Albo’s lack of courage makes headlines, but doesn’t tell the full story of his government

If you’ve gained the impression that Anthony Albanese’s government is one that knows what it should be doing to fix our various problems, but lacks the courage to do anything that might be controversial – even just including questions in the census about people’s sexual orientation – I can’t tell you you’ve got the wrong idea.

What people outside Canberra often don’t realise is how obsessed governments, of either colour, become with how their opponents will react to anything they do or say. Albo seems to have a bad case of this.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

It’s something economists understand from their study of the behaviour of duopolies. Albanese has forgotten the golden rule of competition laid down by the social psychologist Hugh Mackay: to compete successfully, focus on your customers, not your competitors.

But while Albo’s lack of courage keeps hitting the headlines, it’s not the whole story of this government. Behind the scenes, it’s gearing up to do a better job of ensuring that the many billions of taxpayers’ money it spends each year are more effective in improving our lives.

Governments don’t deliberately waste our money. Almost all of it is spent with the intention of making us safer, improving our health, adding to our education, ensuring we don’t starve because we can’t find a job or are too old to work, or just to help us travel from A to B more easily.

But while almost all government spending is done with good intentions, a surprising amount of it does little to achieve its stated objectives. Why? Because we’re spending on things we’ve always spent on, doing things the way we’ve always done them. Because we’re spending on new things just in the fond hope this will make things better. And because our spending choices are guided by ideology, anecdotes or – and this one’s a favourite – because it’s spending you know will give voters the impression things are improving.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers “are on a quest to make government better”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

After decades of pursuing the quest of making government smaller – by privatising government-owned businesses and paying private businesses to deliver government-funded services – Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers are on a quest to make government better.

They’ve set up within the Treasury the Australian Centre for Evaluation, which will co-operate with other departments in assessing government spending programs to see how well they are achieving their objectives. The goal is to build a body of evidence of what spending works and what doesn’t. Spending programs should be based on such evidence, not on hunches and hopes.

Last week, Treasury secretary Dr Steven Kennedy gave a long speech outlining his department’s commitment to “evidence-informed policymaking”.

For many years, the medical profession has been committed to using “randomised controlled trials” to evaluate the effectiveness of medicines and medical procedures. These involve experiments where subjects are divided into two groups selected at random. One group is given the pill or the procedure, then compared with the “control” group to see what difference it made.

Now the econocrats want to use this technique to evaluate government spending. And on Tuesday Dr Andrew Leigh, the assistant minister for competition, charities and treasury, gave a speech on evidence-based policing.

Controlled experiments have been used to study the effectiveness of police behaviour in America for many years. For instance, it’s widely believed that the use of body cameras will improve the way police treat members of the public. But a study involving more than 2000 police officers in Washington DC found that wearing cameras had an insignificant effect on police use of force and on civilian complaints. Their benefit was in providing better evidence in court.

In Australia, the Queensland community engagement trial tested the effect of training in “procedural justice” on citizens’ views of the police. Traffic police were taught to use a script when speaking to drivers stopped for random breath testing. The study found it improved drivers’ views of the police, though they were no more likely to obey officers’ directions. (But I doubt if many people disobey the coppers, no matter how impolite they are.)

Many randomised trials involving the police are being conducted in Victoria. One seeks to reduce the number of people who fail to appear in court after being summonsed. It tests the effect of providing simpler information, replacing a 2200-word, seven-page document with a 60-word statement and links to support services from Victoria Legal Aid and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service.

The initial results show that the shorter document leads to better court attendance, and thus fewer arrests and incarcerations of people who don’t turn up. The results of many more experiments are on the way.

Meanwhile, the Brits have set up a What Works Centre for Crime Reduction, and Leigh hints that we may do something similar in Australia.

Policing is just one example, of course. It all seems pretty laborious, but if it leads to less ineffective spending and better government it’s a worthwhile endeavour. And not before time.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor.

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