Rudd's River Of Inquiries Poised To Burst Its Banks

The Age

Saturday August 9, 2008

Tony Wright, National Affairs Editor

IT'S review season in Kevin Rudd's Australia, and forests of earnest findings and recommendations are beginning to thump on to ministerial desks, their purpose to reshape and refine the national fabric.

But the blizzard of paper is already causing strangled noises from powerful interests that feel left out of the Rudd revolution, and from government departments and agencies unaccustomed to the Rudd approach. And the noises are likely to get louder.

Only this week, Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks let rip, alarmed that a "new protectionism" was seeping back in to the national debate about manufacturing industry policies.

Yet he was talking about reports that aren't yet public.

It was more than a hint that the Rudd approach of establishing a river of inquiries, reviews and taskforces that has characterised the first six months of his administration, may prove to be a dam of political trouble for him and his Government.

Mr Rudd, being at heart a bureaucrat and policy wonk, has chosen in large part to appoint academic and public service experts, many of them long-time friends of Labor, to dominate his Government's inquiries. A broader range of industrialists, business people and anyone with a sniff of the Howard administration have been left outside the tent.

Accustomed to John Howard's habit of drawing business folk and trusted advisers inside his marquee - and thus wedding them to final recommendations - many powerful interest groups are unlikely to hold their tongues as Mr Rudd's review season blows up a storm of recommendations that don't suit them.

Mr Banks' concerns this week that reviews on the automotive and textile industries might lead to more expensive public assistance, plus slowing the process of tariff cuts, was undoubtedly sharpened by the fact that he and his Productivity Commission - so central to the big inquiries of the Howard government - have been locked out.

Mr Howard, of course, was no slouch at commissioning inquiries and reviews and appointing committees.

Indeed, when Brendan Nelson's Opposition decided to make sport out of criticising Mr Rudd's penchant for government by committee, Transport Minister Anthony Albanese came to the argument well armed. "They talk about government inquiries," he told Parliament in June. "According to the 2005-06 annual reports of government departments, the Howard government had 501 reviews and taskforces set up in one financial year."

The Rudd Government may have some distance to catch up, but it is valiantly working on it.

Of the readily identifiable 130 or so reviews, inquiries, working groups, taskforces, forums, and ministerial councils, boards and offices that have been established since the Government was installed late last year, only a handful have completed and reported.

Mr Rudd and Australia are perched at the edge of what will be an avalanche of advice and recommendations about the way the nation should conduct itself.

It is boom time for printing companies and no wonder: the 550-odd pages of what is no more than Professor Ross Garnaut's draft report on climate change, and the 642 pages of Graeme Samuel's Competition and Consumer Commission inquiry into grocery prices are a small taste of things to come.

In the next few months, doorstop-sized publications will include a review into homeland and border security, Professor Garnaut's final report, reviews into national innovation, Comcare, national infrastructure, higher education, quarantine and biosecurity, skilled migration, coastal shipping, credit rating agencies, the citizenship test and cutting water, waste and emissions from government operations.

Next year the frantic pace, and the pressure on agencies producing these reports, plus a public service dealing with what will be new policies flowing from all the recommendations, will simply increase.

The media management alone will put heavy pressure on Mr Rudd, his ministers and their staffers, but feeding it through the public service is proving extra challenging.

In May, Dr Terry Cutler, who is heading the innovation review, reported that the number and size of submissions to his inquiry had "caused the department's computer servers to go into meltdown". By the end of this process, it might not simply be computers melting down.

UNDER REVIEW - SOME HIGHLIGHTS

AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Headed by Steve Bracks. Report completed. Very sensitive. Government says release will be "soon".

CLIMATE REPORT

Headed by Professor Ross Garnaut. Final report due this month. White paper to follow, establishing policy.

FUTURE TAX SYSTEM REVIEW

Headed by Treasury secretary Ken Henry. Final paper due next year: 350-page document delivered this week showed scale of job ahead.

TEXTILE, CLOTHING AND FOOTWEAR INDUSTRY REVIEW

Due this month. Run by Professor Roy Green, Dean of Macquarie Graduate School of Management. Another challenge to the debate over Australia's ailing manufacturing base, tariffs and free trade.

DEFENCE WHITE PAPER

Due at the end of the year. Will map out the Government's strategy for defending Australia. Author is Defence Department deputy secretary Michael Pezzullo.

NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE AUDIT

The big task of the Government's new Infrastructure Australia. Due at the end of the year. "National infrastructure priority list" to follow.

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home