Government needs to be simplified to overcome crisis of mediocrity

Victorian Premier Denis Napthine attracts low levels of trustworthiness. Picture: Josie Hayden

THIS week, ABC television’s Compass asked Victorians, “How trustworthy do you find the leaders?” Out of a possible 10, Premier Denis Napthine scored 4.1, Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews 3.9 and Greens leader Greg Barber 3.4. Their perceived competency scores were roughly the same. Whoever wins today, few people outside their campaign team will celebrate.

It’s yet another indication of Australia’s democratic ennui. It is odd to be asking constantly why Australia faces a political crisis. There is no rioting on the streets or widespread failure of essential services. Yet the debate continues because something seems not quite right. What is happening in Australia is not so much a crisis of performance as it is a dawning awareness of the steadily growing size of our missed opportunities. Our crisis, so to speak, is the growing opportunity cost of tolerating mediocrity.

After decades of steady growth, we enjoy a lifestyle the envy of the world. On every objective measure the vast majority continue to do better. We could excuse complacency. But here in the high-growth region of Asia, we know the world will not waste time waving as it overtakes us.

We also know that there are too many fellow Australians missing out, left behind and too often forgotten. Most of us want to do better at sharing our success among our fellow citizens so that wealth means something more than money, so that wealth means decency and opportunity and flourishing.

There are things we can do and the action we need shouldn’t be as hard as we’re making it. The first challenge is to make everything simpler. Many factors are causing unnecessary complexity, which leads to blame shifting, confusion and a lack of accountably. Starting at the top, our confused federalism arrangements mean each government can blame another for their failings. No wonder we can’t get a straight answer about why so many kids can’t read. This over-complication diminishes accountably, diminishes the citizen’s confidence and exonerates poor performance while obscuring better alternatives.

At every level of government the complexity grows. Thousands of pages of regulation and growing costs get in the way of individuals and communities solving their own problems. Everything from running the surf club or providing after-school activities for kids to holding a raffle for the fire brigade has become so over-complicated that government is increasingly looked to as a provider of services we used to run ourselves.

Simplification means limited and explicable tasks accounted for regularly and in plain English. When report jargon makes no sense, parents can’t hold schools to account. The same principle holds at election time. When governments give themselves a thousand aspirational activities instead of a small number of mandatory tasks, voters can’t tell who deserves an A and who an F.

Simplifying everything supports effective devolution. The work done with our money should be undertaken as locally as possible to keep government accountable and allow voters to compare their local results with what their neighbours are getting. It also means that each local area can learn from the mistakes and successes of other communities instead of all of us gambling that a one-size-fits-all model designed in Canberra will work in every community when history suggests it won’t.

Finally, after simplifying and devolving, we can begin to compete. Competition is talked about a lot with reference to the private sector. While it’s generally accepted that competition delivers a diversity of better quality phones, computers, cars and holidays, in the public sector it is usually only considered once it’s time to get a price. The real competition we need is on product, not price — competition that develops a market for finding better solutions to persistent “wicked” problems. It’s no surprise we are disappointed in politics and politicians. We have let them create a job for themselves that is too big, too complicated and too centralised for anyone to do well.

We voters have played our part, of course. We demand too many things we don’t really need because we’ve lost sight of what needy really means in this very wealthy country. We’ve also played our part in demanding the increasing regulation as we demand ever-greater safety and risk-free living. Simplification will mean taking back more personal responsibility.

Taking back as many jobs as we can for ourselves and ensuring government does its part as locally as possible will restore democratic authority to the voters and release the political class from a cage of its own making.