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Opinion
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3 April 2018 in Feature, Opinion
Upstream, downstream: water politics in the Murray-Darling
On the face of it, the Murray-Darling basin plan has all the hallmarks of a “good policy”. It has a clear objective: to cap extractions from the river system, so as to ensure the basin’s long-term ecological, social and economic sustainability. It’s backed by scientific evidence and has considerable public support, both in cities and […]
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6 March 2018 in Home, Opinion
Whatever happened to the ‘world’s best job’? How to reinvigorate academia
One of my most esteemed teachers, the late L. J. “Len” Hume, said to me once that he enjoyed his job, “provided they leave me alone”. He was referring to the freedom academics then had (in the 1980s) to develop their own style of teaching, scholarship and research, free of managerial or administrative oversight. Hume […]
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6 February 2018 in Home, Opinion
From little things, big things really can grow
A friend was telling me how her neighbour had proposed that a group of home owners in their street should sell up together, so a developer could put high-density housing on the land. Luckily, in this case, the zoning did not permit it. But the pressure to go after the dollar is constant and unremitting. […]
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5 December 2017 in Home, Opinion
Australia and Indonesia: are we there yet?
My neighbour on the plane was an Indonesian, going home to Jakarta, after having spent many years living and working in Australia. “What takes you back?” I enquired. Like most Australians, I tend to assume that anyone from a developing country who gets the chance would prefer to live and work in Australia. “Job opportunities,” […]
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7 November 2017 in Home, Opinion
NBN and Mr Fluffy overreach remind us why governments should lead, not command
The world is a more complex place than it used to be, and it’s generally accepted that governments need to work more flexibly than in the past. It’s all the more surprising, then, that, in the case of the national broadband network, Australian governments have opted for an old-fashioned, top-down, high-cost solution to the problem […]
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3 October 2017 in Home, Opinion
The art of listening: why we struggle to learn from wayward policies
I was coming home from Sydney in the bus and, as we rolled down Northbourne Avenue, a conversation broke out about light rail. As most people are either still asleep, on their smartphones or plugged into one device or another, any sort of conversation at this point of the trip is unusual. But the choice […]
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5 September 2017 in Home, Opinion
Numbers game is anything but straightforward as politics takes over
It’s often said that in order to manage something, you need to be able to measure it. When it comes to making public policy though, even measurement is rarely straightforward. Far from being clean, crisp and unambiguous, the numbers become political. Take climate change, for example. Like most people, I am inclined to think there […]
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1 August 2017 in Home, Opinion
Engineering know-how would prevent National Electricity Market strife
My dad was an engineer, in the electronics business. He despaired of what we would now call the political class – the politicians and their advisers who periodically blew the ‘high tech’ trumpet and then did nothing to follow through. The politicians expected the businesses to be there when the country needed them, but the […]
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8 July 2017 in Home, Opinion
Rethinking immigration and its complex effects on society
Given its importance to our economy and society, there is surprisingly little discussion of the pros and cons of immigration. The one exception, of course, is boat people. For the number of people involved, or even likely to be involved, we were, until the flow stopped, obsessed by the threat of people arriving on our […]
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6 June 2017 in Home, Opinion
The public housing paradox: by helping only the neediest, we undermine the entire system
One of the first people I met when I came to Canberra, more than 30 years ago now, was a public housing tenant. Let’s call her Patricia. Patricia was a formidable lady from Cooma (a source of many formidable people). She was a widow and she worked full-time. She didn’t earn much but it was […]
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2 May 2017 in Home, Opinion
Getting around to it, and the occasional genius of procrastination
Managers are advised to be decisive. But, sometimes, the best thing to do is nothing.
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4 April 2017 in Home, Opinion
Populate … and perish? Policy lessons from the past
Policy agendas are curious beasts. There are always more ideas running around than most political systems can process, so some “get up” while others are overlooked or ignored. When it comes to implementation, the channelling process can be even more selective. Take climate change, for example. Scientists have been raising the alarm about it for […]
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21 March 2017 in Home, Opinion
A minute to midnight for Ginninderra Falls
On the western fringes of Belconnen, a new development project, Ginninderry, is taking shape. The development will see more than 5000 houses built within the ACT and (ultimately) a similar number across the border in NSW. While the developers have consulted extensively with residents of the adjoining Belconnen suburbs, few Canberrans will be familiar with […]
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6 February 2017 in Home, Opinion
Labor’s light rail political brilliance should not be confused with good policymaking
There is no doubt that plebiscites are powerful indicators of public opinion. As the Brexit vote showed, when the people speak in this way, it is impossible to ignore. Paradoxically, the power of plebiscites to address highly charged issues, may also be an argument against them. Here in Australia, Labor and the Greens opposed a […]
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8 January 2017 in Home, Opinion
On reading
In the year 2000, Colombian politician and academic Oscar Tulio Lizcano was kidnapped by the guerilla organisation known as the FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and spent almost 3000 days in captivity in the jungle. Eventually, with the aid of one of his captors, he managed to escape, and emerged, exhausted, muddy, and […]
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10 October 2016 in Home, Opinion
Please, can we just have a government that works properly?
