On ABC Insiders host Fran Kelly asked health minister Greg Hunt why the Government didn’t have an immediate response ready on the aged care royal commission report just released. “It wasn’t a surprise to anyone, was it”, Ms Kelly observed with obvious frustration.
No, it wasn’t. Not to anyone whose parents or friends have ended up in an aged care facility. Not to any politicians who have had their eyes open. And most certainly not to the highly paid bureaucrats in our federal and state health departments.
So why do we need to keep having formal inquiries before anything is done about known problems in government administration and abject market failures? Problems that so dramatically impact on the lives of the most disadvantaged among us.
Accounts of systemic failures in aged care are the latest revelations to expose how fundamentally ineffective our governments and their agencies have become.
The week after a scathing interim report was handed down, Mr Hunt reportedly said the Government is “working to make sure that we have the right response” on chemical restraint, which was one of three priority areas highlighted by commissioners. Did this offence against human dignity come as a surprise to his department? Surely they had been alerted to it along the way given that it featured so often in the accounts of distraught witnesses? Did they not know about it all along? Yet they need time to think about a solution!
Mr Hunt says the royal commission uncovered a culture in the aged care sector that “went beyond anything” he had anticipated. I’m literally frightened and frankly astounded that a health minister could be so out of touch.
These are just some of the other areas and issues covered by recent government inquiries. I’ll leave it to others to determine what outcomes resulted from all the time, money and effort that went into them.
| Age Pension | Disability / NDIS | Finance Sector |
| Banking | Decriminalising Drugs | Flammable Cladding |
| Building Industry | Domestic Violence | Mental Health |
| Child Care | Education | Murray-Darling River |
| Child Sexual Abuse | Drought Management | Religious Discrimination |
| Closing the Gap | Emissions Reduction | Uluru Statement |
| Corruption | Family Court | Water Management |
As I’ve observed before, people died as a result of the so-called ‘Pink Batts’ scheme. Not because the concept was flawed but because state government agencies responsible for OH&S failed to ensure that proper safety standards were being applied by the companies well-paid to do the installations.
In 2010 I was a member of an expert panel that carried out a review of the federal government’s investment in the Indigenous broadcasting and media sector. This review was headed by former senior public servant Neville Stevens. We undertook extensive consultations with Aboriginal communities across the country and delivered around 30 recommendations. The report called for a range of changes, including many that simply required administrative action and did not involve the appropriation of new funding. Bugger all happened. The public servant in charge of this policy area was later promoted and now heads up a major government authority.
The problem isn’t new of course. As a young public servant fresh out of university I was given some career advice by an old hand with decades of experience. The message was simple. You’ll never get into strife for not making a decision. But make the wrong one and you might. Proceed with caution (AKA, don’t rock the boat).
As a ministerial advisor to the NSW Attorney-General many years ago I received a late afternoon phone call from a volunteer legal service alerting me to the presence of a 15 year old Aboriginal girl in the adult remand section at the Mulawa Correctional Centre in Sydney. A call to the then head of the Corrective Service department was met the response that “I’ll look into it first thing tomorrow”. Using all the reflected authority of a government minister I insisted that she be removed immediately. It shouldn’t have been necessary for me to ask twice.
Former Prime Minister and Cabinet department head Terry Moran has opined that the public service is so lacking in expertise these days he wouldn’t trust it “with organising a collection of funds to build the local church”. The stuff flows downhill, as the saying goes, so we need to ponder how we’ve ended up with a bunch of politicians so many of whom seem to have little idea about the lives of the people they are elected to represent and even less interest in finding out.
Over the weekend former federal MP Daryl Melham gave a speech in honour of a former NSW deputy premier, Jack Ferguson. Ferguson was Neville Wran’s loyal offsider and was known for reminding his colleagues that “you can’t change things if you are in opposition”. As Mr Melham remarked: “Above all, Jack knew why he was there. It wasn’t about him. It was about the thousands of party members who gave their time, their money, their hearts and minds to support the cause – making other people’s lives better”.
Making other people’s lives better is what politicians and bureaucrats are ultimately there for surely? It’s not called the public service for nothing.
Laurie Patton is a former public servant, ministerial advisor, journalist and media executive. This article first appeared in The Lucky General ()
Laurie Patton is a prominent public interest advocacy and marketing/communications practitioner. He is a former political advisor, journalist and media executive. He is the NSW regional convenor for the Australian Republic Movement.
Comments
3 responses to “LAURIE PATTON. Catch 22.0 – we wouldn’t need inquiries if public administration wasn’t so broken”
Legislation is often created to correct greedy or otherwise improper behaviours. Usually it contains “checks and balances” to assuage concerns about overreach. But who implements and subsequently monitors the legislation? Public servants, of course! And who monitors the performance of the public service? Politicians, of course!
I bet that if an in-depth look was conducted of all of the areas of administration tabulated by Laurie above, the key issue will be seen as a lack of regulation of existing laws by public agencies and not the absence of new laws. Politicians cop out as much as the public servants themselves.
So how do we get Hunt and all the other f*****t politicians and those contracted to do their masters’ bidding bureaucrats sacked and gaoled for their dereliction of duty? It seems clear to me that only a revolution is going to change their cynical rorting of salaries and expense accounts and privilege when they are our servants.
I am travelling in a part of the world now where people do have in living memory several regime changes effected when the rulers were not looking after the citizens. We need some of that moral backbone in Australia.
I rather suspect it’s more to do with bad riding instructions than incompetent jockies.