With a combined total of 90,000 members, Labor and Liberal represent just 0.4 per cent of the Australian population. -------------------- Mark Latham’s 10 tips for fixing government In the origins of representative democracy, it was assumed that citizens would freely delegate power to parliaments and politicians. But with the rise of a more affluent and self-sufficient society, this is no longer the case. More often, people are making their own decisions and expect politics to do less – in part, a diminution of state power, but also a belief that the political class and political media should take a lower profile. This is the type of system the public would more enthusiastically support: one which better suits its sense of empowerment. If politics was to deliver on this democratic desire, becoming less meddlesome and less noticeable in society, it might be possible to rebuild trust in the ideals of a representative system. In effect, politics is at a tipping point. Parliamentarians face a basic choice. They can stick with the status quo: the cycle of distrust and dishonour that has turned public office into a lowly vocation. Or they can pursue change. Not the vain hope of a mass participatory democracy; but rather, politics as the equivalent of a niche profession. That is, doing a relatively small number of things well; bringing its expectations into line with community sentiment; downscaling its presence in the lives of Australians. Let me offer, therefore, 10 ideas for improving the parliamentary system. 1. Light-touch government Our national leaders need to regain the habit of educating the electorate about a realistic role for government. In economic policy, this means abandoning the pretence of interventionism. While policymakers can improve the business environment with strategies for market competition and skill development, they actually have no way of directly controlling economic outcomes. In social policy, governments need to acknowledge the rising tide of self-reliance, rolling back middle-class welfare entitlements. The major parties need to concentrate on doing a limited number of things well. Logically, for the Coalition, this means pursuing labour market deregulation and taxation reform (policies that the current government has fobbed off to inquiries, for consideration after the next election). Instead of a Rudd-style flurry of activity across all areas of administration, the next Labor government should restrict itself to three policy disciplines: education reform, poverty alleviation and climate change action. Public expectations about the role of government are now so low that any kind of tangible achievement would be welcomed as a positive change. 2. Reducing bureaucracy Despite the marginalisation of government power, the size of the federal bureaucracy and the number of parliamentary sinecures attached to it has grown ever larger. The Abbott government, for instance, has 11 assistant ministers and 12 parliamentary secretaries, each of them drawing extra remuneration, office staff and entitlements. Their net impact on the system is to float around media airwaves, adding to the noisy clatter of modern politics. The opposition responds in kind with dozens of shadow ministers. Significant savings can be made. Australia, for instance, has no need for departments of industry and employment. Similarly, the minister for small business is a purely symbolic role, a sop to production-side politics. The abandonment of industry programs would, most likely, increase national competitiveness, weaning complacent companies off government welfare. 3. Independent policymaking A major part of Australia’s economic success has been the role of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in the independent management of monetary policy. This is the type of policy model apathocracy demands: government doing no harm through a low-profile and professional process.There is a strong argument for extending the success of the RBA to other areas of economic debate, such as fiscal policy and climate change. 4. Downsizing state politics When I first met Eric Roozendaal (the former NSW treasurer and ALP general secretary) in the mid-1980s, he was working for Michael Cleary, the NSW minister for sport and recreation. Eric explained how Cleary’s office was so quiet the main staff activity was playing Space Invaders. Thirty years later, if anything, the workload of state governments has decreased. With the privatisation and corporatisation of utility bodies, state parliaments and ministries are struggling to find things to do (other than playing computer games). Cabinets should be reduced from 20 ministers to just 10. State backbench MPs should hold part-time positions, similar to local government. The status and entitlements would be brought into line with public opinion. 5. Minimising infotainment Hard-copy newspapers are dying a natural death, choked off by internet competition and public apathy. They have entered a cycle of cost-cutting and narrowcasting that has weakened their reliability and independence. The bigger challenge for the parliamentary system is to limit opportunities for media infotainment, the harmful practice of turning serious politics into a circus. To this end, question time in Federal Parliament should be abandoned. It has lost its original purpose of holding the executive to account. Our national Parliament should fulfil a transactional purpose, dealing with legislative and constituency issues, rather than sideshow politics. 