Let's not go back to politics as usual. It doesn't work.

With life cautiously returning to normal after the great lockdown, it’s time for Scott Morrison – who’s “had a good virus” – to think about where he goes from here. Does he want to be remembered as a single-minded warrior for his Liberal tribe, soon replaced by another scrapper, or as one of our great prime ministers, up there with Curtin and Menzies?

Does he want to cling to office by exploiting our divisions, or by uniting us in common cause? Does he want to deliver for the party base and its big business donors, or for everyone, even those without political clout?

After the shock of winning an election neither he nor anyone else expected him to, then being caught with no plans to do anything much, Morrison has been on a fast leadership learning curve. First his failure to take command of the bushfire crisis, then rising to the challenge of a pandemic for which we were quite unprepared.

Along with the premiers, his popularity has soared. At times of threat, people crave strong, confident leadership, and he has provided it. But as things start returning to normal, will it be back to squabbling politics as usual, as so many smarties are gleefully predicting?

Certainly, that’s where all our politicians’ instincts would lead them, and the media’s love of conflict would want them to be. But if Morrison allows that to happen, all the goodwill and community spirit will be lost – to Morrison’s detriment and ours.

Much has been made of our loss of trust in politicians and governments in recent years, but new polling by the Australian National University shows that, between January and April this year, confidence in the federal government increased from 27 per cent to 57 per cent, with state governments up from 40 per cent to 67 per cent.

This may be explained solely by our need for strong leadership, but I suspect another part of it is the cessation of politics as usual. Morrison has been too busy fighting the virus to waste time badmouthing his political opponents, saying things calculated to mislead, or making promises he can’t keep.

He’s been busy explaining how viruses work, what he plans to do about it and what he needs us to do. He’s been explaining, explaining, explaining. He’s stopped taking shots at the unions because he needs their co-operation. The opposition hasn’t been game to make any criticisms that weren’t constructive.

And we’ve loved it.

The news media are getting far more attention from their customers than usual. That may be because the virus is so new and frightening, but it also suggests the public finds a constant diet of the pollies’ squabbles and misbehaviour less engrossing than the press gallery does. Maybe people might be more interested in sensible discussion of the policies affecting their lives.

The handling of an epidemic and the way we cope with the huge economic cost of the medicos’ drastic remedies have obliged Morrison to rely heavily on his health and economic bureaucrats – the same people he was telling a few months earlier to keep their policy opinions to themselves and just do what they were told.

The ANU polling shows the public’s confidence in the public service has gone from 49 per cent to 65 per cent. Apart from serving the public, the bureaucrats’ job is to keep their political masters out of trouble. Who knew? Another of Morrison’s recent “learnings”.

Like most issues, responding to pandemics is a shared federal-state responsibility, requiring much co-operation and co-ordination – which, except for those holding neatness to be the highest virtue, has not required states with widely varying experiences of the virus to move in lockstep.

I suspect one reason the pollies are rating high is the blessed relief from federal-state bickering and buck-passing.

What all this says is that politics as usual wasn’t working well. The public was sick of it – as demonstrated by the two main parties’ ever-falling share of the vote and the rise of various populist parties.

Those who think there’s no alternative to politics as we’ve grown used to it show their ignorance. It wasn’t always this unedifying. And now Morrison has demonstrated how well he’s doing without it, there’s no reason we should return to it.

There’s no shortage of problems that need fixing, so governments need a big to-do list. They should focus on explaining and defending those programs, leaving no time for denigrating their opponents. They seem to have no inkling of how unpersuasive and off-putting voters find this.

If you don’t want voters to stop listening, stop refusing to give straight answers to questions. Pretend you’re a real person; throw away the talking points. Stop trying to get elected by telling us the other guy would be worse.

There’s always an important role for oppositions to keep governments on their toes. But less of the “they said white so we’d better say black to make us look different”. And, as Morrison has lately demonstrated, it does impress when you under-promise but over-deliver.

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Lack of trust may have made economic reform impossible

Life’s getting a lot tougher for optimists. I’m starting to wonder whether our politics has passed the point of peak economic reform and controversial policy changes are no longer possible.

We keep berating our politicians, urging them to show leadership and have the courage to make much-needed reforms, but they never do. Right now, it’s easy to look at the way Scott Morrison has fumbled the bushfire response, the need to get real about climate change, and even his reluctance to take a stand against blatant rorting of taxpayers’ money, and decide we have a Morrison problem.

But though we’re discovering the miracle election-winner’s various shortcomings, it’s a mistake to think one man is the cause of our reform problem. It’s possible to argue things have got steadily worse in the revolving-door period since the departure of John Howard, but the greater truth is that the problem’s systemic.

It’s hard to think of any major improvements made by five prime ministers over the past 12 years, with the possible exception of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (which we’re still busy stuffing up).

The carbon tax was a significant reform before Tony Abbott abolished it, but Labor had sabotaged its mining tax long before Abbott got to it. Malcolm Turnbull took one look at the great goal of increasing the goods and services tax and realised it was politically impossible without full compensation of low to middle income-earners, but net of compensation it would have raised peanuts.

All this is just the Australian version of similar stories that could be told in most of the other rich democracies. But, sticking with our story, why has it become next to impossible for our governments to make controversial policy changes?

The pollies would tell you it’s because the 24-hour news cycle – the media are constantly demanding to be fed, and will turn to you opponents if you don’t oblige – and the power of social media to set hares running that have to be chased. This now gets so much attention from ministers and their staff they have little time left to get on with policy development.

Maybe. A less convenient explanation is the way politics has turned into a lifelong career – from staffer to minister to a late-career job advising big business – leading pollies to worry more about their careers and less about the ideals they espoused in their first speech on entering Parliament.

But however you explain it, there’s little doubt that the life of ministers has become pretty much all day-to-day tactics and no long-term strategy. This both explains and reinforces the long-established trend – which Morrison now freely acknowledges – for ministers to prefer the advice of the ambitious young punks in their office to the advice of their department.

The staffers know about what matters – political tactics – whereas the bureaucrats want to keep banging on about policy and warning you about looming problems. Worse, they’re obsessed by the notion that whatever governments do must be strictly in accordance with the law.

Partly because fixing problems usually costs money, the era of Smaller Government and the politically motivated obsession with returning the budget to surplus has heightened the politicians’ normal temptation to pigeonhole government reports warning about problems that need to be fixed now before they get much worse.

A bunch of former fire chiefs want a meeting to warn about how much worse this year’s bushfire season will be and the need for much more equipment and action to limit climate change? Sorry, too busy with more pressing matters.

Even the idea that politicians should “never waste a crisis” – that you won’t get broad support for unpopular measures until everyone’s up in arms about the actual arrival of the problem – and its corollary – don’t act on the multitude of mere warnings of problems ahead, wait and see which of them actually transpire – seem themselves to have been pigeonholed.

Why are politicians no longer game even to seize the moment to do something real when everyone’s demanding that something be done? Because years of declining standards of political behaviour mean that trust in political leaders is now lower than ever. There’s strong survey evidence of this.

Neither side of politics is trusted to take tough measures that are genuinely in everyone’s interests. It’s got to be a trick. Mainstream politicians are trusted only when they run scare campaigns against the other side’s reform plans. But hope springs eternal that some populist rabblerouser may have the answers.

The more impotent mainstream politicians are seen to be, the more disillusioned voters will turn to populist saviours – and the more the main parties will themselves turn to populist diversions and trickery. Freeing ourselves from this vicious circle won’t be easy.

