Dear leaders...
Bob Katter, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor have a huge task ahead of them over the next few days – a burden made heavier by the poor level of secretarial support successive government have provided. So we thought we could lighten their load by drafting a template letter to send to the two contenders:
Dear Julia/Tony
Thank you for your interest. I’m sorry it’s taken you three years to find my E-mail and phone number, but I’m always happy to talk to you.
We have some specific interests including broadband, water policy, the distribution of health resources and policies to deal with climate change – an issue which we are sorry to see has been pushed aside by both parties. While a warmer climate might extend the outdoor dining season for café-latte socialists and may be dismissed by those who think it is “crap”, it is already of vital concern to everyone in rural Australia, and will become of concern to all when they find storms dumping dust in their suburban back yards and when they find their food prices rise to the point of causing hardship.
But these negotiations we can defer for a few days. Seeing you made so few [letter to Julia] any [letter to Tony] meaningful policy proposals during the campaign, we are confident that you have plenty of policy flexibility.
Right now, our interests are in governance. We demand some basic reforms to ensure that future elections present clear policy options. Something less patronising than “stop the boats/debt/waste/big new taxes” and with a little more content than meaningless talk about “moving forward” and “working families”. Even though successive governments, state and federal, have misdirected education funding to the detriment of our regions, our voters retain the native intelligence to detect bullshit.
The principles behind these demands are to distribute power back to Parliament, which represents all Australians, and away from Executive Government, which the election results show represents only 39 to 44 per cent of Australians. We are fed up with the instability of “winner take all” politics.
First, we want campaign financing reform, to prohibit all corporate donations to political parties – including union donations. That’s not going to go down well in Sussex Street or in the Collins Street boardrooms, but we cling to the old fashioned belief that politics is about people, not corporations.
Second, we want a dramatic cut in ministerial staff levels. Ministers, helpless and unworldly creatures that they are, need secretarial and administrative support, but they should rely on the public service for policy advice. Bob Katter can easily find jobs for former staffers on banana plantations, and is happy to offer some training so they can tell the difference between a banana, a lemon and a cane toad.
Third, we insist on parliamentary reform, including an independent speaker (if you offer that to us as a sinecure it proves you have learned nothing in the last six weeks), respect for private members’ bills, and a reform of Question Time.
Fourth, we want all contact between ministers and lobbyists to be recorded on a public website, with an outline of the proceedings of those contacts. Those outlines should be prepared by a public servant present at the meetings. (Please keep the website in plain text until we get something better than dialup.) Again, we acknowledge that this may result in unemployment, but we have a labour shortage in Queensland, and could offer former lobbyists the novelty of productive work.
Fifth, we want all policy research and advice, with minimal restrictions for national security purposes, to be made public. Policy advice should be the work of agencies working at arms’ length from government; the Productivity Commission and the Reserve Bank provide sound models.
Sixth, an essential agency in this regard is Treasury. We want to see all serious policy proposals, emanating from government, opposition or other members, made subject to publicly available benefit-cost analysis in good time before any election. We accept that in many cases it will be difficult for researchers to identify all costs and benefits, but that is no excuse for failing to present whatever analysis is available. This would replace the much abused “Costing of election commitments”, which, with its narrow reliance on fiscal costs, has distorted the public’s understanding of economic management, and is hindering our capacity to make nation-building public investments.
We look forward to meeting with you. Bob Katter has offered his office as a venue, but we realise that, since airlines have been deregulated, it’s prohibitively expensive to get to Innisfail or Mount Isa at short notice. But we can meet in Tony Windsor’s office in Armidale or in Rob Oakeshott’s office in Port Macquarie. We urge you to drive up along the New England or Pacific “Highways” so you can experience the costs of years of diversion to middle class welfare the public revenues that should have gone to infrastructure.
We pray [Tony] wish [Julia] for your safety. We won’t have room in the conference room for any ministerial staffers, but we can provide them with a bed at the local YMCA, a KFC voucher, and some coins to operate the public telephone outside the pub that Jack McEwen got for us in the 1969 election. My secretary can show them how to operate a rotary dial phone.
