potential to strengthen the department’s platform for evidence-based approaches to policy development.

    Throughout the review, employees consistently noted that a central aspect of the department’s culture is its focus on delivery, especially at the tactical policy and program level. Similarly, the review team heard that employees and business areas across the department have effectively and consistently delivered on urgent work in short timeframes.

    The department is widely recognised for its ability to deliver the initiatives and reforms required of it by Government. Examples include the tobacco plain packaging strategy—an international first to reduce smoking levels—National Health and Hospital Reform, and reforms to mental health and aged care. The department has, over many years, also implemented policy ideas across a broad range of areas to improve health outcomes in Australia and internationally. These include reforms to ensure the sustainability of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, increasing private health insurance coverage rates, e-Health initiatives such as the Personally-Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), and enabling more sophisticated debate around health productivity. The department has demonstrated its ability to implement organisational change in response to external pressures such as the 2010 Strategic Review and its more recent internal changes aimed at realising improved financial efficiencies. Employee confidence in the department’s ability to manage change has also improved, up by seven percentage points from 2013, with 2014 Census data reporting that 50 per cent of employees believe senior leaders effectively lead and manage organisational change, compared to 52 per cent in like policy agencies.

    External stakeholders recognised the department’s track record of mobilising and working with public service agencies across jurisdictions and other external stakeholders to help lead the national response to domestic and international health risks and emergencies. Similar to its national efforts, the department is recognised for its positive contributions and leadership role in the international health arena.

    Until recently, the department has been led by Ms Jane Halton PSM, a respected and long-term Secretary who left to take up her appointment as Secretary of the Department of Finance before the start of this Capability Review. The review team heard that the former secretary provided clear task and policy direction for the organisation and was recognised by employees and external stakeholders for her in-depth knowledge of the health sector. Ms Halton also played an important role in her interactions with the World Health Organization, including as the chair of the World Health Assembly in her final year with the department. Ms Halton was instrumental in leading national and international health reforms and provided a strong profile and an identity for the department.

    The department needs an increased focus on organisational culture and people leadership

    The review team found that the department will need to undergo significant cultural change to develop a greater focus on people leadership and capability development.

    Throughout the review, employees described the department as strongly focused on tactical delivery and issues management with limited acknowledgement of the toll its ambitious work program had on employees. Most Senior Executive Service (SES) employees advised the review team that they work excessive hours, with many noting an average of more than 80 hours a week, substantially in excess of the reported APS Employee Census data. Executive Level (EL) 2 employees reported to the review team that they also regularly work long hours, with most volunteering that they have no desire to progress to a senior leadership position due to concerns about a further anticipated diminution of work–life balance. Evidence before the review indicated that much of this workload was attributed to inefficiency of systems and processes, duplication and rework, which all lead to significant resource and capacity waste.

    Employees and external stakeholders regularly noted that the department lacks sufficient focus on the contribution of highly skilled people to its achievements. While some individual leaders were recognised for their focus on people leadership, the review team found that the broader department has not sufficiently invested in the development of its culture, in line with high-performing organisations. Contemporary research is clear: when an organisation’s culture lacks a sufficient focus on people this can lead to a decline in productivity, negative external perceptions and the eventual devaluation of the organisation.1

    Despite the efforts of the former secretary to break down silos, most employees and stakeholders described the department as hierarchical and siloed. The review team heard a strong desire from some employees for consistent communication and greater leadership visibility. This is supported by Census data, which reported that 51 per cent of employees perceive that senior leaders are sufficiently visible, compared to 57 per cent in like policy agencies.

    The review team found strong emphasis on contributions of ‘the individual’ over collective collaboration. Employees commented that there is a lack of a sense of a united leadership ‘team’ and a lack of whole-of-organisation ownership from employees and leaders with a strong corporate versus policy–program–regulatory divide.

    The review team regularly heard evidence from employees and external stakeholders of a culture of ‘inappropriate’ behaviour in some areas, including bullying and harassment. The 2014 Census rate of 19 per cent compares with an average 15 per cent in like policy agencies. The relatively high reported rate of bullying in the Census does not correlate with the data held by the department on formal complaints about inappropriate behaviour. The department has acknowledged that this is an issue and has implemented a targeted communications campaign to encourage employees to report inappropriate behaviour and seek support.

    A number of employees reported a need for greater transparency regarding SES placements and performance pay. Many senior employees commented that they received no input into or rationale regarding their placement to a position, with many in long-term acting positions. Others advised that they had received a telephone call only days before a move with no accompanying explanation.

    APS Census data in 2014 reports on the climate of workplaces by considering the demands placed on employees and the control employees have in relation to these demands. Figure 7 plots the distribution of departments. Those in the lower right-hand quadrant represent employees experiencing the highest demand and lowest control in relation to workload. In relative terms, the department, represented in ‘red’, is a high-strain workplace. Evidence demonstrates that high demand–low control workplaces face an elevated risk of ill health among employees.

    The department needs to develop a high-level organisational and policy strategy

    The department has an ambitious, noble and compelling vision that employees aspire to achieve. But it is not clear how the department’s vision is translated through organisational strategy to inform structures, priorities, resource allocation, workforce planning and performance measurement and reporting. Organisational strategy is also needed to map how the department is going to increase its influence and where it will invest.

    The review team found that the department has a view that the Government does not welcome or value strategic policy, which contradicts the evidence provided. The department does not have a high-level strategic policy framework to support the development of coherent policies and programs that are guided by and support a single strategic intent.

    The department needs to better connect sources of evidence across the organisation to support the development of a high-level whole-of-health-system view to inform and guide the department’s advice in an increasingly contested policy environment. The department has established a Strategic Policy Unit to provide a system-wide and strategic policy capability, however policy discussions are largely constrained within work silos. The review also found limited evidence of horizon-scanning or internal discussion on whole-of-health-system policy.

    The forthcoming White Paper on the Reform of the Federation, the consequences of the Williams II High Court decision, and broader government health and economic policy decisions have the potential to change the department’s role within the Australian health system. While the department is providing input into these processes, the views expressed by external stakeholders, and by some within the department, is that greater internal consultation and connection is needed to leverage expertise and draw on policy ideas from across the department in order to provide the best advice to the Government.

    Internal and external comments to the review team also highlighted a sense of reluctance from the department to consider new or changed policy direction. While there are many examples of the department using evidence to inform policy and decisions, the review team also heard examples where new evidence did not result in a change of policy or program direction. It seems likely that the department’s lack of high-level strategic policy direction is hampering policy and program agility.

    Internal and external stakeholders described the department’s desire to maintain existing work programs, with ‘trimming around the edges’ and a limited appetite for decommissioning work. This has resulted in a lack of agility in resource allocation. The department’s current budget re-basing exercise is, in part, recognition of the need for greater flexibility in resource allocation. The review team found that greater alignment of work programs through strategy, combined with more analysis of the comparative return-on-investment in the health system, could assist the department to prioritise work activities and provide policy options to the Government.

    There is an urgent need to address inadequate governance arrangements and delivery frameworks

    Decision making within the department has been largely centralised at senior levels, with a number of senior leaders being described by employees and stakeholders as exercising a command-and-control leadership style. While this approach may be appropriate in responding to a crisis or national emergency, the review found that its application in day-to-day management has resulted in the disempowerment and poor use of its workforce, reinforced vertical silos, limited corporate ownership and potentially hampered innovation.

    The department’s governance arrangements appear disconnected, which may be a function of their design. The accountability relationship between some committees and the Executive is unclear, with some areas (such as audit and risk) assuming greater prominence on the executive-leadership agenda than others. Minutes of meetings provided to the review team indicated that the department’s People and Capability Committee has met only once in the past 12 months.

    The review team identified a number of people, system and project risks that have not been sufficiently documented through risk frameworks or identified through internal or external audits or management reports. The department needs to review its internal governance and accountability arrangements to ensure decision-making frameworks are fit-for-purpose.

    Throughout the review, employees often commented on significant inefficiencies in the department’s operations due to internal workflows, especially regarding clearance and coordination processes. The review team found that the department would benefit from streamlining internal workflows, further delegating responsibilities and ensuring that people at all levels are appropriately empowered. This shift would also help refocus SES time from detailed management to leadership and strategic matters.

    Additional financial investment is required to modernise and ensure the department’s information and communications technology (ICT) environment is secure and fit for purpose. While the department is acutely aware of the shortcomings and associated risks of its ICT systems, resolving this to an appropriate standard will likely require accelerated, concerted and sustained focus.

    The department needs to foster a culture that appropriately embraces and manages risks within agreed tolerances

    The review team regularly heard examples of risk aversion, tight control of information, micro-management, elevated decision making and an excessive focus on issues management. This approach, coupled with a reluctance from a number of employees to report potential risks or mistakes due to fear of being blamed for failures, has created ‘blind spots’ to risk exposures, disempowered people, increased residual risk and stifled innovation. Employees provided the review team with examples where red traffic lights were not placed on management reports until risks were quite advanced as they felt that bad news would not be welcomed, and they would be better off trying to mitigate risks rather than report them.

    Employees regularly commented to the review team about personal fears of making a mistake, with some commenting that the department ‘does not make mistakes’. The review team found a variable understanding of, and sophistication regarding approaches to, managing risk. This is compounded by risks being elevated or escalated to the Executive to manage.

    The department needs to engage with a broad range of risks on a daily basis. Due to the scale and complexity of its operations, it is inevitable that some risks will eventuate, regardless of mitigation efforts. Significant work is needed to change the department’s cultural appetite towards risk and acclimatise all levels of the department to embrace and engage collectively to manage risk as appropriate.

    The department should lead more purposeful engagement and partnership with external stakeholders

    The department maintains good relations with a number of external stakeholders, particularly when those relations have been managed at the most senior levels. The former secretary was highly respected by the majority of external stakeholders for her knowledge of the health system and her capacity to steer solutions to difficult issues in national and international fora. Many stakeholders also commented on the good relationships maintained with individual departmental officers at lower levels.

    However, a majority of external stakeholders, including agencies across the APS, reported they have experienced the department as increasingly insular and often outwardly defensive. Stakeholders often commented on the difficulty in interacting with the department compared to other APS policy departments which were seen as much more open, though still professional and able to manage competing interests.

    The review team heard from external stakeholders from across the broader APS, and the health portfolio and sector, that they would like to develop stronger, more collaborative relationships with the department. External stakeholders often noted that they understand the department is not always able to be open with them in a timely manner, or to cater to their views. Still, they perceive the department’s approach to consultation as excessively risk averse, narrow and at times perfunctory.

    Some senior departmental employees noted the need to ensure that junior officers are not ‘captured’ by stakeholders who can often be quite influential in their advocacy for a certain policy position. This has led to a rotation of employees or the management of relationships at senior levels in the department.

    In an increasingly contested policy environment, the department needs to ensure it adequately captures the views of stakeholder groups who often hold positions of authority and influence within the community. Incorporating a broad range of external policy perspectives into the department’s advice remains crucial to its continued position as a trusted and key policy adviser to the Government.

     

    Note that the former Secretary of DHA is now the Secretary of the Department of Finance,

     

  • John Tulloh. Israel the promised land of democracy.

    Surrounded by a hostile region where even basic freedoms cannot be taken for granted, Israel is to be admired for its electoral democracy at least. It has a boisterous political system full of wheeling and dealing with everybody having a say. One party even has a 101-year-old leader. Electioneering is in full swing right now for next week’s general election (March 17) with no less than 11 parties fielding candidates.

    The next Prime Minister will be either the incumbent, Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu, aiming for an unprecedented fourth term, or Labor’s Isaac Herzog, a man with Irish roots and the name of political royalty in Israel. Polls have them neck and neck.

    But there is an unprecedented twist. The third most popular leader is a young Moslem lawyer, Ayman Odeh, who heads a coalition of three Arab parties known as the Joint Arab List. This unites a historically splintered demographic covering the interests of 20% of Israel’s population. It is conceivable that, if Netanyahu and Herzog should end up forming a grand coalition, Odeh could find himself the official official opposition leader.

    Latest polls suggest Likud and Labor each will win 24 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. The Joint Arab List may win as many as 15. The outcome of Israeli elections is always a coalition government and whoever is Prime Minister has to be an astute juggler of different party interests.

    Israel’s parliamentary make-up is complex. Each party submits a list of candidates. The number of seats it gets is proportional to the number of votes it receives. Thus if a party wins 20% of the votes, it gets 20% of the seats. The leading parties, traditionally Labor and Likud, look for partners to reach a majority of seats and then approach the President of Israel to choose who should form the new government. This process can last up to 40 days.

    Here in Australia we read about Israel in the context of many problems – Iran, the Palestinians, terrorism, settlements, anti-Semitism, Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and external threats. But they are minor issues in this election. Unsurprisingly, it is mainly about problems all voters have to deal with: a struggling economy and the high cost of living.

    Netanyahu, leader of the Likud Party, is now Israel’s second longest-serving Prime Minister. He represents the Right wing which wants to consolidate the Jewish presence wherever he can at the expense of Palestinians, encourage settlements in the West Bank and constantly alert Israelis to security issues. Talks with the Palestinians are hardly a talking point. Nor is the Iranian nuclear threat despite Netanyahu’s long-held fixation with it, ramming that home in a speech to the US Congress earlier this month.

    Herzog, leader of the Labour Party since 2013, represents the Centre-Left known as the Zionist Union. His coalition partner is Tzipi Livni, the former Justice Minister and leader of the Leftist Hatnua Party. Her party symbol for this election is Che Guevara of all people. He was certainly no friend of Israel, but for Livni he represented change.