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How Morrison is putting politics ahead of policy

If you think Scott Morrison’s been busy doing not very much since the election in May, you are much mistaken. In truth he’s been very busy doing stuff of not much interest to you. But sometimes it pays to take an interest in things that don’t seem of interest.

For instance, I wouldn’t expect you to have taken much interest in the reshuffle of government departments he announced on Friday. But I’ve been reading up on it and been amazed – or appalled – by what I’ve learnt.

It’s said to be the most dramatic overhaul of the federal public service since 1987, cutting the number of departments from 18 to 14 while creating four new mega-departments and removing five department secretaries, three of them women.

Morrison said it was not a cost-saving measure, but had been done to “better align and bring together functions within the public service so they can all do their jobs more effectively and help more Australians”.

So be very clear on that: it’s been done to ensure you and I get better service from the public service. Specifically, the number of departments was shrunk so as to “ensure the services that Australians rely on are delivered more efficiently and effectively”.

I just have one problem: that’s what they all say. If Morrison had increased rather than decreased the number of departments, he would still have assured us it would make the public service more efficient and effective.

This is hardly the first time departmental arrangements have been changed. They’re changed after every election and often several times more. Changes are so common bureaucrats have a name for them: MoG – changes in the “machinery of government”.

According to calculations by Bob McMullan, former Labor minister turned academic, more than 200 changes have been made since 1993-94. “In 2015-16, machinery of government changes involved the movement of 8000 staff in 21 separate changes. Changes following the 2013 election, which involved the movement of 12,000 staff, cost an average of $14 million per agency.”

Governments everywhere do it, but research by academics at UNSW’s Canberra campus suggests Australian governments do it far more than others. “Even governments with an emphasis on ‘cutting red tape’ [such as this one] have undertaken extreme and costly MoG changes,” they say.

So why are the latest changes said to be the biggest since 1987? Because that’s when the Hawke government introduced the idea of merging departments into mega-departments. Paul Keating reversed some of those changes and John Howard undid much of the rest. Get it? It’s time to mega up again.

When the changes cause the name of some function to drop out of the ever-longer titles of departments, the interest group invariably sees red. A few years ago it was the scientists, this time it’s the arts. Actually, the arts have never had their own department, but have been shunted from one department to another.

Since Bob Hawke’s day they’ve gone from Environment to Communications, back to Environment, then Regional Development, Prime Minister and Cabinet, back to Regional Development, then Attorney-General’s, back to Communications and now to the new mega Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

So many MoG changes involve moving functions from one department to another that McMullan has christened them “merry-go-round decisions”. “Responsibility for childcare, aged care and Indigenous affairs (to name a few) have all been the subject of multiple shifts in the past decade. In some cases, the functions have moved out of one department only to return to their original home a few years later,” he says.

He adds that “disentangling financial structures, IT support structures, property responsibilities and HR systems from old organisations and reintegrating them into new ones takes considerable time and effort”.

Former boss of Prime Minister’s Terry Moran’s comment on the latest changes is blunter: “There’ll be turmoil in many departments for a significant period."

So why do the changes keep happening? Partly to create the appearance of progress – “reform”. Sometimes I think the pollies are trying to convince themselves as much as us. But mainly to indulge the preferences, prejudices and professed priorities of the prime minister and his or her ministers.

It’s notable that these extensive changes to the bureaucracy – including the sacking of five department heads – involve no changes to the ministry. The new mega Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment will now contain three Cabinet ministers, co-equal in power and glory.

What particular preferences and prejudices of Morrison do the latest changes reveal? I think it reveals this government’s disdain for public servants. It’s the revenge of the ministerial staffers (which many ministers started their political careers as). Who needs public servants giving ministers advice when it’s the staffers who understand the politics of the matter?

This is Morrison surrounding himself with the top public servants he knows and likes, replacing the ones who want to keep talking about policy with can-do men and women who don’t argue.

Morrison has repeatedly expressed his belief that he doesn’t need policy advice from public servants. They should just be getting on with implementing the policies the government gives them.

I think this is Morrison perfecting the hermetic seal of his personal Canberra bubble. He already knows what’s on his to-do list and he doesn’t want news from the outside world delaying or deterring him from his purpose.

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How politics came to trump economics in Canberra

How does the federal government really work? Is it as we were told in Yes, Minister, with the bureaucrats actually in charge, quietly manipulating the politicians? Or are public servants actually the servants of their political masters, as the pollies focus more on getting re-elected than running the country well?

Does Treasury dominate the other departments and the economic advice going to government? Do bureaucrats still give ministers "frank and fearless" advice, or has their role been usurped by the ever-growing army of ministerial staffers, politically aligned think tanks and lobby groups?

In truth, it’s hard for outsiders to be sure. But a new book by a former 30-year senior Treasury officer, Paul Tilley, Changing Fortunes, is surprisingly frank and fearless in spelling out how things work, and how Treasury’s relationship with the elected government has "changed dramatically in recent times".

Last month Scott Morrison said he saw the bureaucrats’ role as implementing the government’s policies. Their advisory role was limited to advising the government of any problems that might arise during that implementation.

Tilley makes it clear this isn’t just what Morrison would like, it’s pretty much what he and his recent predecessors have long had. Treasury gives much information to the treasurer, but avoids giving written policy advice it believes would be unwelcome. What little frank advice is given comes verbally, as part of the private discussion between the treasurer and Treasury secretary.

Tilley says the art of policy advising involves understanding the true nature of the problem, predicting the consequences of policy options and framing effective policy advice.

To be influential, however, policy advisers need to find a balance between having sufficient separation from the raw politics of government to maintain a strong policy framework, on one hand, and having sufficient responsiveness to ministers to be listened to, on the other.

"Treasury’s influence spectrum had ‘frank and fearless advice’ at one end and full ‘responsiveness to government’ at the other," he writes. The trick was the find the right spot in the middle.

But by 2014, under Tony Abbott, "Treasury was now at the full responsiveness-to-government extreme," he writes.

His book is a history of Treasury from its establishment in 1901. "Treasury has long considered itself to be the best economic policy advising agency in Australia.

"Its favoured economic policy framework has for the most part been grounded in neoclassical economics - a belief in the power of markets, and the inherent tendency of supply and demand forces to move towards equilibrium.

"Non-achievement of equilibrium must be caused then, by some market impediment or government interference, and Treasury has seen it as its job to tackle those impediments or that interference.

"If there has been one enduring belief within Treasury – its light on the hill – this is it," he writes.

This is what Tilley means by Treasury’s possession – unlike so many other departments - of a "strong policy framework".

"If there has been a central defining culture in Treasury, it has been around analytical excellence – having the strongest policy framework and the best ideas. If there has been one recurring constraint on Treasury’s policy effectiveness, it has been too narrow in its focus and closed to alternative perspectives," he says.

Tilley’s title, Changing Fortunes, recognises that, over its 118-year life, Treasury’s influence has waxed and waned.

For its first 30 years it was the government’s bookkeeper. It evolved into an economic policy agency only after the Great Depression revealed its inability to provide authoritative advice on economic policy.

The economists arrived from the 1930s, with the advent of Keynesianism. The "golden years" for the economy in the 1950s and ‘60s were also golden for Treasury, which grew in size and status, leading the debate about economic ideas and allowing its influence and strength to give it "a level of arrogance".