I am not sure which is worse – when politicians deliver on their election promises, or when they don’t. Over the past few weeks, the major parties in the ACT (if we are to believe them) have committed enough funds to send the territory budget into fiscal overdrive for years to come. Health, which at […]
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30 July 2016 in Home, Opinion
Bush capital’s future threatened by feckless development
One of the great joys of living in Canberra is its setting. Most of us are familiar with the blue silhouette of the Brindabellas. But equally important are the ridgelines and wooded slopes of the National Capital Open Space System and, to the west and south-west of the city, the varied scenery of farms and […]
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1 May 2016 in Home, Opinion
How should we evaluate the arguments, pro and con for Canberra’s tram?
An old professor of mine once said that when engaging in public policy debates, it was important to engage each side’s arguments at their best, rather than their worst. Considered from this vantage point, how should we evaluate the arguments, pro and con for Canberra’s tram?
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22 March 2016 in Home, Opinion
Do we really know how to be green?
While decluttering recently (it’s been that sort of summer), I re-discovered a little booklet put out by the Commonwealth Greenhouse Office in 2000 called Global Warming: cool it. While the Greenhouse Office has long since gone to the bureaucratic graveyard and global warming has morphed into climate change, the booklet is full of wise advice about […]
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19 January 2016 in Home, Opinion
Canberrans, cars and congestion: public transport in the ACT
January is a good month to be in Canberra. The weather is warm and the streets are quieter than usual, as most of the population has left for the South Coast. Indeed the quietness of the streets is a useful reminder as to just how car-dependent our city is. It is a dependence that Labor […]
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19 October 2015 in Home, Opinion
The Persistence of Parkinson’s Law
‘Work expands to fill the time available for its completion’.
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6 July 2015 in Home, Opinion
Hooked on students
When I taught public policy, one of the key ideas I tried to put across, was that when you create a public policy, you create a system, and vice versa. One of the reasons, I argued, that policies often produced surprising effects was that the links between different parts of these systems were not well-understood.
Governments necessarily operate bureaucratically, which means that the types of systems they run are disguised by the myriad classes and classifications they use to process reality. Usually, the insiders know what is going on, although for those in government trying to keep control of it all, it may take time to catch up with some effects. But for those on the outside, it is much more difficult to piece the data together.
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2 January 2015 in Home, Opinion
Revisiting The Secret River
There are essentially two kinds of novel set in the past. In the first, we follow the fortunes of a real person, such as Henry VIII’s Chief Minister Thomas Cromwell, the protagonist of Hilary Mantel’s celebrated trilogy. This is a flexible genre, in which the portrait does not have to be accurate to be convincing: witness Peter Carey’s brilliant impersonation of Ned Kelly in True history of the Kelly gang. These works stand or fall according to the psychological interest they create.
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24 November 2014 in Home, Opinion
Government approaches to risk often overblown
Canberra’s Mr Fluffy disaster reminds us how very bad governments can be at managing risk. The decision, 25 years ago, to attempt to remove all the asbestos from roof cavities seems both too little and too much – too little, because as we now know, loose fibres remained, and too much, because in seeking to eliminate the risk, the governments of the day were simply creating further problems in the future.
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20 October 2014 in Home, Opinion
Dairy industry: Kiwis have the right idea
While at the everyday level the ties could hardly be closer, Australians and New Zealanders take little notice of each other when it comes to politics. New Zealand’s recent general election, which resulted in the return to power of National party leader John Key, attracted little attention this side of the Tasman. Yet there is much to be learned, in both political and policy terms, from our Kiwi neighbours.
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28 August 2014 in Home, Opinion
ABC Classic FM late night changes to simulcast spur protest
If, like me, you like listening to classical music on the radio in the wee small hours, you will have noticed, a couple of months back, a big change in the service offered by ABC Classic FM.
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11 August 2014 in Home, Opinion
Step back, breathe deeply, govern wisely – change inevitably causes upheaval
It is said that when the government changes so, too, does the country. After going to all the trouble of getting elected, governments want to see as many of their objectives as possible implemented. The problem is, in the world of public policy, constant, politically induced changes do not produce good outcomes.
