So many sound bites, so little will for genuine reform Peter van Onselen Contributing editor AUSTRALIAN 13,9, 2014 AUSTRALIA is in the midst of bipartisan reform failure. The Liberals won’t risk it, instead dressing up fiscal housekeeping as more reformist than it actually is. Labor can’t even philosophically come to terms with the challenges that are upon us, choosing instead to stand by errors made by the previous six-year Labor government. The high cost of doing business in this country is sending industries overseas. Businesses that can locate operations offshore are doing so, not just because Joe Hockey has retracted government handouts. Getting these businesses back will be twice as hard as the task of doing what we could have to prevent them leaving in the first place. Small business is failing under the weight of uncompetitive industrial laws, with the government showing few signs of being prepared to fight on this ideological front. Labor remains wedded to an industrial relations world view that was already outdated during Paul Keating’s prime ministership in the early 1990s. Educational reforms designed to target learning at skills the economy needs are bogged down in old debates about opportunity. The focus shouldn’t be on the cost of degrees or diplomas, it should (mostly) be on the chances they give graduates of finding jobs. Ageing is only going to burden taxpayers more in the years ahead. Yet few in politics are prepared to openly advocate broader consumption taxes to help pay for us living longer. The antiquated high-income taxing system (made worse with the deficit levy) is narrowing the fiscal burden on to two generational cohorts expected to support both their seniors and their children. It is unsustainable without a decline in living standards or reduced access to basic services. I don’t even know where to start on the perverse impact of how we conduct our national security debate — not to mention our attitudes to asylum-seekers — on the need for immigration to act as a stimulant for growth. Notwithstanding such cultural concerns, we are late introducing the infrastructure necessary to ensure a homogenous embrace of larger, more congested cities. This has been a state government failure in recent decades, but a commonwealth responsible for 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the tax take means it can’t hide from shared responsibility. Who among our “leaders” is going to answer the siren call of reform before we are playing catch-up? Bob Hawke and Keating did it in the 80s, as did John Howard and Peter Costello in the late 90s. Who will stand tall now? Tony Abbott used an address to the National Press Club on Wednesday to lament that journalists too often focused on the bad politicians did rather than on the good. I wish there were more good to focus on in the reforming space. Without the opposition lifting its game, the Prime Minister is unlikely to lift his, consigning a generation of political leaders to laggard status, as Australia’s international competitiveness wanes further. We will always be a lucky country because our natural resources guarantee a certain amount of national prosperity. Iron ore, coal and uranium in abundance go hand in glove with geographical fortune and agricultural self-sufficiency. But Australia will not be all that it can if we do not return to radical conservatism when setting policy goals. Now is not the time for a conservative government to regard its chief role as keeping Labor away from the Treasury benches. Abbott’s focus in opposition was on what he would do away with, and that fascination has continued throughout his first year in office. To rise to the reforming challenge, the Coalition must risk defeat by embracing reforms. The blueprint for much of it is sitting on the PM’s shelf in the shape of the Henry review. Has any decision-maker cracked the spine of the two-volume, 780-page document by reading beyond the executive summary? Once upon a time Western democratic regimes such as Australia were renowned for reforming to stave off a crisis. But in a modern world that is increasingly globalised, tech-savvy and fast-paced, the political class has lost its ability to lead debates, so much so that the fear now is that reform, and indeed the impetus for reform, is possible (if at all) only once the crisis is on our doorstep. If Australia takes the important next step after minor (because that’s what it is) budget housekeeping, it can stay ahead of the next international economic crisis. If we do not we will be playing catch-up for a generation, if not longer. In 2006 George Megalogenis published the book The Longest Decade, examining the reforms that cut across the Keating and Howard eras. Without stronger political leadership the 2010-20 era will become known as the lost decade, when Australia lost its international edge and didn’t take advantage of its geographical location in the early part of the Asian century. The lost decade is already half over. Perhaps the most worrying judgment about the lost will for serious reform comes in the shape of Paul Kelly’s pessimism at the end of his latest book, Triumph and Demise. After chronicling more than 40 years of public policy debates in this country he concludes that “Australia’s institutions and political system now face a test of their maturity ... there is no guarantee that politics can emerge from its current trough to meet the challenges of the next decade ... let us hope the crisis does not get too serious before the political system rises to the task”. My concern isn’t just with the system, it’s with the personnel operating within it. The political class isn’t what it once was. Heavy hitters from the 1980s and 90s are few and far between now. The business community no longer leads debates the way it previously did. The commentariat has a tendency to descend into a left versus right dogfight that detracts from policy debates and rarely focuses on the philosophical principles behind historical clashes of ideas. Voters are more selfish than ever, adding to the malaise. A senior minister commented to me only the other day that “we need a crisis to do what you want us to do”. It was Winston Churchill who said “never let a good crisis go to waste”. But in modern politics the saying has morphed into using a crisis to rebuild political capital rather than work towards important policy outcomes. The Prime Minister, when launching Triumph and Demise, noted the pessimism within it about the future, saying that he would seek to prove Kelly’s conclusion wrong. Talk is cheap. Abbott shouldn’t delude himself that basic budget housekeeping or an antipathy towards carbon pricing, for example, constitutes an embrace of reforms the nation needs. Nor does donning a hard hat to cut ribbons at infrastructure completions the previous government signed off on and started. What comes next by way of serious reform will define this government as well as shape the nation. It won’t involve a photo opportunity and it can’t be encapsulated in a sound bite. Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia. Illustration: Sturt Krygsman Source: Supplied
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 00:07:15 +0000
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