This did not sit comfortably with the increasingly assertive governments of the post-Menzies era. Treasury was pushed out into the cold by Gough Whitlam, and kept there by Malcolm Fraser. Treasury’s advice remained frank and fearless, but was considered dogmatic, and often wasn’t listened to. I think this was when our Yes, Minister era ended.

Relations became more constructive when Bob Hawke and Paul Keating arrived, and continued so under John Howard and Peter Costello. "There was a sense of partnership in the Treasury-government relationships, and with the advancement of economic reforms that Treasury advocated it again influenced the policy agenda."

But for the past decade, first under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, then under Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison, the "political chaos" has robbed governments of the sustained political capital needed to pursue difficult reforms. Governments fighting for their political survival have maintained a "relentless push for message over substance".

"In the daily political and media battles of the last decade, Treasury policy advice has not been sought, and at times not very effectively given. In those battles, it has been economic and budget facts and figures, not policy advice, that have been demanded," we’re told.

"The habit has developed of not providing policy advice that ministers don’t agree with. Policy advice on contentious issues now is discussed with ministers’ offices in its preparation and if the office indicates that the minister would not be comfortable with the proposed advice an information brief goes instead.

"The office’s (politically attuned) policy advice can then be provided over the top of the Treasury information brief."

The balance of policy influence has shifted to the political offices and external stakeholder groups, with the public service becoming more information providers and implementers of government decisions, he says.

"The government, therefore, is left without a strong source of genuine policy advice. The consequent lack of a consistent economic narrative over the last decade is plain for all to see."

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Change is inevitable. If we embrace it we win; resist it we lose

Will Australia’s future over the next 40 years be bright or pretty ordinary? It could go either way, depending on how we respond to the challenges facing us. So what do we have to do to rise to the occasion?

The challenges, choices and likely consequence we face are spelt out in the report, Australian National Outlook 2019, produced by the CSIRO in consultation with 50 leaders from companies, universities and non-profits. The group was chaired by Dr Ken Henry, former Treasury secretary, and David Thodey, former boss of Telstra.

The report identifies six main challenges we face between now and 2060. First is the rise of Asia and the way it is shifting the geopolitical and economic landscape.

Asia’s middle class is growing rapidly, but unless we improve our ability to compete and also diversify our exports, we risk missing out on this opportunity and will be vulnerable to external shocks.

Next is the challenge of technological change, such as artificial intelligence, automation and biotechnology, which is transforming existing industries and changing the skills required for high-quality jobs.

Third challenge is climate change, the environment and loss of biodiversity. These pose a significant economic, environmental and social threat to the world and to us. We could be on a path to 4 degrees global warming by the end of the century unless significant action is taken.

Then there’s the demographic challenge: at current growth rates Australia’s population may approach 41 million by 2060, with Sydney and Melbourne housing 8 to 9 million people each. At the same time, ageing means the population’s rate of participation in the workforce could drop from 66 per cent to 60 per cent. (I don’t accept that such a rate of population growth is either inevitable or desirable.)

The fifth challenge is that trust in governments, businesses, other organisations and the media has declined. Without a lot of trust, it will be much harder to agree on the often-tough measures needed to respond to all these challenges.

Finally, measures of social cohesion have fallen in the past decade, with many Australians feeling left behind. Inequality, financial stress, slow wage growth and poor housing affordability may be contributing to this.

The report develops two plausible but opposite scenarios of how things may develop over the next 40 years. The “slow decline” scenario is the muddle-through future, in which we resist change for as long as we can. In the “outlook vision” scenario we agree to bite the bullet, resist the lobbying of declining industries, make the needed policy changes and exploit the benefits of new technology and trading opportunities.

Under the low-road scenario, real gross domestic product grows at an average rate of 2.1 per cent a year, whereas under the high-road scenario it grows by 2.8 per cent. This would cause average real growth per person to be 39 per cent higher than under the low-road.

Real wages would be 90 per cent higher in 2060 than today, compared with 40 per cent higher under the low-road.

The low-road approach would allow cities to continue to sprawl, whereas the high-road would involve increasing the density of cities by about 75 per cent compared with today. This would keep our cities highly liveable.

Urban congestion could be reduced by higher density. Vehicle kilometres per person would fall by less than 25 per cent under the low-road, compared with up to 45 per cent under the high-road.

Net carbon emissions would fall by only 11 per cent under the low-road, with total energy use increasing by 61 per cent on 2016 levels, and only a modest improvement in energy productivity (efficiency).

By contrast, net zero emissions would be reached by 2050 under the high-road, with a doubling of energy productivity per unit of GDP and total energy use increasing by less than 45 per cent.

Whereas returns to landowners would increase by about $18 billion a year under the low-road, they’d increase by up to $84 billion a year under the high-road.

There’d be minimal environmental planting in 2060 under the low-road, but between 11 to 20 million hectares under the high-road, accounting for up to a quarter of intensive agricultural land. This “carbon forestry” explains why net zero emissions could be achieved without significant effect on economic growth.

More biodiverse plantings and better land management could help restore our ecosystems. And low-emission, low-cost sources of energy could even become a source of comparative advantage for us, with exports of hydrogen and high-voltage direct-current power.

The report says we need to achieve five key shifts to get us on to the high road. First, Industry. We need to allow a change in the structure of our industry, by increasing the adoption of new technology and so increasing productivity. We need to invest in the skills of our workers to keep their labour globally competitive and ready for the technology-enabled jobs of the future.

Second, urban sprawl. We need to plan for higher-density, multicentred and well-connected capital cities to reduce sprawl and congestion. We need to reform land-use zoning, so diverse high-quality housing options bring people closer to jobs, services and amenities. We must invest in transport infrastructure, including mass-transit, autonomous vehicles and "active transit", such as walking and cycling.

Third, energy. We must manage the shift to renewable energy, which will be driven by declining technology costs for generation, storage and grid support. We need to improve energy productivity using new technology to reduce the waste of power by households and industry.

Fourth, land. We need to use digital and genomic technology to improve food technology and to participate in new agricultural environmental markets to capitalise on our unique opportunities in global carbon markets. This will help to maintain, restore and invest in biodiversity and ecosystem health.

Finally, culture. We need to rebuild trust, encourage a healthy culture of risk-taking and deal with the social and environmental costs of reform policies.

Trouble is, a public that’s willing to re-elect the reactionary Morrison government seems more likely to settle for the low-road than strive for the best we could be.

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The great election diversion: arguments about tax, tax, tax

No one’s more interested in taxation than me, but there’s got to be more to this election campaign than claims about which side is high taxing and which low taxing, and interminable arguments and scare campaigns about franking credits and negative gearing.

Fortunately, the nation’s best and most independent think-tank, the Grattan Institute, has taken a much broader view of the issues to which the winning side should pay most attention in its Commonwealth Orange Book (an allusion to the red book and the blue book that the public service prepares to present to whichever side wins).

To help voters put the election issues into context, however, Grattan starts by comparing our performance on a broad range of indicators with nine comparable countries.

On standard of living – measured by gross national income per person – our $62,800 a year is well behind the United States ($75,900) and less behind the Netherlands ($68,100), Germany ($66,900) and Sweden ($64,900), but ahead of Canada ($57,300), Britain ($54,900), Japan ($54,300), New Zealand ($48,800) and South Korea ($48,400).

So we’re in the middle of the pack of rich countries. We can afford high quality public services (paid for by moderately high taxes) and afford to treat the disadvantaged with consideration.

But, despite all the times Scott Morrison repeats the words “strong economy”, our living standards have stagnated in recent times.