    The Prime Minister and his challenger are two contrasting people. Netanyahu is not popular – less than 40% popularity. He has brought about little change. Poverty has increased and the economy is in bad shape. According to supporters quoted by the Washington Post, he is ‘arrogant. But they admire his swagger. He’s a tough guy in a tough neighbourhood. Polls suggest Israeli voters may be tired of Netanyahu, but many cannot imagine the Prime Minister’s office without him’. In a recent poll of preferred leader, 44% opted for Netanyahu and 36% wanted Herzog.

    A former head of the Mossad spy agency, Major-General Meir Dagan, despairs of today’s Israel. ‘There is a lack of vision, a lack of direction and determination and a dearth of exemplary leadership’, he told a rally of 80,000 people in Tel Aviv as reported by Ynetnews.com. ‘I fear hesitation and stagnation. I fear – above all – a crisis at the helm. The crisis we are experiencing today is the worst that I can remember since the creation of the state’.

    Herzog is a dark horse. A lawyer, he is the grandson of the chief rabbi of Ireland and later Israel and the son of a famous Israeli general and diplomat. The questions of poverty and living costs head his agenda. He also wants to settle Israel’s borders once and for all. ‘I will lead Israel in a different direction’, he says. Unlike the forceful Netanyahu, he is soft-spoken and has been described as being like a professor.

    ‘Much hope rests on his small shoulders’, the Haaretz newspaper columnist Asher Schechter wrote. A Herzog supporter, he went on to compare the challenger to ‘a small animal that uses cunning and wit to survive in the jungle’.

    The controversial question of Israel becoming officially the ‘Jewish State’ is not an immediate issue. A Bill has been drawn up, but has not yet had a preliminary reading. As it is, only one third of the Knesset’s current MPs have indicated their support.

    Visionary individual leadership in Israel is nigh on impossible because whoever is the Prime Minister has to appease so many different and sometimes opposing interests in order to govern. Just like our Senate. In short, Israelis probably will end up voting for business as usual whether they want it or not.

     

    FOOTNOTE: A few days ago, Netanyahu visited a crowded Jerusalem market to meet voters. He stopped at a coffee shop and bought an espresso, paying with a 100 shekel note. As reported by the Jerusalem Post, the woman serving him paid him back with 87 coins as a protest against his economic policies, which she said harmed small businesses. It is to Israel’s credit that such a gesture to a country’s leader can be shrugged off whereas it would be unthinkable in its hostile neighbours.

     

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Spencer Zifcak. The Martin Place Siege

    I first came across Man Haron Monis, the Sydney siege gunman, in early 2013. The High Court of Australia had just handed down an important new decision on the breadth of the protection the Australian Constitution provides for freedom of expression. The facts of the case centred upon offensive letters sent to the parents of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. The issue was whether sending offensive letters through the post to the private addresses of parents could properly be regarded as an exercise of constitutionally protected free speech. The person who sent the letters was Monis.

    In one letter, he described a soldier son as having murdered civilians. He likened the soldier to a dirty animal. He described the son’s body as the dirty body of a pig. He wrote that the son’s moral culpability was no less reprehensible than Hitler’s. Justice Heydon described the communications as ‘sadistic, wantonly, cruel and deeply wounding blows during the most painful days of parents’ lives’.

    He seemed to me to be deranged – not necessarily mentally ill but nevertheless profoundly disturbed, the disturbance having a distinctly paranoid character. I thought to myself that this is a person who should probably be watched.

    What we have learnt subsequently confirms that impression. Monis described himself as a sheikh but had no qualifications to be one. It appears that he had engaged in criminal fraud in Iran prior to obtaining refugee status in Australia. He owned a rifle, but no one seems to know in what lawful capacity he was able to obtain one.

    He uploaded a photo of the ABC’s religion presenter, Rachel Kohn, under the heading ‘You Will Pay the Price’, after she described him as an Islamic renegade. He described the deaths of people in the Victorian bushfires as Allah’s revenge upon Australians because the Government had not opposed the death penalty for the Bali bombers.

    He placed advertisements in local newspapers, holding himself out as a spiritual consultant. This rather brought him undone as he was later charged with forty offences of sexual and indecent assault many of which arose from his ‘consultations’. Early in 2014, he was charged with being an accessory after the fact to the murder of his former wife who had been beaten and set alight. Yet he wasn’t on ASIO’s surveillance list.

     

    There has been a lot of discussion since the Sydney siege as to whether Monis was a terrorist or, more prosaically, had committed a murderous crime. This is splitting hairs. The act was terrifying and people died. Whether Monis acted as a ‘lone wolf’ terrorist, or as a deranged criminal, doesn’t seem to count much when weighed against that.

    It is relevant, however, in determining how the siege could have happened and what might be done to prevent similar shocking events in the future. It is almost certain that Monis acted alone. It is also clear that he had had several encounters with the law that could reasonably have led one to the view that he was manipulative, religiously extreme, conscienceless and had a propensity towards violence. He should never have got a gun.

    Monis was on bail for serious criminal offences. Being charged as an accessory after the fact to murder is not nothing. Nor is the allegation that one may have engaged in multiple instances of sexual and indecent assault. Apparently, one reason that bail was granted in relation to the accessory charge was that the Magistrate decided that the case against Monis was weak. Another was that the prosecution did not oppose bail, even on the murder-related charge. Extraordinarily, Monis’ girlfriend, the person charged with the murder, also obtained bail.

    Without being in court to hear the evidence provided, it is difficult to disagree with the Magistrate’s decision. It might have been a reasonable one in the circumstances.  Nevertheless, had it been me in the chair, at the very least I would have put the totality of the charges to the defence and the prosecution and asked them to explain clearly and persuasively how it was that each thought that bail was appropriate. And I would have questioned Monis.

    The NSW Attorney-General has asserted that had his proposed reforms to the Bail Act, been in force, Monis would not have been given bail. These reforms provide that any person charged with a serious crime would be required to prove that they were not a danger to the community. Reversing the onus of proof in a criminal matter is hardly ever desirable as it requires the person concerned to demonstrate a negative. How does one prove that one will not be dangerous? Better to leave it to the prosecution to make the case that one is likely to be.

    So, what are we to do about ‘lone wolf’ terrorists? The honest answer appears to be that nobody knows. The US Attorney-General, Eric Holder, remarked recently that ‘that is the thing that keeps me up most at night, this concern about the lone wolf who goes undetected.’

    Without knowing the details, it seems clear that ASIO has managed to break up a number of terrorist cells that had been in the course of planning terrorist attacks. A small but not insignificant number of individuals have been subsequently tried and convicted. The irony (thankfully) is that it is more likely that terrorist plots will be foiled when they are planned on a large scale and involve several actors, than when all that is involved is a a random plot devised by a psychopathic zealot. The ‘lone wolf’ may communicate with no one and, planning alone, may evade suspicion and detection altogether.

    Turning to a present political controversy, the comprehensive retention of metadata, as currently proposed by the Federal Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, may assist in establishing a pattern of activity by an individual or group that alerts law enforcement officials to the possibility of a terrorist attack. That fact, however, does not provide a complete justification for access to every Australian’s data.

    Individual privacy is important. It forms a component part of what it is to live in a free and democratic society. We dismiss its significance at great peril.

    By all means require ISPs to retain individuals’ metadata for two years. But do not allow law enforcement agencies to access it without prior, independent judicial review. A judge should not agree to the provision of access to an individual’s private internet or telephone activity unless it can be demonstrated that there is a reasonable suspicion that the targeted person may engage in criminal or terrorist activity.

    It is unlikely that the examination of metadata would have netted Mon Haron Monis prior to his siege. As a lone wolf, not even his girlfriend may have been aware of his terrible plan. And he wasn’t on a watch list when patently he should have been.

    In the end, however, more terror laws aren’t going to cut it. Radicalisation must be tackled from its outset. One place to start is at school.

    Every school, primary and secondary, private and state, should be required to teach civics in the context of democracy, political plurality and cultural diversity. The communication of hatred, intolerance and discrimination in schools on racial, religious or ethnic grounds should be prohibited. The study of comparative religions, including secular morality,  should be strongly encouraged. The exposure of children to a wide and balanced diversity of political, social and cultural opinion should form an imperative part of every school’s curriculum.

    This won’t stop the spread of terrorism now. But it could make us safer and more respectful of each other in the foreseeable future.

    Spencer Zifcak is Professor of International Human Rights Law

    This article first appeared in Arena, no 134, 02-2015 – 03-2015.

    See www.arena.com.au

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Julia Davison. It takes a nation to raise a child.

    The week after Australia Day each year, around 260,000 five-year old Australians start school. Of those, almost 60,000 children – 23 per cent – will start school developmentally vulnerable in some way. Children who start school behind often stay behind, and are likely to finish school with skills and competencies that have not equipped them for the workforce or future life. The economic and social costs can be profound and long lasting.

    The first five years of a child’s life are when most of their brain development occurs. It is a period when children are most open to learning and when the foundation stones for future learning can be laid. According to Nobel Laureate James Heckman, it is a period when the biggest returns on investment in education can be achieved.

    Around the world, nations are investing more in the early years as a means of improving the ongoing learning capacity of their future workforce. As nations increasingly compete on the quality of their human capital, they recognise the vital national public interest in having an ‘all hands on deck’ economy when facing an ageing population and declining levels of workforce participation. In this global race to build human capital, Australia can no longer afford to leave 23 per cent of its future workers behind at the starting block of school entry.

    Access to quality early learning has been demonstrated in numerous studies to provide the greatest benefit to the most vulnerable children. Yet these children are the least likely group to access quality early learning, often due to cost barriers.

    Quality early learning provides more than mere child minding. Quality early learning involves qualified professionals delivering age-appropriate play-based programs. Quality early learning magnifies children’s development, their social competency and their resilience, and is very much in the public interest. A study of 2000 Australian children found that those who attended a quality preschool with a degree- or diploma-qualified teacher achieved around 30 points higher on their Year 3 NAPLAN tests. A long-running study tracking 3000 English school children, now up to age 16, found that children who had attended more than 2 years of quality preschool finished their GCSE examination (Year 10) with scores on average around 51 points higher than those who did not. This represents the difference between getting 8 GCSE at ‘B’ grades versus 8 GCSE at ‘C’ grades.

    Reflecting the overwhelming case for the importance of quality early learning, the commonwealth and all 8 state and territory governments agreed to a landmark National Quality Framework (NQF) to raise the quality of early learning in Australia just five years ago. It is particularly pleasing to note that this support is bipartisan, with both Coalition and Labor governments championing the importance of the early years. Though Australia is playing serious catch-up with much of the rest of the world, the decade-long reform process in the NQF gives us a pathway to get there.

    However as any informed shopper will tell you, quality comes at a cost. And government assistance to families, to help meet the rising cost of child care has not kept up. The result has been that too many families have been priced out of access to early learning and childcare. This results in a double negative – for the children who miss access to early learning opportunities, and for their parents who are then unable to re-join the workforce. Both sets of lost opportunities carry big costs for Australia that will accumulate over time.

    Price Waterhouse Coopers has produced some modelling of the benefits of investing in quality early learning. They estimated a threefold benefit to the future productivity of the economy over coming decades – $6 billion from increased female workforce participation if childcare costs were made lower, $10 billion in improved productivity from the benefit of raising the quality of early learning, and a whopping $13 billion from increasing the participation of vulnerable children in early learning. Price Waterhouse Coopers’ modelling also found that while there was a short-term fiscal cost to making quality early learning more accessible and affordable, in the medium and long term it more than paid for itself.

    Other research suggests that Price Waterhouse Coopers’ estimates could be understated. The Grattan Institute concluded that if Australia’s female workforce participation rate rose to that of Canada, our economy would be $25 billion better off. This is a figure often quoted by federal Treasurer Joe Hockey in making the case for increasing Australia’s low rate of female workforce participation, which ranks as the fourth lowest in the OECD.

    Public investment should mirror the public interest, and the public interest case for investing in childcare and quality early learning is very strong. The National Commission of Audit, the Henry Tax Review, the OECD Going for Growth report, and the recent Productivity Commission Inquiry into childcare and early learning have all recognised this.

    It is in the public interest for more children to start school ready to learn. This not only gives children the best start, it also saves the public many millions of dollars. It is in the public interest to provide additional support and early intervention for children facing disadvantages, and the first five years provide a crucial short window to redress the development gap. It is in the public interest to remove barriers to women’s workforce participation through the provision of affordable early learning and care for their children. And it is in the public interest to invest now in Australia’s future economic productivity by investing in the learning capacity of our future workforce.  Australia invests far less in making quality early learning accessible and affordable than most industrialised countries. That needs to change. As a nation, we should not leave any of our children behind. We cannot afford to.

     

    Julia Davison is CEO of Goodstart Early Learning, Australia’s largest provider of early learning and care, with 644 centres across Australia caring for 73,000 children from 61,000 families. Goodstart employs over 13,000 staff and has an annual turnover of around $800 million. Goodstart was created by a partnership of four of Australia’s leading charities – Mission Australia, Social Ventures Australia, The Brotherhood of St Laurence and The Benevolent Society – which saw the potential to operate the failed ABC Learning Centres, transforming early childhood education in Australia. Goodstart’s vision is for Australia’s children to have the best possible start in life. As one of the biggest social enterprises in Australia, Goodstart works to create social change by giving children access to affordable, high-quality early learning. Julia has a strong interest in public policy having completed a Masters in Public Administration at the Harvard Kennedy School.