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22 July 2014 in Home, Opinion
Driving the Discipline
Read Jenny’s article in Australian Quarterly (Jul-Sep 2014) on the persistence of the cringe in Australian intellectual life.
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26 June 2014 in Home, Opinion
Where to now for Australia’s universities?
Through budget cuts and deregulation, the Coalition government may well be about to make life more difficult for Australia’s universities (no mean achievement). But we should also acknowledge that the system it inherited is the product of decades of bipartisan financial fiddling, poor management (by both universities and the educational bureaucracy) and political opportunism.
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30 March 2014 in Home, Opinion
Who’s the greenest of us all? Wind farms, light rail and the ACT government
When Jon Stanhope was in charge, ACT Labor presented as a steady-as-you-go hard-working government, a touch arrogant in its days of majority power, but certainly not revolutionary in its approach or rhetoric. With Katy Gallagher as Chief Minister, and the Greens Shane Rattenbury in the cabinet, we have a government that is unique in Australia – and possibly, the world – in its zeal to transform the city in which its citizens live.
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14 February 2014 in Home, Opinion
Canberra’s population growth should be steady
With the coming to power of another federal Coalition government, it seems likely that Canberra’s high growth rates of recent years will come to an end, at least for the next few years. While there is understandable concern about this change in the city’s fortunes, in the longer run all the indicators are that we will have a much bigger city than we do now.
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24 September 2013 in Home, Opinion
Abbott sailing in rough seas
While there are few consolations for no longer being in government, one that will appeal to Labor is that it no longer has to deal with the asylum-seeker problem. It’s now up to Tony Abbott to ”stop the boats”. As Labor’s perceived failures in this area were Tony’s ticket to the Lodge, it’s unlikely the […]
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27 August 2013 in Home, Opinion
Inner weather: learning from depression
My latest book is something of a ‘coming out’ for me. It tells the story of my lifelong struggle to come to terms with depression, not by focusing on its causes but by understanding how best to fight it.
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23 June 2013 in Home, Opinion
Density debate is overdue
How serious is the ACT government about implementing the much-discussed Gungahlin to City light rail project? Treasurer Andrew Barr’s recent musings about borrowing the money to build it will have sent shivers down the spines of many ACT taxpayers.
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27 May 2013 in Home, Opinion
The cost of party bickering
It would be a great pity if the Gonski reforms to school funding were to become casualties of the current, heightened period of inter-party rivalry. Prime Minister Julia Gillard has deliberately stoked the flames by spruiking the dollar amounts that may, or may not, apply to schools systems in each state and territory. In doing so, she diverts attention from the underlying principles of the reforms which, in calmer times, the Coalition might have had much less difficulty in endorsing.
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8 April 2013 in Home, Opinion
Lake-city revamp a bridge too far
It’s hard to know what to make of Chief Minister Katy Gallagher’s recently announced City to the Lake project. Stripped of its more fanciful components, it seems to be a repackaged version of some familiar ideas.
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20 March 2013 in Home, Opinion
Mining boom drinks us dry
When I first began to study political science in the late 1970s, we were preoccupied with understanding the phenomenon called ”the state”.
In practice, this meant grappling with the writings of some difficult Europeans – not just Marx, but later thinkers such as Habermas, Althusser, Gramsci and Poulantzas. In those days, when the structural connections between the economy and politics were perceived to be of the first importance, puzzling about the nature of the state in capitalist societies seemed entirely natural. The Australian state seemed a particularly apt subject for study. Of the many authors whose works we read on our history, whether they were men or women of the left or not, none doubted that economic development was the main theme of the story – the economic and the political were closely intertwined.
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11 February 2013 in Home, Opinion
The hand of the beholder
The Taj Mahal is one of the world’s most beautiful buildings, visited by millions every year. Shah Jahan’s favourite wife, Mumtaz, whose mausoleum it is, may have simply worn out after giving birth to her 14th child. But the building itself, especially in the dawn light, does not disappoint. It is magical.
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28 January 2013 in Opinion
Courage in management circuits
I have never known an organisation that would not have been improved by a few well-judged changes. Not, I hasten to add, re-structurings or purges, just the addition of a bit of common sense to the pot pourri of accepted practice.
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17 November 2012 in Opinion
High horses fall hard
Bob Carr is clearly relishing his job as Foreign Affairs Minister. He could scarcely conceal his delight when, a month or so ago, he announced that Australia’s campaign to secure one of the non-permanent seats on the UN Security Council had been successful. Australia’s bid was supported by no less than 140 member nations.