At 73 per cent, our rate of employment – the proportion of the working-age population with jobs – is at the low end of the range (New Zealand is on 77 per cent), but all countries are comfortably above America’s 70 per cent – a sign that all’s not so well in Trump’s supposedly strong economy.

A good check on our present success is our NEET rate – the proportion of people aged 15 to 29 who are not in employment, education or training. At 11 per cent we’re level with New Zealand, and better than Canada, Britain and the US, but worse that Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

Could do better. We need to fix the almighty mess we’ve made of vocational education and training.

On income inequality, our gap puts us towards the wrong end of the pack: equal with New Zealand, worse than Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Canada and even Britain, but better than South Korea, Japan and the pinnacle of inequality, the US.

We could greatly reduce inequality simply by paying the $3 billion a year it would cost to raise the dole by $75 a week – a truth Bill Shorten shouldn’t need a protracted inquiry to tell him. That $3 billion, by the way, compares with the estimated annual cost of Morrison’s tax plan, when fully implemented, of $35 billion a year.

We do surprisingly badly on housing, with fewer dwellings per 1000 adults than all the others bar South Korea. And with median housing costs as high as 23 per cent of disposable income, we’re dearer than everywhere except Holland.

Less surprising is how badly the land that used to boast about its cheap power is doing. These days, only German households pay more for electricity than ours do. Despite our ever-growing exports of LNG, our industries pay more for gas than the Canadians, Kiwis and Americans.

And, thanks to the policy dominance of the climate-change deniers, our electricity use generates far more carbon emissions than the others do. A lot more reform of the reforms needed.

Our relatively low funding of schools, and its division on a sectarian basis – the religious get more than the non-religious; some religions get more than others – hasn’t left our kids' performance looking good in international comparisons.

If you ignore the poor deal we give our Indigenous (as we usually do), our health system ranks well. Our life expectancy at birth is bettered only by Japan, and the cost of our healthcare as a proportion of national income is at the lower end (and only a bit more than half what the Yanks pay for their appalling system).

Even so, there’s room for us to get better value for money, and our out-of-pocket healthcare costs are higher than everywhere except Sweden and South Korea.

Which brings us to the quality of our governance. In Australia, trust in government is low and falling. In international comparisons, we’re about middle of the pack on trust.

But Australian cynicism is now at an all-time high – only a quarter of us think “people in government can be trusted to do the right thing” – the lowest since the survey began in 1969.

Grattan says there’s a growing sense that people in government look after their own interests, or those of powerful groups, rather than the public interest.

Many other democracies have stronger rules on political donations and lobbying, designed to keep special-interest influence in check. Most rich countries restrict political donations or party spending in some way. We don’t.

The feds are lagging the states in establishing an effective anti-corruption or integrity commission, in requiring timely disclosure of political donations, publishing ministerial diaries and in imposing a lobbyist register without glaring loopholes.

The failure of both sides to act at the federal level undermines the effectiveness of state measures.

So, turns out we do have issues other than tax we should be focusing on.

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Boards and managers responsible for reducing banks' value

Too few of us realise it, but we should thank God (and my new best friend, Peter Costello) for our independent central bank. Prime ministers and treasurers seem to say little that’s not point scoring, and Treasury is now highly politicised, but we can always rely on Reserve Bank governors to be frank about what’s happening in the economy and what should be happening.

Last week the latest of our straight-shooting governors, Dr Philip Lowe, offered his conclusions on the shocking revelations of the banking royal commission. His wise words are worth recounting at length, to be sure you don’t miss them.

As Lowe reminds us, finance is all about trust. The first line of the voluntary “banking and finance oath” (which more bankers should now be taking) says “trust is the foundation of my profession”.

Australian banks have a strong record of being worthy of the trust that is placed in them to repay deposits, but in other areas trust has been strained.

The royal commission has highlighted three issues where work is needed to restore the public’s trust. First, Lowe says, “the inadequate way in which banks have dealt with conflict of interest issues”.

Second, “the way that poorly designed incentive systems can distort behaviour – promoting a sales culture at the expense of a service culture, and promoting the short term at the expense of the long term”.

Third, “the fact that the consequences for not doing the right thing have, in some cases, been too light”.

Central to fixing these breaches of trust is creating a strong culture of service within our financial institutions, Lowe says. This starts with correcting the system of internal reward established by the board and management.

“The vast bulk of the people who work for Australia’s financial institutions do want to do the right thing, and they do want to serve their customers as best they can. But, like everybody else, they respond to the incentives they face.

“If they are rewarded on sales or short-term objectives, it should not come as a great surprise that that’s what they prioritise.”

In the minds of economists, incentives can be negative (sticks) as well as positive (carrots). “One of the things that influences incentives is the consequences and penalties that apply when something goes wrong.

“Strong penalties can play an important role in incentivising good behaviour, and this is an area we should be looking it.”

But it’s worth distinguishing between the penalties that apply for poor conduct and those that apply for granting loans that can’t be repaid, Lowe says. “On conduct issues, we should set our expectations and standards high, and if they are not met the penalties should be firm.”

With bank lending, however, it’s trickier. “Even when banks lend responsibly, a percentage of borrowers will end up in financial strife and be unable to meet their obligations.

“We need banks to be prepared to make loans in the full expectation that some borrowers will not be able to pay them back."

Get this: “Banks need to take risk and manage that risk well. If they become afraid to lend simply because of the consequences of making a loan that goes bad, our economy will suffer.”

So it does seem true that Lowe fears the banks will overreact to the punishment and tighter regulation imposed on them following the royal commission’s findings, and that this could lead to them crimping economic growth.

(Just how concerned Lowe is about this is something the media can only speculate about. Top econocrats will always be sotto voce, for fear a loud shout of warning may be self-fulfilling. The media trumpet dire predictions because they don’t imagine anyone will take them seriously.)

Back on the public’s trust, having clear lines of accountability can help. But “we should not lose sight of the fact that it is the banks’ boards and management that are ultimately responsible for the choices that banks make. Creating the right culture is a core responsibility of boards and management.”

One thing that would help, Lowe says, “is for financial institutions to a have a long-term focus and reflect that in their internal incentives. Managing to short-term targets might boost the share price for a while, but this short-termism can weaken the long-term franchise value of the bank.

“I would argue that the franchise value is more likely to be maximised if our financial institutions have a long-term perspective, treat their customers well, reward loyalty rather than take advantage of it, and invest in systems and technology that deliver world-class financial services . . .

“Doing this would not only be good for bank shareholders, but also for the broader community.” Well said.

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How a better business culture is within reach

Last week must have been a terrifying wake-up call for Australia’s ruling class – not just our politicians, but also the chief executives and directors of our big corporations, both publicly and privately owned.

If they’re half as smart as they’re supposed to be – after all, we’re told they got their jobs on merit – their performance of their duties will be much improved “going forward”.

The problems at the ABC – managing director sacked and chairman resigned in the same week – and the problem behaviour of our banks are very different, but they have one thing in common.

Members of the ABC board were made aware, if they hadn’t already known, of the chairman’s alleged interference in the day-to-day running of the corporation in a way that endangered its independence from the elected government, but chose to do nothing. Until that knowledge became public and the public’s horrified reaction obliged them to act.

The directors of our big banks presided for many years over a system of remuneration incentives – from the chief executive down – that rewarded staff for putting profit before people.

If the directors didn’t know this was leading to bank customers being mistreated, regulators misled and laws broken, it can only be because they didn’t want to know.