    This article was first published in Australia 21. It was part of a series entitled ‘Who speaks for and protects the public interest in Australia?’  See www.australia21.org.au. 

     

  • Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost: Australia’s New Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 2

    The Foreign Fighters Bill

    The second tranche of counter-terrorism legislation introduced by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, late last year was contained in the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill. This Bill (now passed into law) amended several Commonwealth Acts, most notably the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The primary purpose of these new laws is to enable the investigation, arrest, prosecution and punishment of people supporting foreign conflicts.

    1. Foreign Incursion Offences

    Each of the foreign incursion offences pivots upon the definition of ‘to engage in hostile activity’. A person engages in hostile activity in a foreign country if they engage in conduct intending to:

    overthrow the government of the country, or any other country, by force of violence; or

    subvert society in that or any other country; or

    intimidate the public in that country or any other country.

    This definition substantially expands the one formerly contained in the Crimes (Foreign Incursions) Act 1978. The expansion is achieved by the inclusion of the subversion and intimidation components. Consequently, every offence added to the Criminal Code Act, which turns on the broader conception of ‘engaging in hostile conduct’ has a much expanded scope from that in existing foreign incursion laws.

    So, for example, in the former law the penalty for incursion into a foreign state with the intention of engaging in hostile activity was 20 years. In the new law, the penalty for the more widely defined offence is life imprisonment. Similarly, the former law provided for a penalty of 10 years imprisonment for actions in preparation for hostile activity, whether or not that hostile activity occurs. In the Foreign Fighters legislation, the much broader offence again attracts a life sentence. The idea that preparatory conduct will attract a life sentence is of particular concern. It might, for example, catch a family member in Australia whose only relevant act is sending medicines to a relative engaged in an incursion abroad.

    ‘Subverting society’ is also defined extraordinarily widely. It may for instance apply to serious damage to any property, serious interference with an information system or a serious disruption to transport infrastructure. Such activities may legitimately be criminalized but the attachment of a life sentence to them is manifestly excessive.

    Importantly, too, the new subversion offences are not tied directly to terrorism. Subversive activity encompasses a range of actions that need neither be intended to influence a government by intimidation nor be motivated by the advancement of a political, ideological or religious cause. Subversion takes in the disruption of electronic, communications, transport and postal systems and any and every infringement of property rights, whether or not they form part of a terrorist attack. To avoid substantial legal over-reach, therefore, these offences must be tied directly to the explicit definition of a terrorist act in the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

    To appreciate the breadth of what is proposed, one might take another Timorese example. An East Timorese person who had been granted Australian citizenship or permanent residency and who returned to East Timor in the 1990s to participate in the rebellion against the genocidal Suharto regime’s oppression of the country would have been caught by the Foreign Fighters law and faced a life term. Jose Ramos Horta was resident in Australia for some time while carrying on his diplomatic work in pursuit of Timorese independence at that time. No doubt his activities consisted of advocating for, making preparations for and supporting the commission of hostile activity against the Indonesian government. It would have been a pity, given his subsequent receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, if he had had to serve a long term of imprisonment in Australia.

    1. Declared Area Offences

    The problems attached to overly broad ministerial discretion are illustrated graphically by the offences attached to travelling to ‘no go zones’. Pursuant to the Foreign Fighters law, it is an offence for a person to enter an area in a foreign country that has been declared by the Minister for Foreign Affairs as a no-go zone, where the Minister is satisfied that a listed terrorist organization is operating there. To enter or remain in a declared area attracts a penalty of 10 years imprisonment.

    The relevant provisions create a list of exceptions that include, for instance, cases in which a person has entered an area to engage in humanitarian or journalistic activities or for bona fide family reasons. The exceptions are narrow however. They may not, for instance, cover business travellers, pilgrims, adventurers, ill informed tourists, people who enter inadvertently, people in transit, others who have gone to visit or support friends and so on. The exception for journalists extends only to those who are working in a professional capacity. Social media correspondents, bloggers, researchers, independent cameramen and others are unlikely to fall into the professional category.

    A person picked up in a declared area is also placed at a significant legal disadvantage. To make out a case against her, a prosecutor need only demonstrate that she has been found in a zone, and that the Minister has declared the zone. Once those two requirements have been met, it becomes a matter for the accused to prove that she falls within a lawful exception. Not only that, but she is required to demonstrate that the excepted purpose for her presence in the zone is the sole purpose for her being there.

    This is not strictly a case in which the presumption of innocence is negated, but it comes pretty close. The accused person must prove that they are in an area for a legitimate reason rather then the prosecution having to demonstrate that the accused’s purpose falls outside the mandated exceptions. Further, for a person to prove a negative, that is that they are not in an area for a nefarious purpose, presents formidable evidentiary difficulties.

    The declared area offence should be excised from the legislation. Alternatively, the parliament should include a general defence for a person who has travelled to the area for an innocent purpose which nevertheless falls outside the present narrowly defined, legitimate reasons for travel.

    Conclusion

    It will be clear that in critical respects the new counter-terrorism laws are a disproportionate response to real but manageable threats. While it is highly unlikely that the laws canvassed here will be reviewed in the foreseeable future, a number of supplementary reforms should be considered. These would strengthen the mechanisms through which the legislation could be continuously reviewed and amended when that is found necessary.

    A new person should be appointed to the Office of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor immediately. The Office of the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security should be given stronger powers to monitor Australia’s domestic and international intelligence agencies particularly in relation to their conduct of special intelligence operations. The Parliament’s Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security should report annually on issues and problems arising from the implementation of counter-terrorism laws.

    It is imperative that the laws analyzed here should be subject to sunset terms of no longer than three years. The great problem with counter-terrorism legislation is that no government will ever wish to court the blame for a terrorist attack if ever it occurs. There is consequently, no political incentive for such legislation ever to be repealed. With all its disproportionality and violations of civil liberties, it will stay on the books indefinitely unless, by law, it must be brought to an end when national security and human rights considerations suggest that it is justified to do so.

    Spencer Zifcak is Professor of International Human Rights Law

    This article first appeared in Arena, see Terror Laws: Arena, No 133, 12 2014-01 2015.  www.arena.com.au

  • Spencer Zifcak. Proportionality Lost in Australia’s new Counter-Terrorism Laws. Part 1

    The Attorney-General, George Brandis, crashed two major tranches of counter-terrorism law through federal parliament recently. As always there are two problems with such an approach: overkill and error. Both tranches demonstrate these deficits in abundance.

    It’s important to say that in Australia the threat of terrorist attacks is real. So is the danger posed by fighters returning trained and hardened in Middle Eastern conflicts. The threat and the danger have undoubtedly increased because of the Government’s military commitment to a third Iraq war. The case for some new security laws, specifically targeted at clearly identified threats, is persuasive.

    However, new law requires careful deliberation, particularly if it infringes on civil liberties. In this instance it didn’t get it.  Consequently, the parliament has adopted counter terrorism laws that are loosely drafted, disproportionate to the threats they are designed to deter, and that violate human rights unnecessarily.

    In this article I deal with the National Security Legislation (Amendment) Bill.  In the next I consider the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Foreign Fighters) Bill.

    The National Security Legislation (Amendment) Bill

    The National Security Legislation Amendment Bill (No.1) gives ASIO officers immunity from prosecution for criminal activity in which they may engage in the course of ‘special intelligence operations.’ It creates new offences and severe penalties for the disclosure of information that relates to these operations.

    1. Special Intelligence Operations

    The National Security Bill defines a ‘special intelligence operation’ as one established to carry out special intelligence functions in the course of which an ASIO officer or affiliate may engage in criminal conduct or commit a civil wrong. A special intelligence function is one carried out for the purpose of obtaining evidence that may lead to a prosecution for a serious Commonwealth offence. That means, for example, that if during the course of a special intelligence operation an ASIO officer beats up an innocent party or negligently causes them harm, s(he) will be immune from criminal prosecution or any claim for damages.

    Nevertheless, special intelligence operations are subject to legal limitations. An operation, tautologically, must be one that will assist ASIO in the performance of a special intelligence function. The unlawful conduct involved in undertaking an operation must be limited to the maximum extent consistent with conducting an operation effectively. The conduct involved must not cause death or serious injury to any person; involve a sexual assault; or result in serious damage to property. An authorized officer must assess and approve a special intelligence operation prior to its commencement.

    Even this brief description makes it plain that the special intelligence operation provisions travel far more widely than is consistent with the rule of law. It is unacceptable in principle and practice that ASIO officers should be immune from prosecution for crimes they commit. This violates the fundamental constitutional principle that every person should be treated equally before the law.

    The safeguards set in place with respect to the commission of crimes are weak. Unlawful conduct is confined to that required for the successful implementation of an operation. This is no real safeguard at all. The greater the perceived importance of the operation, and the greater the risk in effecting it, the greater the latitude for criminal behavior will be.

    Criminal and civil immunity may be provided so long as agents’ conduct does not cause the death of, serious injury to, or the commission of a sexual offence against a person. So, causing injury to a person may be permissible as long as it is not serious injury. Where the line between serious injury and injury is to be drawn is anyone’s guess. The limitation is expressed broadly. Consequently, it could mean that a person may still obtain immunity where (s)he engaged in conduct that was likely to result in, death, serious injury or sexual violation, but did not ultimately engender those consequences. That is insupportable.

    Given the clear dangers attached to the conduct of special intelligence operations, not only to ASIO officers but also to members of the general public, one would have expected substantial safeguards to be attached to their authorization. Instead authorization is left to the Director-General or Deputy Director-General of ASIO alone. Plainly, they are judges in their own cause. Authorization should reside with real judges. A judicial warrant should be required to authorize a special intelligence operation. The case for authorization should be subject to scrutiny by a judge of a federal court who can assess an ASIO application independently and impartially. As an additional safeguard a Public Interest Monitor should be appointed to adduce relevant evidence and test each case made by ASIO prior to a judicial decision on a warrant being issued.

    1. Information Disclosure and Freedom of the Press

    The National Security Amendment Bill (No.1) prohibits the disclosure by any person of information that relates to a special intelligence operation. It is worth citing the provision in full:

    35P. Unauthorized disclosure of information
    A person commits and offence if:

    The person discloses information; and

    The information relates to a special intelligence operation.
    Penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years.

     

    This provision could slam the door on investigative journalism. Press freedom exists in part to ensure that government agencies can be held to account for their actions. The accountability principle applies to intelligence organizations no less than to any other entity in the machinery of government. S.35P is a concerted attempt to undermine it.

    Take the fiasco of ASIS’s covert recording of the deliberations of the Timor-Leste’s Cabinet. The recording was of the Cabinet’s discussion of legal arguments to be put before the International Court of Justice in Timor’s case against Australia concerning the division of proceeds from oil exploration in the Timor Sea. Journalists alerted by Timor-Leste’s Australian lawyer made the existence of the recording public. The AFP raided the lawyer’s office and legal documents related to the case were confiscated. The Court delivered Australia a stern rebuke.

    Now under s.35P, if this had been declared a special intelligence operation, the lawyer and journalist who reported upon the ASIS operation could both be subject to prosecution and substantial terms of imprisonment. As a result, no one would have known about the bugging which, in the legal circumstances that prevailed, was scandalous. No questions would have been asked, no answers required. Accountability would have been defenestrated.

    Journalists and whistle-blowers often work in tandem to obtain and expose information about governmental corruption and malfeasance. This activity is clearly in the public interest. Journalists cultivate knowledgeable and expert sources all the time. They promise sources that their identity will not be revealed. They receive and evaluate confidential information. They question and determine its veracity and reliability. They balance the merits and demerits of disclosure.

    S.35P, however, is likely to chill these crucial investigative activities. Journalists, lawyers and others who come into possession of specialist intelligence information may be prosecuted not only when they intend to disclose that information but also if they are reckless as to the possibility of its disclosure. All the government now needs to do to stop such disclosures is to warn media organizations that matters in which journalists have an interest may relate to special intelligence operations. Because these are secret, the media will be unable to verify that assertion. And no one will be willing to risk imprisonment for publishing related information for fear of being prosecuted for reckless release. Press freedom, and the accountability that it generates, will be damaged severely.

    S.35P should be repealed in its entirety.

    Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

    Spencer Zifcak is Professor of International Human Rights Law

    This article first appeared in Arena, see Terror Laws: Arena, No 133, 12 2014-01 2015.  www.arena.com.au

  • Alex Wodak. Reducing the demand for illicit drugs

    At his Congressional confirmation hearing in January 2001, the then Secretary of Defense-designate Donald Rumsfeld was asked whether US drug problems were best attacked by reducing demand or targeting drug supplies. Rumsfeld said that he believed that illicit drug use was “overwhelmingly a demand problem”. He added, “If demand persists, it’s going to find ways to get what it wants” and “if it isn’t from Colombia, it’s going to be from someplace else.” This might have been an unconventional view 14 years ago but it’s becoming a mainstream perspective these days.

    The conventional view is that young people make bad choices about illicit drugs because of an information deficit. Tell young people how bad illicit drugs are, so Conventional Wisdom asserts, and they won’t touch the stuff. Unfortunately, the experience of evaluating decades of educational mass and school-based campaigns is that, at best, modest and temporary benefits are achieved. But some studies have found that educational interventions often achieve no benefits or even increased drug use and problems. Community and therefore political expectations, are stubbornly unrealistic. In the various National Drug Strategy Household Surveys conducted for the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing every three years, the community always notionally allocates the lion’s share of government expenditure to drug education. Drug education is clearly the community panacea for drug problems.