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25 September 2012 in Opinion
A war worth fighting
After more than 10 long years, the war in Afghanistan must rank as one of the most frustrating Australians have ever fought. The Prime Minister is determined to see the job through, which means staying the course until our forces are pulled out in 2014. However, in private, I doubt that she, or her advisers, believe that any form of sustainable government will have been established by that time.
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13 August 2012 in Opinion
Time to take the creative option
One of the most difficult jobs in public administration is that of the regulator – the person (or agency) responsible for implementing the rules. Do your job too uncompromisingly, and the regulated are on your back (or complaining to the politicians). Do it too leniently, and the problems the rules were designed to deal with, are likely to multiply. And that’s your fate when the rules are well-set. Regulators often find that the system they are trying to manage evolves more quickly than their legislation envisaged. The result is that the legislation either becomes a dead letter, or is amended repeatedly, often by patching it up with bits of regulatory gaffer tape. As fast as one loophole is closed, another is discovered (or opened) by those eager to see how far they can go.
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17 June 2012 in Opinion
Information isn’t everything
My brother and sister-in-law have two children, plus a dog and a cat. They can just about manage the children, but the animals are something else. Recently, at midnight, the cat dragged itself up the stairs to the adults’ bedroom, and promptly started convulsing. There began a frantic visit to the emergency vet, which saved the cat’s life but just about destroyed the family’s bank balance. It turned out that my sister-in-law, in a rush as mothers tend to be, had used dog anti-flea powder on the cat, thinking that one would do for the other. My brother was indignant. Why, he demanded, had she not read the instructions? These, when reviewed, clearly stated that the product could be toxic to cats.
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16 June 2012 in Opinion
More zeal than sense
Why throw out a perfectly respectable source of revenue – stamp duty – and thereby narrow your tax base?
As his recent budget demonstrated, ACT Treasurer Andrew Barr is an ambitious politician who intends to leave his mark on the territory’s public finances.
Nothing wrong with that, except that the Treasurer’s plan (eventually) to replace revenue from taxes on conveyancing (stamp duty) with revenue from rates suggests more reforming zeal than common sense.
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18 May 2012 in Opinion
Perils of the vertical village
It seems that Canberrans are taking to apartment living. There are apartment blocks, either newly built or going-up, in Belconnen, Civic, Woden and in other locations such as Kingston. The real estate industry says the market can’t get enough of this kind of housing. But what’s the place of high-rise (let’s say, more than 15 […]
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5 March 2012 in Opinion
Religion’s place in Australia
Recently, Baroness Warsi, a Conservative Cabinet minister in Britain’s coalition government, and also a Muslim, criticised what she saw as a trend towards ‘militant secularisation’ in European society. By this, she meant that religion was being downgraded in the public sphere. Europe, she wrote, should be more comfortable in its Christianity and less timid about […]
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16 January 2012 in Opinion
Green, but not happy to pay
Beyond composting the kitchen scraps and making sure the bottles and paper go in the yellow bin, most of us find the going tough, Jenny Stewart writes. Despite what Shakespeare may have said, there’s a lot in a name. Canberra’s tips, once the site of weekend recreational outings with the trailer, have long since morphed […]
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13 December 2011 in Opinion
Weighted figures stretch truth
The so-called obesity epidemic is a more complex picture than the statistics would have us believe.
Who’s heard of the Australian obesity epidemic? One way or another, most of us are vaguely aware of the growing fatness of Australians, if only when we ruefully try to get into last year’s swimming costume. Doctors warn of the rising incidence of diabetes and other conditions associated with being overweight.
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5 December 2011 in Opinion
The tricks, and trials, of measuring performance
I don’t know anyone who enjoys performance assessment, either having it done or doing it. At one stage in the public sector, many agencies offered performance pay: a salary top-up for those who were considered to have performed well. Although this practice seems to have died away, having one’s performance assessed is still important. Payment of increments, for examples, rather than being automatic as it once was, now depends on at least satisfactory performance. (Only senior people in the financial sector, it seems, are paid bonuses even when their company does badly.)
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10 November 2011 in Opinion
Long way to independence
The Queen’s visit serves to highlight how much Australia has change – and how much we’ve stayed the same these past 60 years.
The Queen’s 16th visit to Australia has come and gone, reminding us how much – and how little – has changed in the 60 years since she ascended the throne. Most Australians my age can remember the tremendous to-do of the first and second royal visits, the breathless anticipation, the flag-waving, and if you were lucky, the gloved hand glimpsed through the window of the passing Roller.
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