Well now, thanks to the royal commission’s shocking revelations, all of us know the extent of the banks’ misconduct. And the directors have nowhere to hide.

See the link between the two cases? When you’re on a board, it’s easy to see how things look from the viewpoint of the insiders – the people in the room, and on the floors below. What’s harder to see, and give adequate weight to, is the viewpoint of outsiders.

But that’s the board members’ duty, statutory and moral: to represent the interests of outsiders, including the shareholders, but also other “stakeholders”. To view things more objectively than management does. To avoid falling into groupthink. To rock the boat if it needs rocking.

A good question is: how would it look if what’s now private became public? Because that’s what happened last week. And now a lot of executives and directors are viewing the consequences of their acquiescence with fresh eyes and are not proud of what they see.

The ABC’s governance problems, we must hope, will be fixed relatively quickly. The misconduct of the banks is a much tougher problem.

The interim report of the banking royal commission carried a wake-up call also for the financial regulators – particularly the Australian Securities and Investments Commission and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, but also the Reserve Bank and Treasury.

Allow yourself to be captured by the people you’re supposed to be regulating, and one day your failure to do your duty according to law will be exposed for all to see. How good will you feel?

Get too cosy and obliging, and the banks take advantage of you behind your back. Conclude from things they say - and the way they keep cutting your funding – that your political masters want you to go easy on their generous-donor mates in banking and, when the balloon goes up, the pollies will step aside and point at you.

Since you did neglect your duty to protect the public’s interests, you won’t have a leg to stand on.

Some people were disappointed the interim report contained no recommendations – no tougher legislation, no referrals to the legal authorities – but I was heartened by Commissioner Kenneth Hayne’s grasp of the root cause of the problem and the smart way to tackle it.

Too often, he found, the misconduct was motivated by “greed - the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of basic standards of honesty . . . From the executive suite to the front line, staff were measured and rewarded by reference to profit and sales”.

Just so. But what induces seemingly decent people to put (personal) profit before people? That’s a question for psychologists, not lawyers. We’re social animals with an unconscious, almost irresistible urge to fit in with the group. A tribal urge.

Most of us get our sense of what’s ethical behaviour from the people around us in our group. If what I’m doing is no worse than what they’re doing, that’s ethical. Few of us have an inner moral compass (set by our membership of other tribes – religious or familial) strong enough to override the pressure we feel under from what our bosses and workmates are saying and doing.

Sociologists call this “norms of acceptable behaviour” within the group. When regulators first said that banks had an unhealthy corporate “culture”, business leaders dismissed this as soft-headed nonsense. Now, no one’s arguing.

But, we’re told, how can you legislate to change culture? Passing laws won’t eliminate dishonesty.

Fortunately, that’s only half true. Rationality tells us people’s behaviour flows from their beliefs, but psychologists tell us it’s the other way round: if you can change people’s behaviour, they’ll change their beliefs to fit (so as to reduce their “cognitive dissonance”).

Hayne says “much more often than not, the conduct now condemned was contrary to law”, which leads him to doubt that passing new laws is the answer.

So what is? His hints make it pretty clear, and I think he’s right. Make sure everyone in banking knows what’s illegal, then police the law vigorously with meaningful penalties. Fear of getting caught will override greed, and a change in behaviour will be reinforced by an improvement in the banking culture.

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Politicians should get wings clipped on infrastructure

The more our ever-more "professional" politicians put political tactics ahead of economic strategy – put staying in government ahead of governing well – the more pressure they come under to cede more of their power to independent authorities.

The obvious instance is our move in the mid-1990s to transfer control over interest rates ("monetary policy") from the elected government to the independent central bank.

Shifting interest rates away from those tempted to move rates down before elections and up after them has proved far better for the stability of the economy.

Another issue on which voters don't trust politicians to make good decisions – mainly because of the risk of collusion between them – is their own remuneration.

So, first, responsibility for setting politicians' salaries, and now, their expenses, has been handed over to independent bodies.

Then there was the Gonski report's proposal that responsibility for determining the size of grants to public, Catholic and independent schools be taken away from deal-doing pollies and given to a properly constituted authority, following consistent and transparent criteria.

The idea was rejected by Julia Gillard but, particularly now the amazing variance in the deals Labor did with different school systems has been revealed under the Coalition's version of Gonski, there's still hope we'll end up with an independent, rules-based grants authority.

Some years ago, the Business Council took up a proposal by Dr Nicholas Gruen for the example set by monetary policy to be spread to fiscal (budget) policy. An independent body would set the budget's key parameters – for spending, revenue and budget balance – leaving the government to decide the specific measures to take within those parameters.

The idea didn't gain traction, but it may have boosted the push for independent evaluation of infrastructure projects.

You can see an admission that "something needs to be done" in the establishment of Infrastructure Australia by the Rudd government, and its rejig by the Abbott government, as a supposedly "independent statutory body providing independent research and advice to all levels of government".

Trouble is, the authority has little authority. Its role is to create the illusion of independent evaluation and reformed behaviour, while the reality continues unchanged.

There's no obligation for even the federal government to have all major projects evaluated, for them to be evaluated before a government commits to them and begins work, nor for those evaluations to be made public as soon as they're completed, so voters can debate the merits of particular projects with hard evidence.

Promises to build particular projects in a state, or even an electorate, are a key device all parties use to buy votes in election campaigns.

As Marion Terrill, of the Grattan Institute, has demonstrated, few of the projects promised by the government, opposition and Greens at last year's election had been ticked by Infrastructure Australia, and many of those it had ticked weren't on anyone's list of promises.

Terrill's research has revealed the huge proportion of government spending on capital works that's unlikely to yield much economic or social return to taxpayers.

For some years the Reserve Bank, backed by the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has argued that fiscal policy should be doing more to help monetary policy get our economy back to trend growth by spending more on worthwhile infrastructure projects. These would add to demand in the short run, and to supply capacity in the medium run by improving private sector productivity.

This changed approach would involve shifting the focus of fiscal policy from the overall budget deficit (including capital works spending) to the more meaningful recurrent or operating deficit.

This year's budget seemingly accepted this proposal, promising to give greater prominence to the NOB – net operating balance – and announcing two huge new infrastructure projects: the second Sydney airport and the Melbourne to Brisbane inland freight railway.

See the problem? Government infrastructure spending does wonders for the economy only if the money's spent on much-needed projects. As a proper evaluation would show, the inland railway is a waste of money (the product of a deal with the Nationals).

So it's little wonder that cities and infrastructure are the third big item, after healthcare and education, on the Productivity Commission's new agenda for micro-economic reform.

It's first recommendation? "It is essential that governments ensure that proposed projects are subject to benefit-cost evaluations and that these, as well as evaluations of alternative proposals for meeting objectives, are available for public scrutiny before decisions are made."

This is something the professed believers in Smaller Government, and those professing to be terribly worried about lifting our productivity, should be making much more noise about.

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Governments share power with multitudinous lobbyists

You may think the media is full of the argy-bargy of politics, full to saturation point. There is, however, a level of politics we rarely hear about. You may not have noticed, but it raised its ugly head at the time of the budget earlier this month.

One sign was the anger, almost outrage, of the big banks when, on budget night, Scott Morrison surprised them by announcing a small new tax on them. Why weren't we consulted about this, they shouted.

Just a few days earlier, Education Minister Simon Birmingham surprised us by announcing the government's conversion to needs-based federal grants to schools, a la St David of Gonski.