    My personal journey thinking about these issues started after I spent an evening in a shooting gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, in October 1987 while looking at HIV among people who inject drugs in Europe and North America. ‘Shooting galleries’, common in much of the USA, are derelict houses where people can bring drugs secreted on their person and hire (used) needles and syringes for a few hours to inject with. Shooting galleries helped to spread HIV extensively in the USA. The local police are usually paid to ignore shooting galleries.

    The Williamsburg area, now gentrified, was then clearly extremely dangerous. Abandoned cars rested propped on bricks on the side of the road. Many tenement buildings were derelict and lay empty after a fire. We gathered in a basement room carpeted with filth and broken glass. We had brought candles, as there was no electricity in the building. The front door of the house was missing. I watched aghast as four Hispanic people injected speedballs of heroin and cocaine for several hours.  I could not stop wondering why these two men and two women were so ridiculously indifferent to their health. I wondered why they made so little effort to avoid HIV? I established that they knew some people who had injected drugs and had AIDS, including some who had died of AIDS. But I was then instructed to stop asking further questions. I realized that these four people had lost all hope of decent housing, healthcare, education and employment. Not just for themselves but also for their children and grandchildren. Given the inevitability of a bleak future for them and their families and friends, enjoying a few hours of intense pleasure made some sense after all.

    In 2009, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett published ‘The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone’. This influential book argued that many important public health and social outcomes were worse in countries with high levels of inequality, such as the USA and Australia, and better in countries with lower levels of inequality, such as Japan and Scandinavia. Illicit drug use was one of the issues that they included in their studies. This book has its critics but overall, the reception has been quite positive. My 1987 experience in Williamsburg, Brooklyn seemed to fit their theory like a glove.

    Last October I was invited to give some talks on harm reduction in Japan. I was struck by the fact that after a quarter century of economic stagnation, average unemployment was still only 3.1%  in Japan while after almost a quarter century of uninterrupted growth, average unemployment in Australia was more than double. Youth unemployment in both countries would have been several multiples of average unemployment. Heroin use is almost unknown in Japan but continues to be a significant problem in Australia. Amphetamine use in Japan is also tiny compared to Australia.

    In 2011, I was asked to give a presentation on demand reduction to the Global Commission on Drug Policy in Geneva. I argued that the results of conventional attempts to reduce drug use and problems through education were disappointing. The Chair of the Commission, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who had been the President of Brazil from 1995- 2003, did not seem impressed by my negative assessment of demand reduction. Cardoso, a hero in Brazil for conquering hyperinflation in the 1990s, asked me what I would do to reduce the demand for drugs. I replied that his slaying of Brazilian hyperinflation had done more to reduce the demand for drugs than all the conventional drug education in the world. Although he did not seem to like that answer either, many clinicians and researchers around the world do accept that higher levels of illicit drugs use and problems are very likely if severe social and economic disadvantage is common.

    The conclusion seems inescapable to me: if we in Australia want lower levels of illicit drugs use and problems, we will have to reduce our high level of inequality. This may seem counter-intuitive to some but there are many examples of dangerous health conditions being conquered as much by improved social conditions as by powerful medical treatments. In the USA, with improved social conditions the prevalence of TB fell by more than two thirds in the early decades of the twentieth century before the advent of antibiotics.

    Dr Alex Wodak AM

    Emeritus Consultant, St Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst, NSW 2010

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Helen Sykes and David Yencken. Leadership in the public interest.

      

    No fundamental social change occurs merely because government acts. It’s because civil society, the conscience of a country, begins to rise up – demand – demand – demand change. (Joe Biden, Vice President of the United States)

    History shows that the public interest can vary over time and between societies. These are, nonetheless, ideals that every nation should have for the wellbeing of its citizens. For Australia they include the protection of core values of democracy and society and the proper care of its people. They require the protection and nurturing of the physical environment as the source of sustenance and life. They ask that we maintain decent standards of living for all citizens and thus a fair and efficiently operating economy. They mean that our artistic and cultural heritage and traditions are treated with respect, support and encouragement.

    Many of these ideals, core values and social needs are under serious threat. One forceful way of confronting this challenge would be to try to reach agreement across Australian society about the major issues facing the country and to focus attention sharply on them. How might that be done and who should take a leadership role? Government clearly has a major role to play but the deficiencies of the political system in dealing with critical issues facing Australia and the world are all too apparent. Business has its part but works to its own rules so while it is an important source of enterprise and wealth generation for the country, it is not principally focussed on the broader public interest and often works contrary to it. The university sector has a critical role in carrying out research, promoting research findings and making its undergraduates and postgraduates aware of societal issues, but it rarely takes the main initiative in promoting new policies to protect the public interest except through the views expressed by individuals in university communities. Neither old nor new media are likely to don this mantle.

    There is another major sector, the civil society sector (or not-for-profit or non-government sector), which could play a lead role in bringing about change that serves Australia’s public interest. The Australian Productivity Commission in its 2010 ‘Contribution of Not-For-Profit Sector Report’ points out that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) ‘identified 59,000 economically significant NFPs, contributing $43 billion to Australia’s GDP, and 8 per cent of employment in 2006-07’. In support of greater recognition for the sector, the Productivity Commission Report also notes that ‘the level of understanding among the wider community of the sector’s role and contribution is poor and deserves attention’.

    There are other reasons why this sector is ideally placed to take a leadership role. One is the rich array of skills covering the widest range of issues to be found within it. Another is the standing of the sector in the eyes of the public and the trust in which it is held. Edelman, the global public relations company, has just released the findings of its 2015 Trust Barometer. Once again the survey shows that non-government organisations (NGOs) enjoy the highest levels of public trust, ahead of government, business and the media, although disappointingly the level of public trust in all institutions has fallen this year. The drop in trust for NGOs has only been small, however, and still leaves this sector highest ranked and well-placed to take the lead in promoting the public interest.

    What stops the civil society sector acting more vigorously? Key problems are its fragmentation and lack of resources. Australia is a rich pluralistic society within which many different voices speak out freely for the causes about which they are concerned. But such diversity can blunt a sharp focus on the most important issues and thus the likelihood of the media or politicians paying serious attention.

    A challenge for the sector is how to make the most effective use of its diversity and skills to generate a list of critical issues and get wide agreement about them. This could, no doubt, be done in many different ways.  Since there is not space to explore alternatives in any depth, we focus here on two key principles that should inform the task and one proposal that might produce a powerful outcome.

    The principles are that the work undertaken should fully engage the civil society sector and that it should be intellectually rigorous. With these two principles in mind we suggest that a representative group of civil society organisations should take the first step by preparing a preliminary list of the most important issues facing Australia, inviting the widest possible inputs.

    The second step would be to submit this list to a consortium of academics from Australian universities for checking, review and further development. When the academic review is completed a series of ‘citizen parliaments’ would be an ideal way to test and promote the research findings with community members. All community consultations should have multiple aims: to gather further valuable inputs, to create a learning environment for all concerned, and to gain the greatest amount of media attention and reporting.

    The civil society sector would have the responsibility for promoting the findings of the research, individually and collectively, so that they become key issues regularly taken up in the media, leading in turn to pressure on all political parties to respond and incorporate into their policy commitments. Ideally the exercise should be repeated at regular intervals. The ongoing research team should be a dynamic group constantly kept alive with the injection of new voices, ideas and energy.

    Funding of the project would no doubt be a challenge. Every effort should be made to ensure that the funds needed come from the combined resources of civil society organisations, universities and philanthropy and not from business and government.

    Sir Gustav Nossal reminds us that: ‘Community leadership is the courage, creativity and capacity to inspire participation, development and sustainability for strong communities.’ Australia’s civil society sector is well placed in Biden’s words to rise up, demand change and show that leadership.

     Helen Sykes AM is the Director of Future Leaders, President of the Trust for Young Australians, Chair of The Australian Collaboration, Vice President of the Council for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Associate of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, Member of the Future Justice Executive, Summit Governor of the Hillary Institute, and Board Member of the Public Interest Journalism Foundation. She has published and edited many books.

    David Yencken AO is Professor Emeritus and former head of the School of Environmental Planning at the University of Melbourne. He is Patron of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He was the inaugural Chair of the Australian Heritage Commission and the former Secretary for Planning and Environment in the Victorian government. He was later the founding Chair of the Australian Collaboration. He has written, co-authored or edited eight books.

    This article is one of several published by Australia 21 on the subject ‘Who speaks for an protects the public interest in Australia?’  See website www.australia21.org.au 

     

     

  • Michael Keating. The 2015 Intergenerational Report

    Purpose of the Intergenerational Report

    The Intergenerational Report (IGR) should be an important document.  It purports to tell us what the Australian population, economy and Budget could look like in forty years time.

    Of course no-one really knows what the economy will look like in forty years time. Instead the IGR tells us how fast the economy could grow over the next four years if the drivers of economic growth – population, participation and productivity – continue to have the same future impact as in the past. So despite the declared optimism of the Treasurer about our economic future, and how much better off we will be, as far as the IGR is concerned that future has been established by definition and is certainly not proven.

    But that is to miss the point of this IGR and its three predecessors.  Rather the IGR is a conditional projection designed to help us assess the sustainability of government policies impacting on expenditure and revenue, assuming that the economy continues to grow in much the same way as in the past.  That is a useful exercise, especially as each of the four IGRs so far have signalled a future long run Budget deficit, although the magnitude has varied substantially from one IGR to another (see Table below). This in itself reinforces the need for caution in interpreting the IGR projections as a basis for policy action.

    Projected Fiscal Deficit in Successive Intergenerational Reports

    Per cent of GDP

    Report Projected deficit forty years later
    2002 5.2
    2007 3.5
    2010 3.0
    2015 6.0

     

    Nevertheless the principal message in all the IGRs is that assuming no change in present policies, there are pressures for public expenditure to grow faster over time than the economy and revenue; principally because of:

    • the ageing of the population,
    • the disproportionate impact of more expensive technologies on the cost of health care, and
    • the relatively high demand for more health and education services as incomes rise.

    Accordingly it would seem prudent to start taking action now to bring the budget back onto a more sustainable basis in the long run, especially when the present starting point is itself an unsustainable deficit. But given the inevitable uncertainties associated with these projections, the pace and extent of fiscal tightening should be subject to constant review as events unfold.

    Although this message of the need for ongoing fiscal restraint is common to all of the four IGRs so far produced, this latest 2015 IGR is different in both tone and presentation.  In particular, the three previous IGRs had only one fiscal projection based on a continuation of present policies, whereas this 2015 IGR has three scenarios. In itself this introduction of scenarios might be a good innovation, as they could serve to further illustrate the relative significance of the uncertainties involved in these projections. Unfortunately, however, that does not seem to be the main purpose of the three scenarios in the 2015 IGR; rather their purpose seems mainly to make polemical points about the irresponsibility of the previous Labor Government and those who continue to oppose the Government’s budget measures in the Senate.

    The fiscal scenarios

    The three fiscal scenarios provided in the 2015 IGR are:

    1. A ‘previous policy’ scenario which purports to reflect the situation that the present Government inherited on its assumption of office along with a continuation of what would have allegedly been the previous Labor Government’s policies. Under this scenario an underlying cash deficit for the Budget is projected equivalent to 11.7 per cent of GDP in 2055, and net debt would reach almost 122 per cent of GDP.
    2. A ‘currently legislated’ scenario, which uses the Government’s savings measures that have actually been passed by the Parliament, and for 2055 it projects a Budget cash deficit of almost 6 per cent of GDP and a debt to GDP ratio of almost 60 per cent.
    3. A ‘proposed policy’ scenario, which is based on full implementation of the present Government’s policies as they had been announced – a couple of these policies have been reversed since the scenario was completed (namely the Medicare co-payment, the Defence Forces pay, and possibly additional expenditure on international and domestic security). According to this scenario the underlying cash balance of the Budget will improve to a surplus of 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2040, and then moderate to a surplus of around 0.5 per cent of GDP in 2055, with net debt projected to be fully paid off by 2032.

    The second ‘currently legislated scenario’ has most in common with the way previous IGRs reported, and this projection of the size of the fiscal task is of much the same order as projected in the first IGR. However, in Peter Costello’s first IGR the projected fiscal gap was discussed in a much more measured way as an illustration of the future challenges, whereas in the latest IGR the presentation seems to be intended to scare us into accepting the Government’s ill-fated budget.

    Furthermore, the so-called ‘previous policy’ scenario which the Government wants to hang around Labor’s neck is a pure concoction. The starting position chosen for this scenario is after the Government had been in office for some time and had made a number of decisions, such as abolition of the mining and carbon taxes. That effectively means that at its starting point the Budget deficit for this scenario was already much greater than when Labor left office.  In fact the only true statement of the fiscal situation that the present Government inherited is the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook report, which the two Secretaries of Treasury and Finance signed off on just before election day, and that report showed that in the Secretaries’ opinion the Budget would return to surplus as soon as  2016-17. In addition to the extent that the Budget has deteriorated since Labor left office there is every reason to think that Labor would have taken action to restore the fiscal position, as Labor has in the past.

    In short, this ‘previous policy’ scenario is quite disingenuous. Furthermore it is inconsistent with the Government’s professed desire to build the bi-partisan support which will almost certainly be required to restore a sustainable fiscal position.