6. Entitlement reform The solution to entitlement rorts is straightforward: bundling up and cashing out the current system of entitlements into a single global budget – to be managed by MPs themselves, under strict guidelines. A truly independent monitoring body should also be established, with the power to fine and, in clear cases of rorting, expel offending MPs. 7. Voluntary voting Australia is one of just four Western nations that still enforce compulsory voting (the others are Belgium, Greece and Luxembourg). Increasingly, however, this system is out of step with the values of apathocracy. The Australian Electoral Commission has reported that prior to the September 2013 election, 400,000 people aged between 18 and 24 failed to enrol to vote – the equivalent of four federal electorates. That is, among the best-educated cohort of Australians, the ones with the greatest long-term stake in the country’s future, a significant number could not care less about party politics. This trend should be formalised. Self-evidently, voluntary voting removes from the electoral equation people who have no interest in public issues: the apathetic majority at whom the major parties currently target their scare campaigns and shallow policy platforms. If the electoral franchise was restricted to those with a genuine commitment to politics, candidates would need to work harder to earn their votes. 8. Smaller election campaigns As the re-run of the Western Australian Senate election demonstrated, it is possible for wealthy business people to buy seats in Parliament. During the Palmer United Party’s successful WA campaign, Clive Palmer purchased 788 of the 1647 television spots devoted to political advertising, outspending the combined Labor/Liberal effort by four to one and targeting people who have so little interest in elections, their vote is influenced by political propaganda. Open-ended campaign spending results in the major parties being heavily dependent on financial donors. When in government, supporters usually expect favourable treatment, especially in access to ministers. Campaign expenditure limits are therefore an important step. 9. Sidelining lobbyists One of the frightening aspects of the NSW disease was the frequency with which Eddie Obeid lobbied his ministerial colleagues about his business interests. In evidence at ICAC, the ministers concerned said they never bothered to ask Obeid if he had a financial stake in the matter under discussion – an amazing oversight. While governments have established official registers of lobbyist organisations, they cover only a tiny fraction of the moneyed interests constantly trying to influence ministers. The Coalition in particular has a small army of former MPs, staffers and party officials who have become company directors, corporate advisers and industry association representatives. Federal and state parliaments should enact laws that: • require any minister lobbied by private financial interests to list the nature of the meeting on a publicly available register; • ban former MPs or party officials from acting as lobbyists for a period of five years after leaving office; • adopt Peter Reith’s proposal for senior party officials to be prohibited from holding corporate positions. 10. Power to the edge In an era of apathocracy, the major parties need to minimise the risk of narrow factional control. This is the one area in which politics needs to be more visible: inviting public involvement as a way of breaking down the powerbroker/parliamentarian/lobbyist cartel. With a combined total of 90,000 members, Labor and Liberal represent just 0.4 per cent of the Australian population, making them an easy target for influence peddlers and powerbroker control. Both parties are shackled by their ancient production-side links, with union-based factionalism dominating the ALP and corporate figures running the Liberal Party. Earlier this year, in the outer south-west Sydney electorate of Campbelltown (which was formerly a safe seat, until it was lost in the 2011 O’Farrell landslide), Labor’s local branches had just 28 preselection voters, the equivalent of 0.05 per cent of the electorate. Facing the embarrassment of a “telephone booth” process, the party opened up 50 per cent of the preselection franchise to community participation and attracted a further 1061 voters. While this number still represents little more than 2 per cent of the seat, it nonetheless provided a respectable voting base and secured victory for an outstanding community candidate, Greg Warren. A region usually associated with apathy produced its biggest voluntary political event in my lifetime. Australia’s democratic deficit cannot be overcome in a single parliamentary term or even a single decade, but by downsizing the role of politics it might be possible for the public, over an extended period of time, to look at the system afresh, to find something more authentic and worthwhile than the troubles of previous decades. Technically, these reforms are not hard to achieve: they simply require a commitment from parliamentarians – a cohort that, in recent decades, has witnessed a damaging pattern of democratic decline. As ever, in public life, leadership is all-important. Leaders from both sides of Parliament can help themselves by helping the Australian people find new reasons to believe in the value and integrity of party politics. afr/p/national/mark_latham_tips_for_fixing_government_YFsiuP47cTCPenXNfflQQN
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 21:30:03 +0000