The Catholic school authorities were deeply saddened. Birmingham's plan was to gradually unwind decades of special sectarian deals, the most recent of which had been made with the previous Labor government.

Why in Heaven's Name weren't we consulted before this unholy decision was made public, they cried.

When I heard both interest groups making their loud complaints I reacted the same way. Who the hell do these guys think they are?

You and I don't expect to be consulted before governments announce their policy decisions, so what gives these people the right to special treatment?

Well, I'll tell you: it's because that's the way they're used to being treated. Governments are considering making changes affecting a powerful and vocal interest group, so they – and more particularly, the top bureaucrats in the relevant government department – engage in private discussions with industry leaders and lobbyists.

If Birmingham decided on a new school funding arrangement without consulting the most-affected interest groups, it must have been because he knew they'd move heaven and earth in their efforts to ensure it didn't happen.

And, come to think of it, it's not all that unusual for new tax measures to be announced in the budget without prior consultation. You could justify this as necessary to ensure people aren't able to profit from inside information.

But I suspect it happens also because Treasury likes it that way. In the annual preparation for the budget, which goes on for months, Treasury ensures decisions about tax changes are made just days before budget night. That way, there's no time to consult and no time for ministers to be dissuaded from acting.

So the consultation happens after the move has been announced, when the government would lose face if it backed down too far.

Indeed, major tax and policy changes are invariably put into an industry consultation phase before being legislated. You can justify this practice by saying the world's become a complicated place and that the affected industry will always have an understanding of the practicalities of implementation that's superior to the bureaucrats'.

But there's more to it. I think industry representatives are routinely consulted on policy matters affecting them because, in practice, elected governments have come to share their power with a multitude of lobby groups.

You and I don't see the huge extent of contact that occurs between peak industry groups, consultant lobbyists and visiting executives, on one hand, and ministers, parliamentarians and bureaucrats on the other.

Indeed, we non-Canberrans don't realise the extent to which lobbying has become that city's second-biggest industry. That's particularly so if you include Canberra's small army of economic consultants, who earn their living by concocting "independent" modelling which, purely by chance, always seems to prove their clients' case.

And that's not counting the big four accounting firms which, when they're not doing "independent" modelling for the small fee, give extensive – and no doubt expensive – consulting advice on policy questions to government departments.

Why do they need such advice? Why is policy expertise moving from the public service to outside consultants? Because the yearly imposition of "efficiency dividends" on government departments means they keep getting rid of their policy experts. The words "false economy" spring to mind.

For an idea of just how big the lobbying industry has become, consider this. Buried in the budget was an announcement that the government had accepted the recommendations of a review of the financial system's arrangements for resolving external disputes.

Some lobby groups were unhappy with this decision, so last week they issued a press release saying so. It was issued in the name of six industry groups: the Mortgage and Finance Association of Australia, the Customer Owned Banking Association, the Australian Collectors & Debt Buyers Association, the Association of Securities and Derivatives Advisers of Australia, the Australian Timeshare and Holiday Ownership Council, and the Association of Independently Owned Financial Professionals (each with their own logo).

But if all the industry groups and other lobbyists did was issue press releases there would be little to worry about. Lobbying in public is just the tip of the iceberg. What matters is all the private contact with bureaucrats, ministers and politicians, particularly crossbench senators, we know nothing about.

Late last year I wrote prematurely about an eye-opening book by Dr Cameron Murray and Professor Paul Frijters, Game of Mates, which has finally been published.

The book reminds us that one way moneyed interests gain influence in the halls of power is by rewarding co-operative senior bureaucrats and politicians with post-retirement patronage. You too could be gamekeeper-turned-lobbyist.

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The Game of Mates we never quite notice

Not long after he arrived at Sydney Cove as a convict on the First Fleet, James Ruse was granted Australia's first parcel of private land – 30 acres in the heart of Parramatta – by governor Arthur Phillip.

Establishing private property rights in land is one of the core powers of government to this day. Britain had imposed limits on how much land Phillip could give away, but he had discretion over who he gave it to.

He seems to have taken a shine to Ruse, or maybe Ruse knew how to keep in his good books.

Three years later, Ruse sold his original grant for £40. A year later he was given 140 acres. Then another 16 acres, three years later.

The following year he sold these lands for £300. Twenty-one years later, aged 60, he obtained another grant of 100 acres at Riverstone. Altogether, he was given land value equivalent to about 20 years' wages for an English worker. In today's terms, about $1.5 million.

All this is recounted in the book, Game of Mates: New Masters of Australia, by Paul Frijters and Cameron Murray, to be launched on Friday.

Frijters, one of the most promising academic economists in the country, was a professor at the University of Queensland, but some of his research mightily offended the Brisbane establishment, so now he's off to a better job at the London School of Economics.

The book is his parting gift to Australia. He argues that a small class of well-connected operators hanging around the levers of government power are lining their own pockets at the expense of the rest of us.

Since Ruse was the first of them, he names each of these villains James. Frijters wants us to meet his archetypal modern James.

"He is a charming Queenslander who went to the right school, was president of the student union and has both politicians and top civil servants in his contact list. He is a professional in the Game of Mates.

"James is a clever man. When the 1980s housing boom began driving up the prices of houses throughout Queensland, he pinpointed a way to leverage the price gains for himself."

James' genius was to recognise that politicians and bureaucrats were truly in control of the gains from the influx of money for housing.

"It took political decisions to decide where new houses could be built. It took bureaucratic decisions to decide who would get permission to build bigger houses and larger apartment buildings.

"James set to work, using some of the money from his family's wealth to get started. He bought large plots of land just where one would not think the cities would expand and he set to work on the politicians and bureaucrats he knew.

"He spent time with them, shared parties and business dealings with them. He made some of them partners in his firm and, in turn, James' friends were appointed on boards deciding on planning decisions.

"Befriended politicians ran with slogans pronouncing that James' wishes were opportunities for their region, rather than costs to it.

"The politicians were later rewarded with consulting jobs to James and his friends' companies."

Get it? A Game of Mates doing what mates do, look after each other. I do you a favour and maybe one day you'll do me one.

Frijters argues this game is played in many more areas than land zoning. It can be played wherever government departments are supposedly regulating the activities of powerful industries in the interests of the public.

How many times have we seen politicians and top bureaucrats retire, but then pop up a few months later on the board or as a consultant to one of the companies they used to regulate?

How many times have we seen lobbyists brought in to head departments that regulate particular industries?

Frijters says the game has four main elements. First, flaws in our laws and regulations that create an economic honeypot to be snatched.

Second, the need for James and his mates to work as a group to capitalise on these flaws by establishing their networks of favour-exchanges.

Third, they need a way to signal loyalty to the group, a way for new members to join, and a way to rid themselves of traitors.

Fourth, they need to shield their true actions from public scrutiny with plausible myths suggesting James' dodgy dealings are good for Australia.

Frijters stresses that people playing this game aren't necessarily acting illegally, and in that sense may not be corrupt.

"The rules surrounding conflicts of interest, cooling-off periods for politicians [before they begin] working in industry, and exercising political discretion, are weak in Australia," he says.

What can we do to stop the game? "Our basic advice is to charge James for the privileges he trades in his Game of Mates or to establish a public competitor to supply the product he sells ourselves.

"We should charge him for the value increase on his houses. Charge his bank for the profits made by collusion, or introduce real competition by a true state bank. Charge his mines for the value pumped out of our ground. Charge him proper taxes. Set up a state superannuation fund . . . to compete with private ones."