    Restoring a sustainable fiscal position

    The Government’s ‘proposed policy’ scenario projects a return to a fiscal surplus by 2019-20, and this surplus continues to increase slowly to around 1.4 per cent of GDP in 2039-40. On what we presently know, the projected trajectory for that Budget balance seems reasonably in line with what is required to restore fiscal sustainability.  Again, however, the validity of this scenario depends upon the realism of the underlying assumptions, particularly as regards the policies required to achieve the projected Budget surpluses.

    Indeed a key rationale for each of the four IGRs that have been produced to date has been to examine the fiscal consequences of the projected ageing of the population, and the extent of that projected ageing has increased through successive IGRs as the baby boomer generation continues to age. Thus this latest 2015 IGR projects that in forty years time there will be just 2.7 people working for every aged dependent whereas today there are 4.5 people in the workforce supporting every aged dependent. And by comparison, the first 2002 IGR projected that there would be about 4 people working for each aged dependent in another forty years, compared to a bit more than 5 working people at that time.

    So, as expected, the projected aged dependency rate has increased as the time-period of the projections has been pushed out in successive IGRs, and other things being equal, the fiscal pressures expected from an ageing population should have also increased commensurately. But the preferred ‘proposed policy’ scenario in the latest 2015 Report projects much lower social spending on health, aged care and age pensions, and education than all the previous IGR Reports. Thus the latest IGR 4 projects increases of 3 percentage points for these social expenditures in the ‘preferred policy’ scenario, compared to around a 6 percentage point increase projected in IGRs 1 and 2, and a 4.5 percentage point increase in IGR 3.

    This much lower social spending projected in the latest 2015 IGR essentially reflects the policies of the Government that the Senate has so far refused to pass and which are the key feature of this ‘proposed policy scenario’. But the realism of these proposed policies must surely be open to question.

    First, health costs were projected to rise by 80 per cent over the following forty years to 7.1 per cent of GDP in IGR 3, but in the latest IGR 4 these costs are projected to only increase by 30 per cent to 5.5 per cent of GDP in 2055. The principal reason for this huge turnaround in projected health costs is the government’s plan to reduce the indexing of health payments to the States. Similarly changes to indexation arrangements are expected to bring big savings in education; especially in payments to State schools.

    Even if the Government does succeed in limiting its payments to the States to this extent, it seems most unlikely that the States could then restrain the expenditures commensurately on health and education. Instead this policy is a form of cost shifting to the States, and if the States have to wear it, then they will almost certainly have to raise additional taxation revenue to cover their higher share of health and education expenditures. The most obvious tax for the States to increase would be the GST, but that is a Commonwealth tax and the 2015 IGR is premised on the assumption that the revenue from Commonwealth taxes will not be allowed to rise above a ceiling equivalent to 23.9 per cent of GDP. If that ceiling is adhered to then the Australian Government would then need to find further expenditure savings on its own account if the States were allowed to increase their GST revenue to meet their increased funding share of essential health and education services.

    Second, another major source of savings critical to achieving the outcome of the ‘proposed policy’ scenario is the change in the indexation arrangements for various pensions and other social security payments so that they are indexed to consumer prices rather than to average weekly earnings[1]. Peter Whiteford of the Australian National University has shown that this will result in the single age pension falling from about 28 per cent to just under 24 per cent of average earnings by 2029. While if indexation back to wages were not restored then, by 2055 the single age pension would have fallen to around 16 per cent of average wages, a considerably lower level than any experienced in the last 50 years. The projected increases for many other social security payments, such as family allowances and Newstart, would lead to even more inequality, and this in an economy which already has a tendency to increasing inequality without the government withdrawing assistance to lower income people and their families.

    In short, there must be considerable doubt about the realism of this ‘proposed policy’ scenario.  Wage earners would continue to experience increases in their living standards and no increase in their taxes, but people on welfare and those who are sick would fall behind.  The consequences for our society would seem to make it most unlikely that these policies would be maintained for the next forty years. Instead many would say, as the Senate is presently disposed, that the route back to fiscal sustainability must lie elsewhere.

    Thus, unlike its predecessors, this latest 2015 IGR does not provide a useful basis for further planning and we all will need to consider alternative strategies.  There are other alternative ways of balancing the budget, and in addition the rate of economic growth could be enhanced modestly by further improvements to participation and productivity.

    These alternative proposals for restoring fiscal sustainability over time and further improving living standards will be the posted as part of a series of policy articles being planned for this blog to appear over the next few months. In addition, some previous suggestions for an alternative budget strategy were canvassed in articles I posted on 21-23 July 2014.

    Michael Keating AC was formerly Secretary of the Department of Finance and Secretary, Prime Minister and Cabinet.

     

    [1] The IGR assumes that this policy will only be maintained until 2028-29, although the Government’s legislation has no such sunset clause.

  • Alex Wodak. The current imbalance between public and private interests. 

    The public interest, meaning ‘the welfare or wellbeing of the general public’, has always competed with private interests. Furthermore, public and private interests will always be in competition. What is so unusual about the current tension is the extreme imbalance: these days, private interests almost always get what they want. The policy domination by huge companies and extremely wealthy individuals has severe adverse consequences for the community in areas such as health, social cohesion and the economy. The current extreme imbalance between private and public interests is now not merely an Australian phenomenon but is also international. Examples of this policy imbalance abound in Australia and include mining, alcohol, fast food, transport, taxation and gambling.

    The increasing dominance of private over public interests coincides with an increasing inequality of income and wealth. Inequality in Australia waxed and waned over the years with low levels reached in the 1970s. Inequality then began increasing in Australia, growing under Labor and Coalition governments. Inequality increased to even higher levels in the United States where the imbalance of private and public interests is even more evident and has had striking political repercussions.

    The health of Australians improved dramatically during the 20th century. For example, average life expectancy increased from about 45 years in 1900 to over 75 years in 2000. About 25 of the additional 30 years of life expectancy resulted from improvements in public health while advances in clinical medicine only added five additional years. Yet in Australia, 98 per cent of health expenditure funds clinical services with only 2 per cent allocated to prevention. In the first half of the 20th century, improved sewerage and drains substantially reduced deaths and disease. In the second half, the decline in smoking, improved diet and increased exercise were major factors improving health. Tobacco control has been a rare victory for a public interest David over a corporate Goliath. Yet in 2014, the federal government blocked the implementation of a national agreement to alert consumers to the potential health risks of some foods. Some powerful food producers were the only beneficiaries.

    The fate of the proposed Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) is another example of the recent dominance of private over public interests. In 2010, the federal government proposed the RSPT, modelled on the well-regarded Petroleum Resource Rent Tax levied on the off shore petroleum extraction industry, after accepting a recommendation from a review of Australia’s tax system. A distinguished committee chaired by a highly regarded Secretary of Treasury had carried out this review. Vociferous criticism from the mining industry including an effective advertising campaign followed, and after the deposition of the Prime Minister by the Deputy Prime Minister a heavily watered down and ineffective Minerals Resource Rent Tax (MRRT) replaced the RSPT. The then government contributed to its own problems through its political incompetence. Once again, powerful private interests got their way and the community lost.

    One of the common links in these examples is the development of monopoly, or near monopoly, arrangements used to generate vast wealth and thereby political power sufficient to extract huge economic rents.

    Taxation arrangements in Australia in recent decades including the abolition or reduction of inheritance taxes, capital gains taxes, private income and company tax, and generous concessions for superannuation and negative gearing, have benefited the wealthier members of the community and large companies.

    The coming to power of Thatcher in the UK and Reagan in the USA and the fall of communism in the USSR and its satellites increased support for the view that private economic interests are inherently more efficient than publicly owned enterprises.

    The replacement in China of a central command economy by a free market system which lifted hundreds of millions of people from poverty over the following decades seemed to exemplify the benefits of a free market economy with minimal restrictions for large companies and wealthy individuals. In the United States, major economists including Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz and Jeffrey Sachs have warned that the currently high levels of inequality have corrupted the political system and there is increasing concern that with a radically extreme Republican Party often prepared to disregard the national interest the United States may have become ungovernable — surely a warning for Australia.

    What is to be done? The first step for those concerned by the increasing dominance of private and corporate interests over the public good is to articulate their views.

    Could a Public Interest Commission maintain a better balance in the future?  First some difficult questions would have to be answered. How will the public interest be defined and measured? Where will successful examples of a Public Interest Commission be drawn from? How will issues be selected and enquiries be conducted?

    And finally, what sort of Australia do its citizens want — an individualist Australia with marked inequalities, poor public services, choked roads and shrinking taxation on the American model, or a more collective and more equal Australia with less poverty, better public services but more taxation similar to the Scandinavian countries and Japan?

    A political correction to the current imbalance can only occur if Australians start to debate their values and visions. The political class can only do so much. Extensive polling shows that a majority of Australians want improved public services and are prepared to pay higher taxes to fund them. However, if large numbers of Australians want to see a different country emerge, they have to be prepared to work for these changes starting at the community level.

    Dr Alex Wodak AM, a physician, was Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney from 1982 until he retired in 2012. His major retirement project is drug law reform.  Together with colleagues, Dr Wodak started Australia’s first needle syringe program and supervised injecting facility when both were pre-legal. He was also involved in establishing the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, the Australian Society of HIV Medicine and the NSW Users AIDS Association, an organisation for and by people who use drugs.  He is a Director of Australia21.

    This article is one of a series published by Australia 21 on the subject ‘Who speaks for and protects the public interest in Australia?’  For other articles published, see www.australia21.org.au.

     

  • Elaine Pearson. Time for an Asia-Pacific Anti-Death Penalty campaign.

    Many Australians are sickened that Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two Australians sentenced to death by Indonesia’s courts for drug smuggling, have been transferred to an Indonesian island in preparation for their imminent execution.

    They are slated to be executed alongside three Nigerians, a Filipina, a Brazilian, a Frenchman, a Ghanian, and an Indonesian.

    “I am sure that Indonesia understands it will have consequences,” Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop told journalists.

    But the Indonesian-Australian relationship has been so fraught with tension lately it’s unlikely that unilateral measures Australia could take – like recalling the ambassador or suspending trade deals – will make any difference.

    Instead, Australia should jumpstart a campaign to reject the death penalty across the Asia-Pacific, educating the region’s populations in how the death penalty has failed to deter crime and been unjustly applied, and gradually building pressure against the practice.

    These are universal values, not Australian values. The United Nations opposes the death penalty. The UN General Assembly has passed resolutions year after year calling on countries to suspend use of the death penalty with a view to its abolition. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said “the death penalty has no place in the 21st century” and urged Indonesia to reconsider these executions.

    Australia should partner with the United Nations and anti-death penalty countries like the Philippines and Cambodia in this initiative, targeting countries that continue to execute people – China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam – as well as Papua New Guinea and Brunei who are taking steps to bring the death penalty back.

    For this to work, people across Asia need to be mobilized. It’s not only Australians who are disgusted by this inhumane practice. Reaching out to and building support among Asians and Pacific Islanders should help to end this cruel and inhumane punishment once and for all.

    Elaine Pearson is CEO Human Rights Watch, Australia.

     

  • Max Corden. Bring Back the Carbon Tax? 

     Mr Hockey has invited the Australian public to join in a conversation about the economy and budget issues. Here is my mildly radical contribution.

    There are two strong reasons for bringing back the carbon tax.

    Tony Abbott, when Leader of the Opposition, promised to repeal the carbon tax brought in by Prime Minister Julie Gillard.  And he has fulfilled his promise. Congratulations. Now circumstances have changed: the budget deficit and public debt have turned out to be important problems in the eyes of the Government because of the somewhat unexpected decline in export prices.  So Mr. Abbott or his successor as Prime Minister would be justified in re-imposing this tax. This is the first reason: the revenue from a carbon tax could make a significant contribution to dealing with the deficit problem. Of course, it would not be enough, and, as is well known, other measures or reforms to generate revenue for the government are available and are certainly needed.

    The second reason for restoring the carbon tax I shall discuss later. First, let us take a closer look at this tax, both as a burden and as a revenue raiser. 

    The Carbon Tax as a Burden

    Mr Abbott certainly convinced his fellow Australians that this tax would be a burden. So, I have taken a close look at his two key speeches, one in September 2011 when the bill to launch the tax was before Parliament and the other in July 2014 when the tax was repealed.

    In his view this was “just another big new tax.” But one could add that all taxes impose burdens or costs somewhere, whether on companies or individuals. One might reflect that, in current circumstances, because of the budget problem, a “big new tax,” and perhaps more than one, is just what doctor Hockey ordered.

    The carbon tax was paid by numerous businesses, but this did not mean that they carried the final “burden”. Mostly they would have passed it on to their customers, both households and businesses. Essentially it might be regarded as a fossil energy tax. When the tax was repealed Mr Abbott stated that households would benefit on average by $ 550 a year, with gas prices to fall by 7% and electricity prices by 9%.  His much-repeated and persuasive message was that the carbon tax raised the cost of living and this was “toxic” and “has been hurting ordinary people”. I suspect that his strong opposition to the tax was influenced more by the complaints of producers of emissions-intensive products – especially in the coal industry – than by complaints from average citizens. He also argued that a tax that raised energy prices would have led to job losses.

    All this seemed very persuasive. The persuasion was reinforced by the fact that earlier – essentially from 2007 to 2010 – electricity prices had risen sharply for other reasons, essentially to pay for the high costs of excessive investment in networks (poles and wires). In many minds those price rises were mixed up with the expected effect of the carbon tax. 

    Where did the Revenue go?