Yours truly,
Ian McAuley
Ian McAuley is a Fellow at the Centre for Policy Development who lectures in public sector finance at the University of Canberra. He is also co-author of a number of papers for the Centre for Policy Development, including Reclaiming our Common Wealth: policies for a fair and sustainable future, A Health Policy for Australia: reclaiming universal care and You Can See a Lot By Just Looking: Understanding human judgment in financial decision-making.
This article originally appeared on the Centre for Policy Development website. It was reproduced with permission.
Comments on this article
Be Fair
Some good points, but your criticism should have been a bit more party specific.
Unless my memory is playing tricks:
Labor has instigated the NBN.
Labor has undertaken a major program to address water resource problems.
Labor has consistently criticised middle class welfare and tried to wind back the outrageous unmeanstested health insurance subsidy but was rolled in the Senate.
Labor tried to initiate a start to the addressing of global warming but was infamously rolled in the Senare by the Greens and Coalition.
Labor's "moving forward" slogan was underpinned by major policy initiatives in the areas of health, education, technology, tax reform and transport.
“stop the boats/debt/waste/big new taxes” was both the Coalition's slogan and policy.
The Coalition led by Barnady Joyce succeeded in reducing debate on substantive issues to mindless slogans. Instead of being brought to account by the media he was lauded as the new breed of "Retail Politician". Fortunately Tony Abbott gave him a job where he had to talk some sense and he quickly proved what sensible people had already perceived, that most of what he said was utter rubbish.
But the Coalition's fear campaign re putting a price on carbon had by then already succeeded, aided and abetted by the business community who apparently did not want to offend their Coalition friends. Not until after Labor backed off on introducing a CPRS did the business community start to speak up about the need for a price on carbon to be established. Heather Ridout was an honourable exception as she was on the need fro the introduction of a resource tax. The rest of the business community had apparently been quite happy for Labor to do all the heavy lifting and take the flack for any pain generated by putting a realistic price on energy to enable a move away from carbon based energy production.
It has been very popular to brand all political parties as being tarred with the same brush. I think in this instance, it is grossly unfair to the Labor Party
Ian's Letter to Leaders
Good stuff Ian - sensible points, put well, in true Aussi fashion - and loved the reference to the good work of Black Jack McEwen.
Doubtless there has been the odd Labor pollie since then who lost their way and wound up accidentally somewhere in the countryside. But there sure wasn't any mention during the election campaign of what they intended to do to improve the lot of our rural cousins.
Unfortunate too that Libs did little better.
This hung parliament business has the potential to be the best thing for the bush since the 1956 floods.
Edward
Elephant in the room
Chris, that's not the real elephant in the room. Much of the energy supply industry is actually calling for a carbon price; no one can invest with certainty until there is one.
The real elephant in the room is that the general community does not want to pay more for electricity, and until they do, and see it as necessary in order to reduce greenhouse emissions, it will be difficult for any politician to force this through. This is evidenced by the success of the "great big new tax" fear campaign to derail the momentum behind the CPRS; it played very well in the marginal electorates.
chris sanderson for parliament
Dear Chris Sanderson,
Please stand for parliament, you are one of the few who seem to get the problem
The Greenhouse Elephant in the room
Yes, but when will you start to deal with the elephant in the room that Guy Pearse, Clive Hamilton and the ABC 4 Corners program 'The Greenhouse Mafia' told us about 4 years ago?
Until we change the rules, the fossil fuel industry will continue to write govt policies on CO2 emissions or any other subject that would affect their profits. And they'll continue to do it regardless of which party gets into power, because they have them both by the b*lls.
Garnaut was right, it is a fiendishly difficult problem because they also control our power supplies. No wonder we are concerned abour 'Energy Security'. And the US has exactly the same problem.
Difficult or not, until people in positions such as you hold, are able to name that elephant, nothing will change.
As Lord Stern remarked recently, countries like Australia will eventually have to face international sanctions until they join the rest of the world in dealing with climate change.
That means that the changes will then have to be applied fast, resulting in far greater pain for everyone than if the adjustments were made slowly over time....../.Chris
If only they will read this great Letter
Lets hope so, stranger things have happened in the past few days. Well done Ian.
Nigel Hall
Farm Economist
I could not have said it
I could not have said it better myself. Well done Ian. Let's hope it stirs the debate even further....
Anne-Maree Huxley
MOSS