Just as well you're leaving the country, Paul.

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Why big business has so much influence

According to the Labor Party's rising star, Senator Sam Dastyari, 10 big companies control our political process. They are the four big banks, three big mining companies, the two big grocery chains and the one big telco, Telstra.

The only surprise in that list was his third miner, not the foreign-owned Glencore Xstrata – to go with the foreign-owned BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – but the largely Australian-owned Fortescue Metals.

I doubt it's quite that simple but, on the other hand, I doubt many people would believe me if I claimed that big business had no great influence on our politicians.

You don't need to look far to find evidence of the power wielded by "the big end of town".

Consider the fate of the mining tax. First Julia Gillard allowed the original big three miners to redesign the tax to their own satisfaction, hugely reducing its revenue-raising potential, then Tony Abbott abolished it.

Or consider the banks. Whenever they fail to pass on in full to home buyers a cut in the official interest rate, the pollies on both sides are loud in their condemnation. But they never actually do anything.

Since the global financial crisis they haven't been game to make the one big change we need, obliging the banks to choose between their government guarantees and their right to continue engaging in speculative market trading.

When the former Labor government responded to the various cases of bank-owned outfits giving appalling advice to small investors by tightening up the rules and limiting the use of commissions, first Labor toned down its investor protections in response to bank objections, then the incoming Coalition government attempted to tone them down a lot more.

And any number of farmers and small suppliers will tell you Woollies and Coles are allowed to get away with murder.

It's tempting to think the economy is controlled for the benefit of big business, not mere consumers.

But there are plenty of counter examples. Take Malcolm Turnbull's decision not to make changes to the goods and services tax.

Who do you think was pushing hardest for the GST to be raised? They hoped the proceeds would be used to cut the rate of company tax.

The point is that politicians survive only by getting enough votes, and each of us gets a vote but companies get none.

Turnbull turned away from the increased GST because he feared the economic benefits from a change wouldn't be sufficient to justify the risk of losing many votes.

But if politicians care ultimately only about votes, why are they so prone to accommodating the interests of big business? Because the two sides compete hard to attract votes during election campaigns using advertising, direct marketing and other expensive tools.

The parties need money to finance their campaigns, and big business and big unions are willing to supply it. Election campaigning has become a kind of arms race, where each side can never get enough. Give the parties public money to help with expenses and it doesn't satisfy them, it just moves the race to a higher level.

But does this mean businesses are attempting to buy influence with people in power? Does it mean the parties are effectively selling favours?

What an utterly offensive thing to say. Joe Hockey would be shocked. Businesses just want to support the democratic process. The parties are happy to take the money, but donors gain nothing in return.

Don't believe it? Neither does the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. It says so in a new report, Financing Democracy: Funding of political parties and election campaigns and the risk of policy capture.

"Although money is necessary for political parties and candidates to operate and reach out to their voters, experience has shown that there is a real and present risk that some parties and candidates, once in office, will be more responsive to the interests of a particular group of donors rather than to the wider public interest," the report says.

"Donors may also expect a sort of 'reimbursement' for donations made during an election campaign and to benefit in future dealings with the respective public administration, for instance through public procurement or policies and regulations."

The report proposes a framework of items to avert the capture of government policy by interest groups. It advocates tight regulation of party donations, but warns that rules can be avoided by the use of "third-party" funding (interest groups in sympathy with, but not part of, particular parties) and other legislative loopholes.

It calls for a highly independent, well-resourced electoral authority with monitoring powers and the ability to impose sanctions ranging from fines and criminal charges to the power to confiscate illegal donations. Sounds a long way from our electoral commission.

It reported on political donations only last week. The donations it informed us of had been made up to 19 months earlier. Even so, the figures may not be complete. There is little penalty for late disclosure.
Parties are not required to disclose donations under $12,800, and buying a seat at a dinner table with a minister is not classed as a donation.

The OECD report says public reporting of donations should be timely, reliable, accessible and digitally searchable. Why? To make it easier for civil society groups and the media to be effective watchdogs.

Perhaps that's why we don't do it.

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Go to ex-bureaucrats' blogs for the good oil on policy

Dr Ken Henry, a former Treasury secretary, says he can't recall a time when the debate about public policies has been poorer. I can't either, and I guess the dreaded MSM - mainstream media - is part of the problem.

But if the challenge of digital disruption has tempted the mainstream to devote more time to political colour and movement and less to debating government policies, there's one respect in which the internet has made things better.

The advent of blogging has given anyone who wants to the ability to air their thoughts to the world. A lot of blogs come under the heading of you're-entitled-to-your-opinion, but sometimes they're written by people who know a lot more about the topic than most of us and have a valuable contribution to make.

That's particularly true when academics take to blogging. One of the earliest bloggers about economic policy  was Professor John Quiggin, of Queensland University. Other high quality Australian blogsites are Club Troppo, Core Economics and, for the more libertarian, Catallaxy Files. (There was a blog called Ross Gittins, Corrected but they seem to have given up.)

The best academic blogsite is undoubtedly the uni-sponsored The Conversation. To have all those academics writing short, timely, readable pieces in their area of specialty is an invaluable contribution to the policy debate.

And then there's the blog of the former bureaucrat John Menadue, called Pearls and Irritations. Menadue brings in other contributors, and his blog is the place to go to see ex-bureaucrats casting a critical eye over present government policy.

These guys know where the bodies are buried, and no one sees through the political smoke and mirrors  more easily than they do.

Earlier this year Menadue teamed up with the former econocrat Dr Mike Keating to instigate a special series on the many challenges facing the government today, called Fairness, Opportunity and Security, with a wide range of contributions from ex-bureaucrats (including Stephen Fitzgerald, David Charles, Andrew Podger and Jon Stanford), academics (including Michael Wesley, Ian Marsh, Ian McAuley and Julianne Schultz) and academics who've spent time in government (including Ross Garnaut, Glenn Withers and Stuart Harris).

Now Menadue and Keating have turned the series into a book of the same name, published by AFT Press, which they asked me to launch last week. It covers 13 topics ranging from the role of government to the economy, foreign policy, health, the environment and Indigenous affairs.

In his discussion of the way vested interests seem to have excessive influence over policymaking, Menadue notes the remarkable rise of the lobbying industry, estimating there are now more than 1000 lobbyists operating in Canberra.

"The health 'debate' is really between the minister and the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Pharmacy Guild, Medicines Australia and the private health insurance companies," he writes.

"The debate is not with the public about health policy and strategy; it is about how the minister and the department manage the vested interests."

Menadue says much of the policy skills in Canberra departments have been downgraded and policy work is contracted out to accounting and consultancy firms. Policy work within the government is now undertaken more in specialist organisation such as the Productivity Commission.

"Departmental policy capability has been seriously eroded. That is the real story behind the problems of the pink batts scheme."

As for the "inexperienced and young ministerial staffers", they're "much more likely to listen to vested interests".

On foreign affairs and internal security, the blog collection says we've become overdependent on the United States at the expense of our relations in our region. As Paul Keating once said, we should be "finding our security in, not from, Asia".

In dealing with the threat from terrorism, "a balance needs to be struck between national security and the freedoms essential for a civil society, including the humane treatment of refugees. The politicisation of security has arguably made us less safe."

On Medicare we're told it "has stood the test of time but it now represents the single biggest budgetary challenge and it is over 30 years since it has been seriously reviewed and reformed".