    Now, there is something very odd. In his two speeches Mr Abbott never refers to the government revenue that was raised because of the carbon tax. Did the tax not have any beneficial effects for households or businesses to compensate for the directly adverse effects of the higher prices of energy?  Where did this revenue go?

    In fact, some of it was used to compensate firms that competed in international markets while a substantial part compensated low income households through reductions in their income tax. The latter was an important element of the Gillard programme. What was taken out of the income stream by the carbon tax at one point was put back by the compensation at another point. If there were job losses at one end, there would be job gains at the other. Furthermore, reducing income tax, at least in the low income ranges, would increase the incentives to seek work, a highly desirable economic effect. Possibly some of the revenue led to greater government spending which benefited households. By ignoring all these offsetting revenue effects Mr Abbott was able to conclude that the carbon tax had a severely adverse effect on incomes and employment. Did he really believe this?

    At this point one might ask: what was the point of the whole exercise when funds are taken out of the economy at one end and put back at the other. The answer seems obvious. The carbon tax would produce market inducements that reduced harmful emissions of greenhouse gases. Of course, if one does not believe that climate change is a problem, or that Australia could make any difference, the whole business seems pointless. And if one assumes that nothing happens to the revenue, the tax would seem not just pointless but harmful.

    Use the Revenue to reduce the Deficit?

    Let me come back to my proposal that the carbon tax be reinstated. This time the whole of the gross revenue might be used to reduce the budget deficit. It would not finance increased government spending. How much money would be available? According to official estimates, in the first two years of operation the carbon tax raised $15.4 billion in gross revenue

    If the carbon tax revenue actually reduces the budget deficit without compensating tax or spending changes elsewhere the benefit would then be in the future (when debt is lower than otherwise) while the return of the “big new tax” would indeed impose a present cost. Mr Hockey would then get his deeply desired budget improvement and Mr Abbott could keep on complaining about the big new tax.

    But Mr Hockey would have to think about the current macroeconomic implications of improving the budget balance through higher taxes, possibly combined with reduced government spending. This would reduce total national spending (aggregate demand) and thus increase unemployment. In that case one would hope that the Reserve Bank of Australia would compensate by stimulating the economy through monetary policy, which in turn would induce depreciation of the exchange rate and thus make Australian industries more internationally competitive.

    Why Climate Change Matters

    Climate change is a world problem.  Those who believe that it is not really a problem are unlikely to be reading The Conversation, but if by strange chance they are among my readers, they should stop here. But, also, there are “realists” who do not deny climate change but who argue that Australia generates such a small proportion of the world’s harmful carbon emissions that we cannot make any difference anyway. So, why bother about a carbon tax? Here I wish to go beyond this view. We can make a difference, and, above all, it is in our interest that we do. The basic point is that we may not be able to directly affect world climate on our own, but it certainly will affect us, so we must try and affect the future world climate through influencing collective action among many countries.

    We would be affected adversely by climate change, and possibly are already. This effect could be severe. Therefore we should certainly try to make a difference.

    How would we be adversely affected?

    (a) First there is the direct effect on Australia, and especially its coastline. All the details can be obtained from CSIRO documents. Likely effects include reduced rainfall in southern Australia, more extreme fire weather, adverse effects on the Great Barrier Reef, on coastal populations, and so on. Particularly important for Australia are increasing heatwaves.  (Heatwaves have killed more Australians than all other natural hazards combined).

    Apparently we would be more adversely affected than any other developed country. In view of this, it is just amazing that our government has such a sceptical attitude to climate change compared to governments of many other countries.

    (b) Second, there is an important effect perhaps neglected by an inward-looking population. The rise of the sea level in association with severe weather events is likely to have a serious impact on islands and island countries. And there are many of these in our region, above all Indonesia with many of its population of 250 million people highly vulnerable, and, of course, the Pacific Islands. We may eventually have to cope with floods of climate refugees.

    What we must do in our Interest: the second Reason for returning to the Carbon Tax

    The moral is that for selfish reasons we need to use our maximum diplomatic influence to encourage other countries – and particularly the United States, but many others as well – to take the necessary measures to drastically moderate or avoid climate change. And we can only do this if we set an example ourselves. A restoration of the carbon tax would be the first step. Furthermore, our government should actively campaign for world-wide measures to mitigate or avoid climate change, and also finance appropriate research. In other words, in the national interest the government should completely reverse its current stance. Our current captain, no doubt well meaning, is steering the ship in the wrong direction.

    The simple immediate measure would be our return to the carbon tax. Of course, eventually this might evolve into an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). In both cases carbon emissions will be discouraged and the government will receive revenue.

     

    A very readable explanation of all the issues is in Ross Garnaut, The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia in the Global Response to Climate Change, Cambridge University Press 2011. See also John Quiggin et al, Carbon Pricing: Early Experience and Future Prospects, Edward Elgar, 2014, and John Freebairn, “ Carbon Price versus Subsidies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” Economic Papers, vol. 33, September 2014, pp 233-42.

    Max Corden is Professorial Fellow in the Department of Economics at University of Melbourne. This article was first published in The Conversation on 5 March 2015.

     

     

  • John Falzon  ‘Welfare reform’ but where are the jobs?

    If by “welfare” we mean giving assistance to those who don’t really need it and who are living off the public purse, then it is indeed time we had a comprehensive review of welfare.

    Sadly, but not surprisingly, the McClure Welfare Review was given the task of cutting social expenditure to those who actually do need it. If only we devoted as much effort to welfare reform for the corporates and the rich as we do for the people who struggle! If only we were able to admit that our irrational spending on those who need it least has to stop. It’s time for a review of corporate welfare.

    This, rather than blaming the unemployed for needing assistance, should be our focus. I suppose though that it depends on what you want to achieve. If, as a government, you are actually committed to ramping up inequality, then it will be no surprise that you cut social spending whilst leaving tax loopholes and concessions that benefit the rich largely untouched. If, on the other hand, with Oliver Wendell Holmes, you affirm that “Taxes are the price we pay for a civilised society”, then you will do all that is possible to put a civilised society for all ahead of profits just for some.

    While we are on the subject, it’s interesting how whenever, as a society, we ask large corporations to pay their fair share of tax we are accused of being ham-fisted and threatened with a capital strike but when we cut spending for the people who struggle, we are painted as being fiscally responsible. It is deeply unjust to rip $1 billion from social services. It is not unjust to make large multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax. There is no place in a progressive country for putting the boot into people who are low-paid or on income support, whilst protecting corporate privilege. Social security for people who are aged, young, unemployed, with caring responsibilities, or living with a disability, is something we should be proud of. Welfare for multinational corporations or high-wealth individuals, via revenue foregone, on the other hand, is something we need to stop.

    The McClure Review is not without some good ideas, but it was always predicated on two false assumptions: that we need to cut social expenditure and that unemployment is fundamentally a problem that is addressed at the individual, rather than the structural, level. By focusing, for example, on “encouraging” people to find work, there is an almost dogmatic assertion that people actually choose to be unemployed. By talking about making some of the requirements stricter or the compliance harder, we are merely emulating the US approach that unemployment is best addressed by threatening people with even deeper poverty.  Poverty is not a personal choice. Unemployment and underemployment are not personal choices. Forcing people off a social security benefit does not equate with employment: it equates with deeper poverty. You don’t help people into jobs by forcing them into deeper poverty.

    What we are looking for is a plan for jobs. What we are left with is a long-term attempt to reduce social spending. Government will not create jobs by cutting spending. The people who use the social security system in Australia are people we should be investing in and supporting. The people who are unemployed are not the problem. The problem is that there are not enough jobs. With only one job available for every thirteen jobseekers (based on ABS data on labour underutilisation) it is clear that the starting point should be a jobs plan, including economic development in areas of high unemployment combined with access to high quality education and training. It also means addressing the clear inadequacy of the Newstart payment, which sits at only 40 per cent of the minimum wage and is so low that it has become an obstacle to participation.  We repeat our call for an immediate $50 a week increase to the Newstart payment and the indexing of all payments to wages rather than CPI. A good social security system is meant to prevent poverty, not to humiliate people.

    The St Vincent de Paul Society supports an approach which actually invests in people and supports them so that they can participate in society and, where appropriate, in paid employment. We are concerned by the potential impact of the proposed tiered Working Age Payment. We are also alarmed by suggestions that support for people living in social housing could be undermined. As for the suggestion that people under the age of 22 should not receive independent income support, we are left wondering how they are meant to survive.

    Life has taught us that an injury to one is an injury to all. Solidarity is our secret weapon in the struggle against inequality. We will win in our struggle against inequality by defending and extending the gains we have made in the areas of universal health, free education, and a social security system that keeps people out of poverty and supports them to live with dignity. We are also desperately in need of a national plan for full employment (remember the 1945 White Paper on Full Employment in Australia?), including an economic development component and, very importantly, a plan to ensure that no one misses out on social and affordable housing. Sticks on the backs of the unemployed will not create jobs. Neither, for that matter, will the carrot of encouragement. It is the role of government to allow society to achieve collectively what we cannot achieve individually. Governments must do what markets cannot. Markets are a very useful mechanism for generating profit, but woeful at guaranteeing equity and fairness.

     

    Dr John Falzon is CEO, St Vincent de Paul Society, Australia.

     

     

     

    (For an excellent analysis of our current jobs crisis, especially in terms of youth unemployment, see the work of Professor William Mitchell:  http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30165 )

  • Cavan Hogue. Australia will not be safer.

    Australia’s upping the ante in Iraq is a recipe for disaster. It is hard to see anything positive coming out of it.
    Mr. Abbott said the request came from the Iraqi Government and the USA. As in the past, the request from the USA was almost certainly what it is all about plus the domestic need to show how hairy his chest is.
    Did the Americans have to lean on Iraq to invite us this time as well?
    As Vietnam showed, the trainers will end up as combat troops and if the Americans ask for more we will give it.We have all been training Iraqi troops for years to no avail.  How will Australians improve morale and loyalty among the Iraqi army troops?
     This is Vietnam all over again. We are intervening in a civil war which has nothing to do with us. Iraq is a mishmash of competing factions only one of which is the Iraqi Government.When it fails we will be tarred yet again with the same brush as the US.
     This escalation will not make Australia safer as the Government claims but, on the contrary, will increase the likelihood of terrorism in Australia. How will it decrease the attraction for young Australians of joining ISIS.?
     Where will the money come from in a tight budget? What will be sacrificed to pay for this exercise?
    The Opposition’s support of this foolishness can only be described as depressing.
    Cavan Hogue is a former Australian Ambassador to USSR and Russia.

  • Graham Freudenberg. Gough Whitlam Commemorative Oration.

     You will see below what I think is a remarkable speech by Graham Freudenberg about Gough Whitlam’s contemporary relevance.  This oration is much longer than I normally post on this blog, but it is an outstanding oration which I am sure you will enjoy.  The Whitlam Institute will also be publicising this oration.  John Menadue

    THE WHITLAM INSTITUTE

    GOUGH WHITLAM COMMEMORATIVE ORATION

    “Contemporary Relevance, comrade”:

    Gough Whitlam in the 21st century

    Graham Freudenberg

    St Kilda Town Hall, Melbourne, 4 March 2015

     

    Let me begin by doing what I did for the best part of my career, and re-cycle a speech by Gough Whitlam.  It was his first major speech in the House of Representatives on international affairs, in days when they actually debated foreign policy in the Australian Parliament – on 12 August 1954.  That was another world.  Yet this speech goes to the heart of my assertions about the contemporary relevance of Edward Gough Whitlam.  In style and substance, in his zest for the cut and thrust of parliamentary debate, for the sweep of its ideas, its challenge to prevailing orthodoxies – and for its optimism – it is quintessential Whitlam.  He made the speech soon after the Geneva Conference in 1954 had given the West a new chance for good sense over China and Vietnam; instead, alas, the lost opportunity of Geneva became a disastrous wrong turn for the United States and Australia. Whitlam had been a member of parliament for less than two years.  His star was just rising in the Labor Party, itself on the threshold of the Great Split.  I’ll quote just a few of his opening lines, to give the flavour:

    In the exciting and rapid movement of events during the last few months, the Minister for External Affairs [Mr Casey] has twice circumnavigated the globe in the steps of his model, Mr Eden, and his master, Mr Dulles [UK Foreign Secretary and US Secretary of State respectively].  Though the Minister saw fit to make statements to the newspapers in the United States of America and in other parts of the world, he did not say anything to the Australian press.  The only Minister who has seen fit to make any statement on international affairs has been, of all people, the Postmaster General (Mr Anthony)  [Doug Anthony’s father, that is], who three weeks ago addressed the annual conference of the Queensland branch of   the Australian Country Party.  In haranguing that rally of rustics, the Postmaster General declared that we Australians cannot live in peaceful co-existence with the Communists in this cold war.  That pronouncement, fortunately, was in direct contradiction of statements that had already been made by President Eisenhower, of the United States of America, and Sir Winston Churchill, the British Prime Minister.  The declaration of the Postmaster General has been emphatically repudiated in this House by the Prime Minister [Mr Menzies] and the Leader of the Opposition [Dr Evatt].  As a consequence of that rash utterance, the Postmaster General, whose health in recent months was deemed to be rapidly qualifying him for a diplomatic post, has rendered himself persona non grata  to every head of State except President Syngman Rhee of the Republic of Korea, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Government [on Formosa].

    When, more than a decade later, I came to read all Whitlam’s early speeches with a professional eye, time and again I found myself thinking “I wish I could say things like that”.  So I did.

