My Team Australia would put the 'fair go' and respect for evidence first
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Version 0 of 1. What do Australian Muslims, state premiers, Bill Shorten and the Business Council of Australia have in common? They’ve all been asked to sign up for “Team Australia”. Team Australia is playing in an ever-increasing number of tournaments: from fighting in the Middle East, adding more layers to anti-terrorism laws, to modernising Federalism and broadening the tax base via an increased GST. Membership of the team appears fairly random too; it doesn’t seem like merit is the key to being selected. In appealing to notions of “joining the team”, Tony Abbott is doing what all leaders aspire to, but he does start his public interest game with a disadvantage. After all, few politicians have been more combative, less compromising and outright opportunistic than our prime minister. His brand of ideological divisiveness is unlikely to build a national consensus. But it does raise the question of what such a consensus – a true Team Australia – might look like. If we could restart our nation-building, beginning from a position where the “common good” actually means that, rather than simply the adoption of the ideologies of the incumbent government, what would that involve? It would seem that an important start would be to put aside ideological agendas and the interests of specific, powerful constituencies. Instead, public policy on key areas would be driven by what the evidence shows works best and a guiding principle of inclusion or equality. Everyone knows the shorthand for this in Australia: the “fair go”. And while there will be debate and dispute about what the evidence is and what a “fair go” might look like, that would still be a richer public debate than what we have been used to in recent times. But let’s say our notion of a “fair go” ensured that a key test for policy development was ensuring that the most disadvantaged were taken care of. Nice sentiments – but what would that look like in practice? A policy-based approach that targeted social and economic inequity would have to look at the evidence of what works and what doesn’t, requiring both sides of politics to leave their dogma at the door. It would involve taking on the vested interests on your own side of the political fence. Let’s look at some examples of how this might play out. Abbott wanted business and the premiers to join Team Australia to assist with his tax reform goals. Putting aside ideology, increasing a tax on consumption through a broader and higher GST is credible policy. But so is a profits-based (not volume-based) minerals tax – a properly framed mining tax. Equally, the evidence is clear that a price on carbon, via an emissions trading scheme, is an efficient and effective way to reduce man-made greenhouse gases. An increased GST would be hard for the left to swallow – and Abbott is hardly going to introduce a mining tax or ETS – but complex, evidence- and equity-driven tax reform is going to require consideration of all facets. If evidence-based policy prevailed, Indigenous affairs would be completely transformed. There would be no more Northern Territory intervention, or its successors in income management of the poor more broadly. These policies have not contributed to closing the gap, especially not around educational attainment and housing. In fact, the intervention has led to increased rates of incarceration; no evidence exists to demonstrate an improvement in child protection. But the policies limp along, driven by ideology and dismissive of reliable proof and evidence. Instead we should be looking at why we are spending so much money with so little to show for it. Policy failure only compounds the marginalisation of our most disadvantaged Australians; no other portfolio suffers as much as Indigenous Affairs from a lack of respect for evidence. Although we might aspire to revisit the halcyon days when university was free, there is clear evidence that having students contribute towards the cost of their higher education through an income linked, post-qualification tax surcharge (through the Hecs scheme) has not limited access to higher education and, in fact, has greatly increased the resource base of the sector. University fee deregulation has risks but, properly designed, it could promote choice and better-apportion the resources available to universities. Such a framework would need to be in addition to, not a substitute for, significant public investment in education (from pre-school on up) and in research. Fee deregulation is unpalatable to the left, and our public debate over how to extend the concepts of “user-based” education is poor. Similarly, the higher education sector suffers because of a government that claims it is seeking to find savings for a non-existent budget emergency and ignores all the evidence (most of which seems like common sense) of the importance of significant investment in higher education and research. This investment allows individual tertiary institutions to have much more flexibility about how they will approach fee deregulation if they approach it at all. Australian political debate often polarises in how to best protect and enhance human rights. Conservatives appear to have an almost irrational fear of “activist” judges being let loose on an unsuspecting public if we moved to strengthen rights protection, even through a charter of rights would be an important benchmark for laws around security, the handling of personal data and the asylum seeker debate. Public policy debate around law reform is impoverished by a lack of a rights culture and, again, this can be levelled at both sides of organised politics. The previous government’s failure to move on gay marriage is as much a blot on that period as the current government’s refusal to give a conscience vote on the issue. There are no quick answers in applying an evidence-based approach but a public debate shaped by what works and what doesn’t, coupled with considerations of greater social inclusion and equality, makes for better outcomes. I’d join Team Australia if it put serious public policy debate above meaningless political slogans. I also suspect a richer public debate would engage many other Australians too. |