    But what could be the possible relevance of a speech made by a Labor backbencher more than 60 years ago, when Churchill was still Prime Minister of Britain and when Menzies still had more than eleven years to go as Prime Minister of Australia?  Well, this was the speech in which Whitlam first called for recognition of the People’s Republic of China, nineteen years before he achieved it.  In particular, he insisted that China’s sovereignty over Taiwan (Formosa) must never be allowed to become a cause for war with China, inevitably a third world war, inevitably a nuclear war.  Whitlam was daring to assert that the views and interests of Australia might not always be the same as those of the United States.  His propositions will be as relevant to our relations with China and the United States over the next 60 years as they were 60 years ago.  Further, he made an eloquent connection between hopes for democracy in our region, then in the throes of decolonisation, and the preservation and enhancement of parliamentary democracy in Australia – his life-long cause, from which all else flowed.  It was a speech marked by his special capacity to make connections between the wider world, the region around us, and Australia’s own standing and conduct.

    And this speech, not only in its content but in its approach, attitudes and insights, the breadth of vision enhanced by his attention to detail, provides a sub-theme for everything I say tonight:

    Gough Whitlam’s contemporary relevance lies not only, or even so much, in the actual policies and issues he placed on the Australian political and social agenda, but in the educative process, based on reason, relevance, knowledge and foresight, by which he reached them.  And perhaps most relevant of all to these times, for all of us as Australians, his challenge to conventional wisdom, the prejudices and fears of his times.

    And that included emphatically obsolences and obstructionism in Labor thinking.  I don’t pretend to be able to answer the question: “What would Whitlam do if he were the Labor leader today?”  I’m certainly not purporting to tell Bill Shorten and his colleagues: “This is how Gough would do it”.  But perhaps I can shed some light on what I believe would be his approach and attitudes to the very complex questions facing Australia and the Labor Party in today’s “rapid and exciting movement of events”.

    There is no place more fitting to do this than Melbourne.  I take the opportunity to make amends for an omission in my accounts of the life and times of Edward Gough Whitlam.  In my brief eulogy at the Sydney Town Hall on 5 November last year, for instance, I identified the central importance of his relationship with Werriwa, for 25 years his electorate in the outer Western suburbs of Sydney.  And he himself always acknowledged the impact of being a teenager in Canberra, as it struggled to grow into the national capital after the move from Melbourne in 1927.  But it should never be overlooked how much of Melbourne there was in Gough Whitlam.  It is not just the fact that he was born here – on 11 July 1916 – and spent the first five years of his life here.  The greatest single influence of his life was his father, Harry Ernest Frederick Whitlam, later Commonwealth Crown Solicitor; and Fred Whitlam was Melbourne through and through.  His influence on his son was steeped in the old Melbourne liberal/radical tradition.  Its strength, paradoxically, retarded the early growth of the Labor Party in Victoria. There was a remarkable revival of that tradition through the flourishing of the Fabian Society in the late fifties, sixties and beyond; and the Fabian relationship with the rise of Whitlam is an important part of the larger story.  “Among Australian Fabians, I am Fabius Maximus”, he said.  Though I myself believe the title properly belongs to Race Mathews.

    Gough returned to Melbourne, in thought, towards the very end.  When much in that mighty memory was fading, he would recall to his faithful visitors to his William Street, Sydney, office, like John Faulkner and John Menadue, that when he was 17 or 18 he took his grandmother to the new Shrine of Remembrance in St. Kilda Road and read out to her – she was nearly blind – the name of the battlefield in France where her son, his uncle, had died.

    Even at the time of Gough’s death, the comment was still being made that it was strange, with his background, he should have become a Labor leader.  There used to be Tories who regarded him as a class traitor.  The truth is, with his upbringing, with such a father and his values, Gough Whitlam could never have been any other than Labor, in the Australian context.

    In November 1973, in the glow of his first year in office, Whitlam delivered the Robert Garran Memorial Lecture in Canberra.  His father had delivered the inaugural Garran Lecture in 1959, one great public servant honouring another, who had been his Melbourne mentor.  Whitlam quoted his father, who was speaking of Australia’s role in the United Nations:

    The task before Australia is honourable, and its efficient discharge would make for a dynamic peace; to it, all the resources, skills and energy that Australia can command deserve to be committed.  The honourable task, however, could become majestic, and infinitely inspiring, and the peace could become creative, deep and rich, and enduring, if there be added what I have termed Excellence, Excellence in all its fullness.

    That is Gough Whitlam quoting his father.  But he might just as well have been quoting himself.  Perhaps, given the closeness of their relationship, he was.

    I acknowledge my own debt to Melbourne.  Melbourne made me.  I arrived here as a 20-year-old reporter for The Sun, via newspapers in Brisbane, Sydney and Mildura, in 1955 – the year of the Great Labor Split and the beginning of the Bolte era in Victoria.  Anyone who believes that the fifties were dull wasn’t there.  I missed the transformational event of the 1956 Olympic Games because I had taken myself off to London for a year.  It was a watershed year: Khrushchev’s not-so-secret speech in Moscow denouncing Stalin; Nasser’s nationalisation of the Suez Canal and the Suez crisis; the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

    The Suez crisis was my political Road to Damascus.  Returning to Melbourne in 1957, I immediately joined the East Melbourne branch of the Australian Labor Party.  Arthur Calwell, then Deputy Leader of the Opposition under Evatt, was the member for Melbourne.  In 1961, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime when, by a wonderful combination of friends and flukes, I became Press Secretary to Arthur Calwell, by now the Leader of the Opposition,  and in 1967, to his successor Gough Whitlam.  When Whitlam made his famous or notorious “The impotent are pure” speech before the jeering delegates to the Victorian Labor Conference at the Melbourne Trades Hall in June 1967, Calwell watched the performance from the gallery and said to me in the vestibule afterwards: “You won’t be working for your new boss long now”.

    “Throughout my public life”, Whitlam said on the 30th anniversary of the It’s Time election, “I have tried to apply an over-arching principle and a unifying theme to all my work.  It can be stated in two words: contemporary relevance.  It was the fundamental test I applied, in particular to the development of Labor policy in the years before 2 December 1972.  There is a case to be argued that my government faltered whenever we lost sight of the principle or allowed the rush of events to subsume them.”

    Among the many fine and true things said at the Sydney Town Hall, I want to focus on a point made by Tony Whitlam.  He said that his father believed deeply in a strong two-party system.  The whole thrust of Whitlam’s career was to further his determination that the Labor Party should remain one of the two dominant forces within our parliament, either in government or able to form government, in its own right.  He saw strong, effective parties as the mainstay of parliamentary democracy.  The future of the two-party system and Labor’s role within it is now the big political question facing Australia today, not just the Labor Party.

    May I say here how much encouragement we draw throughout Australia from the victory of Daniel Andrews and the Labor Party in Victoria, so soon after Gough Whitlam’s death.  Like Neville Wran’s victory in New South Wales six months after the Dismissal, it had a galvanising effect and renewed our sense of what is possible.  As to the Queensland result, well, it shows that anything is possible.

    In his first statement on becoming Leader of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party on 8 February 1967, Whitlam said:

    For the Labor Party, what is clearly at stake is its future role within the Australian parliamentary system …. Our actions in the next few years must determine whether it continues to survive as a truly effective parliamentary force capable of governing and actually governing.

    Nearly nine years later, almost on the eve of the Dismissal, in the middle of his tremendous battle against the Senate, the ultimate challenge to the very legitimacy of a reforming Labor Government, Whitlam delivered the Curtin Memorial Lecture at the ANU in Canberra (29 October 1975).  Speaking of his work before 1972, he said:

    I addressed myself to three principal tasks: to develop a coherent program of relevant reform; to convince a majority of Australians that those reforms were relevant to their needs and their lives; and to convince the Labor Movement as a whole that the parliamentary institutions were relevant in achieving worthwhile reform.

    “The great organisational battles between 1967 and 1970, particularly in Victoria”, he said, were essentially about that third task:  “It was the toughest of all”.

    Keeping bright the Whitlam legend does not require manufacturing myths about him.  The stakes in Victoria were high; and while both sides invoked high principles, in the end the resolution of the conflict involved number-crunching of the roughest kind.  Whitlam was not particularly adept at that game, but accepted its necessity.  He largely left it to others – Lance Barnard in his rise to the leadership; Rex Connor in his self-imposed contest for the leadership with Jim Cairns in April 1968; Clyde Cameron in the reconstruction of Victoria in 1970.

    So I want to emphasise that electoral and political calculations figured as largely with Whitlam as any other political leader.  It was not all altruism and crashing through.  To gloss over Whitlam as a practising, party politician, working the system with the best of them, is the surest way to make him irrelevant.

    Whitlam set out, from the first, to combat the defeatism which had settled on much of the Labor Party, particularly in Victoria.  Political necessity drove his defiant speech to the Victorian ALP Conference in June 1967:

    We construct a philosophy of failure which finds in defeat a form of justification and a proof of the purity of our principles.  Certainly, the impotent are pure ….. Let us have none of this nonsense that defeat is in some way more moral than victory ….. I did not seek and do not want the leadership of Australia’s largest pressure group.  I propose to follow the traditions of those of our leaders who have seen the role of our party as striving to achieve, and achieving, the national government of Australia.

    Whitlam was especially infuriated by the self-serving claim that the bosses of the Victorian Central Executive were the principled guardians of Labor’s opposition to Australian involvement in the war in Vietnam.  In his landmark speech of 4 May 1965, Calwell had explicitly acknowledged the unpopularity of Labor’s position, to be met, in what seemed on the day a devastating reply by Menzies, with the sneer “If I might end on a horribly political note, it is a good thing occasionally to be in the majority”.  This was the same speech in which Menzies’ total justification for the war was that it was “part of the downward thrust by China between the Indian and Pacific Oceans”.  By such simplicities did Menzies reign supreme.  After the debacle of the 1966 election, ostensibly because of Vietnam, but more because of the dire state of the Labor Party itself, Melbourne became the heart and soul of the Moratorium Movement under the memorable leadership of Jim Cairns.

    Whitlam, by contrast, antagonised the Labor Left by his dismissive attitude towards the Moratorium Movement.  He told that Victorian Conference in June 1967 that protests “would not save a single Australian life or shorten the war by a single day.  Our consciences should not be so easily salved.  The present government opposes all moves which might bring about negotiations, and is the first to applaud and endorse escalation of the war.  Therefore our aim must be to replace that government.”

    But Vietnam was not really the divisive issue for Labor.  The most potent source of division was far older – over a century old in fact.  It was the issue of State Aid for non-government schools, meaning, in practice, the Catholic parish school system.

    It must be hard for any Australian under 60 to grasp fully the sectarian bitterness and the political explosiveness surrounding this issue.  Even the phrase itself – “State aid” – barely registers today.  The Bishops and the Church, even with so powerful an advocate as Archbishop Mannix, had failed utterly to dent the bipartisan intransigence against State Aid – the Liberal Party still essentially a Protestant  party; the Labor Party, its traditional Catholic support notwithstanding.  The unravelling came after the Split when the breakaway DLP put a pro-State aid plank in its platform.  From then on and for the next decade, the Labor Left made opposition to State Aid the test of Labor orthodoxy.  This was the issue which was to provide Whitlam with a platform to secure representation for the parliamentary leadership on the Labor Party’s Conference and Executive, ending the “36 faceless men” controversy.    It produced Whitlam’s outburst against “the 12 witless men” of the ALP Federal Executive, and his near-expulsion from the party in 1966.  It produced his triumph at the 1969 Federal Conference in Melbourne which adopted his ground-breaking proposal for the Schools Commission, granting aid to all schools – government and non-government alike – on the basis of needs.  It produced the last ditch defiance of the old VCE, sabotaging Labor’s 1970 State campaign, and perversely giving Whitlam unmistakable grounds for Federal intervention; which in turn paved the way for Victoria’s decisive role in electing the Whitlam Government in 1972 and saving it in 1974.

    What were the qualities that rewarded Whitlam with such success after these long years of turmoil and confrontation?  Perseverance, of course.  Stamina, of course.  But there was something else – a characteristic approach to political problems, and his way of arguing them out.  “Only connect”, E. M. Forster wrote, and Whitlam was the master of making connections – from the particular to the general, linking the local with the regional, the regional with the national and the national with the international.  Or reversing the process, as when debating standards for education, health, housing or transport, he would start from the carefully crafted formula: “Countries with which we would choose to compare ourselves”.  Sometimes, this left only Canada.  In the case of State Aid, he comprehensively connected the whole education issue with party reform, policy reform and electoral success – “the party, the policy, the people” in John Menadue’s 1967 formula.

    I see this making of connections as the essence of the Whitlam approach and the key to his contemporary relevance.  Remarkable, too, was his melding of personal experience with public policy.  In her truly great biography, Jenny Hocking describes his learning curve on aborigines when he witnessed their treatment in Queensland and the Northern Territory during his wartime years in the RAAF.  I have already mentioned the connection between Whitlam, the member for Werriwa, and Whitlam’s policies on “Schools, hospitals, cities”, to use his shorthand for his Program, his deep understanding that Australia is a nation of immigrants, and all the opportunities and obligations which flow from that central fact, his passion for electoral reform, one-vote, one-value, and even the national sewerage program.  He himself dated his determination to modernise the Constitution from the failure of the 1944 referendum, broadening and deepening with his service on the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Constitutional Reform.  This seminal experience led him to focus on the connection between the Constitution and the Labor Platform.  He was exasperated by the way the Labor Party had allowed the High Court rejection of bank nationalisation under Section 92 in 1948 to become an excuse for policy stagnation.   He later put his attitude in this way:

    I was concerned by the way in which the Labor Party’s failure to move on, to look ahead, to attempt to find new ways towards reform, was short-changing the Australian people and short-changing the Party itself.  The Party became obsessed with the idea that rather than being about revival for the future, its purpose was to return to a more comfortable past – not renovation but mere restoration.  As a result, both the achievements of the past and the hopes for the future receded equally.  The Party stagnated and the Platform was stultified.

    There, in its most striking form, is Whitlam’s continuing challenge – to modernise the Party, to modernise the Platform, to modernise the Party’s place in a modernised Australia.  He wanted, of course, to modernise the Australian Constitution, and no Australian leader worked harder to achieve change by referendum.  Right to the end, he never gave up on this, despite the overwhelming evidence that change by the direct referendum route is almost always foredoomed in Australia.  Yet despite this, he achieved real change in the spirit of the Australian Constitution, in its interpretation and in the application of the Constitution as it exists to the implementation of Labor policy.  He never succeeded in altering the Constitution by a single line or letter, but he enlarged the Constitution like no other leader.  As in so much else, Whitlam was the Great Enlarger.

    He did it in three ways.

    First, by pointing the Labor Party to the parts of the Constitution which were relevant and achievable.  As he said in 1961, in his first Curtin Memorial Lecture:

    In our obsession with Section 92, which is held up as the      bulwark of private enterprise, we forget Section 96, which is     the charter of public enterprise.

    In that speech, too, he derided the most sacred of Labor’s cows, the socialist objective, as “weak, defensive and apologetic”.  At the same time, he was not apologetic about calling himself a socialist and was, in fact, the last Labor leader to do so.

    Second, in government, he widened the Constitution and its interpretation whenever his legislation was tested in the High Court, starting with the Hamer Government challenge to the Australian Assistance Plan in 1974.  He was justly proud of the fact that no Whitlam Government laws were ever held to be unconstitutional.

    Thirdly, most relevant of all, he enlarged the Australian Constitution by the use of the external power, and by enshrining key laws within covenants of the United Nations and the International Labor Organisation.  The Racial Discrimination Act is an outstanding example.

    And here I make the claim that the connections Whitlam made between what we do here and our standing in the world represents his distinctive expression of Australian patriotism – rational, authentic and deep patriotism.

    Let me give a specific example.  In two visits to Papua New Guinea in 1970 and 1971, as Opposition leader, he proclaimed independence for PNG by 1976.  In Government, he advanced the time-table by a year.  The independence ceremony in Port Moresby in September 1975 was the last time Sir John Kerr and Whitlam appeared in public together.  During the 1970 visit, his meetings with Michael Somare were tracked by ASIO.  After he addressed 10,000 Tolai at Rabaul, Prime Minister Gorton said he would have “blood on his hands” if there were any violence on the Gazelle Peninsula.  The Minister for Territories, CEB Barnes, thought PNG might be ready for independence in 25 to 100 years.  This was probably majority opinion in Australia.  Seven Australian Prime Ministers attended Whitlam’s Memorial on 4 November 2014 – with five Prime Ministers from PNG, including Michael Somare.

    How did Whitlam turn around Australia’s stance so completely, so quickly?  I remember vividly the day in Port Moresby in January 1971 when he dictated the thoughts which we worked up as the definitive statement on PNG independence:

    All Australians must now realize how damaging and    dangerous a reputation Australia’s present policies produce.  What the world sees about Australia is that we have an aboriginal population with the highest infant mortality on earth, that we have eagerly supported the most unpopular war    in modern times on the ground that Asia should be a      battleground for our freedom, that we support the sale of arms to South Africa, that the whole world believes that our immigration policy is based on colour and that we run one of the world’s last colonies.  We may profess our good intentions      and feel that we are victims of special circumstances but the combination of such policies leans heavily indeed on the world’s goodwill and on Australia’s credibility.

    The true patriot therefore will not seek to justify and   prolong these policies but will seek to change them.

    It is upon his determination to protect and advance Australia’s reputation and standing in the world that I stake my strongest claim for Whitlam’s contemporary relevance.  I deeply believe that if the Labor leadership had taken its stand clearly on Australia’s international reputation and international obligations on refugees from the beginning, in 2001, we would not have had fourteen years of this malignancy, eating away at our national self-respect.  Of course, Australians care about “who comes here and the circumstances in which they come”.  But, given leadership, they do care for Australia’s good name in the world.  How else were Whitlam and Don Dunstan, together with quite small public interest groups in the universities, churches and unions, able to persuade the Labor Party in 1965 to abandon its most cherished tradition and Australia’s deepest fears embodied in the White Australia Policy?

    So I stress the importance of making connections in Whitlam’s approach to policy.  But I am bound to acknowledge that there were disconnections when it came to implementing policy in government.  The connections were Whitlam at his most constructive; the disconnections the most damaging.  No appraisal of his contemporary relevance can omit the failures, and the lessons to be learned from them.

    In his book The Whitlam Government, Whitlam himself makes a significant admission.  The matter-of-fact way he puts it masks the pain it cost him to make it.  He wrote (p.195):  “The chief economic failure of my Government resulted from the wage explosion of 1974.  In part, our failure was a failure of communication, our failure to persuade the trade union movement to accept the central concept of Labor’s program.”

    He then spelt his definition of the meaning of equality in modern Australia: “That central concept was this: in modern communities, even the wealthiest family cannot provide its members with the best education, with the best medical treatment, the best environment, unaided by the community.  Increasingly, the basic services and opportunities which determine the real standard of life of a family or an individual can only be provided by the community and only to the extent to which the community is willing to provide them.  Either the community provides them or they will not be provided at all.  In the Australian context, this means that the community, through the national Government, must finance them or they     will not be financed at all.”

    That is the bed-rock of the Whitlam Program, with its over-arching theme of a more equal Australia.  Then comes his painful admission: “I have to acknowledge that this philosophy was never really accepted by the Labor movement of Australia at any time after the election of its own Labor Government.”

    In a generous review in The Age, Sir Paul Hasluck described the book as “the longest trumpet voluntary in political literature”. But it seems to have escaped Sir Paul that there could hardly be a more mortifying admission than that the very core of Labor support had not accepted the relevance of the Whitlam Program to its immediate concerns.  By contrast, the Hawke and Keating Governments succeeded in persuading the unions to accept the concept of a social wage, and, through the Accords, made it the basis of their transformation of the Australian economy.

    Whitlam notoriously said: “I don’t mind how many prima donnas there are in my Cabinet, as long as I’m prima donna assoluta”.  It was a throwaway line that actually highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of the Whitlam style of government: individual brilliance against collegial disarray.  There was a serious gap between the primacy he gave to Parliament, to parliamentary government on one hand, and the operation of its most distinctive feature, the Cabinet, the great engine of parliamentary government.  Cabinet embodies the two principles that make parliamentary democracy work effectively – Cabinet solidarity, and answerability to Parliament.  Cabinet is the grand committee of the nation.  Bob Hawke’s superb chairmanship skills made his Cabinet the most successful in our history.  A properly-run Cabinet would not have enmeshed the Whitlam Government in the toils of the loans affair.

    Nevertheless, while the orchestration was sometimes discordant, the Whitlam Government was not a one-man band, although Gough himself scarcely discouraged the notion.  “What would happen if you were run over by the proverbial bus”, Mike Willesee asked him in 1974.  “In the light of my government’s public transport reforms, that is highly improbable”.  But the free rein Whitlam gave his Ministers did become the basis for its record of achievement.  The one thing he expected was that they would act in the spirit of the Program, especially as set out in the It’s Time Policy Speech.  As Kim Beazley Snr said: “The Platform is the Old Testament; the policy speech is the New Testament”.  He was only half-joking.

    There will never be another Policy Speech like it.  At least I devoutly hope so, because I hope that the conditions which produced it will never be repeated.  That is, I hope fervently for the sake of Australian parliamentary democracy that the Australian Labor Party will never again be out for 23 years, or anything like 23 years.  We cannot fully understand the nature, content and purpose of the It’s Time  Policy Speech, unless we place it firmly in the context of those 23 years.  Nor, for that matter, can we fully understand the conduct and fate of the Whitlam Government without understanding the sense of urgency and expectation those lost 23 years produced.

    There were outstanding Ministers.  Think of Bill Hayden, who built Medibank – with its vital principle of universal access to health care – so strong that it defied seven attempts by the Fraser Government to dismantle it and enabled the Hawke Government to restore it as Medicare.  The attacks on its basic principles by the present Federal government are, of course, part of its current turmoil.  Contemporary relevance indeed!

    Again, Hayden had progressed far towards establishing a national superannuation scheme.  Keating accomplished it, and Labor’s role as the custodian of superannuation, and its true principles, remains, or should be, one of its greatest electoral assets.

    Think of Lionel Murphy, whose transformational law reforms constitute almost a parallel program.  His concerns about the accountability of the national security apparatus remain a question of fundamental relevance to Australian democracy.

    Or think of Al Grassby.  For dismantling White Australia (“Give me a shovel and I will bury it”, he said to a sceptical reporter in Manila); for establishing multicultural Australia, he paid a high political price.  He lost his seat in what Whitlam called Australia’s first overtly racist campaign in 1974.  We may think we have come a long way since 1974.  On the other hand, we may think that the story has deep contemporary relevance, certainly in terms of the need for unremitting vigilance in the work of building a more inclusive and tolerant Australia.

    I think, in particular, of Tom Uren, who breathed life into the most original and wide-ranging of all the Whitlam concepts, really the heart of the Whitlam project – national involvement in cities and regional centres.  The restoration of his Department of Urban Affairs is again urgent and relevant to the Australian people in almost every aspect of their daily lives.

    These examples remind us of a largely neglected, if not forgotten, aspect of the Whitlam project – how much, both in development and implementation, the Whitlam Program was a collective effort, how much he sought and welcomed the ideas and advice of others, inside and beyond the Labor Party.  Many years later, I suggested that he should acknowledge that “the Program did not spring, like Minerva, fully armed from Zeus’ brow”.  He agreed entirely, but insisted that he was not going down to posterity confusing the Greek and Roman gods.  Gough thought Zeus more appropriate than Jupiter, so Minerva had to give way to Athena.

    This aspect of the Whitlam project, as a cooperative and collaborative effort, will, I believe, become increasingly relevant to Labor’s mission, as Australia moves into a more complex era, with its communities more dissociated, its voters more volatile, its competing interests more vocal, its public discourse more discordant, if not debauched, its media ever more pervasive.

    More than a century ago, Alfred Deakin complained about the impossibility of governing “with a reporter at one’s elbow”.  We may speculate how Gough would have coped, in a world of instant response, endless spin, the ten second grab and the cacophony of self-appointed pundits.  I think I know the answer.  Brilliantly.  Three reasons: He was the master of the one-liner before the term was invented.  He would have dominated the mainstream media by open, long and frequent press conferences.  And, above all, he would have refused to relegate Parliament to its present humiliating role as an almost incidental channel of political communication.

    Almost our last collaboration, stretching across more than 40 years, was the Foreword to Troy Bramston’s splendid collection, The Whitlam Legacy.  Gough knew it would be his last serious word on Australian politics:

    May I make one valedictory point: never forget the primacy of Parliament as the great forum for developing, presenting and explaining policy.  This seems to me the best response we can make to the unprecedented demands now made on our leaders and representatives by the relentless news cycle, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  If we develop, define and defend our policies thoroughly before their implementation, we will be much less likely to be blown off course by the accidents and aberrations inseparable from modern political life.  And Parliament is by far the best place to achieve it.

    This was the precept and practice of a life time.

    Parliament is, or should be, a marvellous resource, and it has been the anchor of our national life longer than almost any country in the world and, by the standard of the suffrage – the right to vote – more democratic longer than any.  But if the Labor Party is to survive as the prime mover in the development and implementation of the public polity – the party of new ideas – its policy makers will need to draw on all the available resources, reaching out beyond its own resources and ranks.  This points to a future role for independent but dedicated resources like the Whitlam Institute itself.  This was Gough’s own deep hope as he watched the Institute grow during his rich and mellow autumnal years.

    Partly because of his long and active public life, there is a timelessness about Gough Whitlam’s legacy, extraordinary for a working politician who reached the heights of his achievement forty years ago and whose Prime Ministership lasted only three years.  But I always emphasise that Gough Whitlam was also very much a man of his time.  His vision of a more equal Australia, a more independent Australia, a more inclusive, generous and tolerant Australia, a more forward-looking and outward looking Australia, belongs to all time.  But the means by which he sought to advance Australia towards that vision reflected his own times, the influences, pre-occupations and demands of his time, the political, constitutional, social and economic opportunities and constraints of his time.  Hence his insistence on contemporary relevance.  Here in St. Kilda Town Hall, closing his great campaign in 1972, he invoked Ben Chifley’s “light on the hill”.  His program was not the light on the hill; but he shone a bright light along the path.

    Far be it from me to presume to put words into Gough Whitlam’s mouth, at least now that he cannot speak for himself.  But I do believe that his first advice to his successors – the Labor leadership, the members, supporters and well-wishers – as they pursue their tasks of shaping and re-shaping Labor policies, Australian policies, for the 21st century, in times and circumstances every bit as daunting and challenging as those he faced in his time – I believe that his watchword would be for them, as his instruction was so often to me:

    “Contemporary relevance, comrade”.