On superannuation, Andrew Podger, former head of various government departments and now a professor at the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy, makes a plea for considered and balanced reform rather than piecemeal tinkering.

You'll go a long way before you find someone providing a more authoritative, independent and sensible commentary on budget repair and other fiscal matters than Mike Keating, former head of the Finance department and Prime Minister's and Cabinet.

In this book he has hardheaded things to say about the dream of lower taxation, which "has been embraced by all political parties without any evidence that, given our already low starting point, less taxation will in fact lead to higher economic growth, let alone pay for itself".

He quotes John Howard saying that tax cuts should be considered only "after you have met all the necessary and socially desirable expenditures".

All the evidence is that these spending demands, even if efficiently funded, are most unlikely to be fiscally sustainable without a modest increase in taxation relative to gross domestic product.

"Indeed, Australia already has lower taxation than almost any other advanced nation, but we aim to provide the same level of public services and welfare as the others," he writes.

"Thus the biggest challenge facing modern governments is the gap between expectations on them and their capacity to deliver.

"In these circumstances, encouraging unrealistic expectations of tax cuts is only making government more difficult."

Reading this collection of blogs leaves you with the impression the good bureaucratic advice our successive governments have needed to do a better job of running the country now resides outside the public service, in the minds of the retired bureaucrats who're from the days when they were expected to know about policy.

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How my views have changed over 40 years

They say if you still believe at 50 what you believed when you were 15, you haven't lived. Just this week I've now worked at Fairfax Media as an economics journalist for 40 years. Those ages don't quite fit, but my views today are certainly very different from what they were when I started.

When, disillusioned with life as a chartered accountant, I began at Fairfax, most of my effort went into relearning the economics I was supposed to have learnt at university. There it didn't make much sense to me and I had trouble remembering enough of it to pass exams. Once passed, it was promptly forgotten.

A lot of my re-education came at the hands of the nation's most high-powered econocrats, who are remarkably generous with the telephone tutorials they're willing to give journos who seem genuine.

So at first most of my effort went into mastering and then propagating economic orthodoxy. I still see it as an important part of my job to help readers understand what it is that leads economists to do and say the things they do.

Newspaper economics tends to be pretty basic. Doing the job year after year is like answering the eternal year 12 economics essay question: "From your knowledge of economic theory, comment on ..." Joe Hockey's budget preparations, cabinet's decision not to give SPC Ardmona a $25 million subsidy, the government's inquiry into the financial system.

But one ambition has been to introduce something a little more sophisticated, to lift the level of analysis from introductory to intermediate. To this end I've devoted a fair bit of my free time to reading the latest books about developments in economics and, increasingly, psychology.

Though Australian academic economists write books that seem intended to impress by being incomprehensible, leading American academics write (carefully footnoted) books that explain their findings to the average intelligent person. Sometimes they even make the best-seller lists.

I've been looking for stuff that would interest readers, but also trying to deepen - and broaden - my understanding of the topic. It's this broadening that's done most to change my views about economics and how I should do my job.

Economics is the study of "the daily business of life" - earning money and spending it, buying and selling assets such as homes and shares, borrowing to finance the purchase of assets and saving to repay debts. Macro-economics is the study of how whole economies work and how governments can "manage" them, seeking to limit inflation and unemployment and promote growth.

So, contrary to my conclusions at uni, economics has a lot of practical application. There's always plenty of interest in the topic and plenty of coverage in the media.

But as I've got older and read more widely I've realised that, if anything, we tend to take economics too seriously. It deals only with the material side of life - getting and spending - and in this more materialist age we run a great risk of focusing excessively on getting and spending at the expense of other, equally important aspects of our lives. I've concluded there's more to life than economics.

Our heightened materialism means we take economists far more seriously today than we did 40 years ago. Their message is that we're not trying hard enough: not doing enough to change ("reform") our economic arrangements to foster faster growth in the economy and hence a more rapidly increasing material standard of living.

But I've concluded economists suffer from the same failing as other specialists. In their enthusiasm for their topic they want to take over your life. The economists' union wants to make becoming more prosperous the nation's central objective. And these guys urge us on with little thought about what trying harder and doing more may imply for the other dimensions of our lives.

You and I know most of the satisfaction in our lives comes from our personal relationships. But relationships aren't part of the economists' model, so they urge particular "reforms" without any thought about the implications for our relationships. Politicians act on their advice without such thought, either.

So, to borrow a cliche, economists need to be kept on tap but not on top. These days I try to explain the rationale for economic policies - what they're trying to achieve and how they're supposed to work - but also play the role of a sort of economics theatre critic, adding a critique of economics, economic policies and economists.

I've learnt there's little correlation between being a successful business person and having a good understanding of economics. They seize on an argument that seems to support the line they're pushing. Whether it's logical they seem not to know or care.

Economists study and advocate efficiency in the way we combine economic resources - land, labour and capital - to produce goods and services. This is supposed to maximise material prosperity. The position I've come to is that we should strive for efficiency unless we've got a good enough reason to be inefficient.

For instance, it's inefficient to have government rules specifying minimum levels of local content on television. It would be much cheaper to buy not just most but all our TV programs from America. But I agree it's better to force our TV channels to produce a bit of Aussie drama. Culture matters.

Even so, knowing where to draw the line on inefficiency ain't easy. It's too short-sighted to expect that those industries, interest groups or regions that have managed to extract assistance from government in the past retain their privileges forever, or that industries adversely affected by overseas developments be given ever-growing government assistance so nothing needs to change and all pain is avoided.

Life's a bit tougher than that. Change is unrelenting. It's our continuously changing circumstances - and, I hope, our improving understanding of how to respond to challenges - that keeps me going.

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No need to exaggerate Labor's failings

They say history is written by the victors, and already the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government's many critics are busy reshaping our memory of the recent past. But, though Labor's performance was poor in many respects, they shouldn't lay it on too thick.

Those who claim Labor Party governance led to "chaos" should look up the meaning of the word, while those who repeat Tony Abbott's claim that this was "the worst government ever" are too young to remember the Whitlam era.

What is true is that Labor's latest incarnation was far inferior to the 13-year Hawke-Keating government. In just the term of the Howard government, Labor seemed to lose its race memory of how to govern.

Rather than blame all its troubles on the three years of Rudd-Gillard infighting, or keep telling itself its policies were good, Labor needs to reflect deeply on why its execution of policy fell so far short of the Hawke-Keating example.

A fair bit of the reason is its failure to unceasingly explain and justify its policies and instead rely on wet-behind-the-ears spin doctors and dodgy taxpayer-funded ad campaigns.

Rather than explain and justify, ministers preferred to criticise their opponents, forgetting the punters are never edified or impressed by arguing pollies and inadvertently giving the opposition greater credibility. Labor forfeited most of the advantages of incumbency.

One big difference was the way Bob Hawke and Paul Keating maintained the confidence of business. Part of the explanation was that when you reveal yourself to be a soft touch for rent seekers - as Rudd did almost from the start - you incite envy and disaffection, not respect.

Another part of it was Gillard's resorting to the rhetoric of class conflict, which did much more to disenchant business than to energise complacent workers. Hawke and Keating did a lot to redistribute income, but didn't make speeches about it.

The more Abbott and Joe Hockey are forced by economic reality to back-pedal on their promises to "end the waste" and "repay the debt", the more they'll cover their retreat by exaggerating Labor's budgetary failings.

So let's set the record straight from the start. It's unimpressive enough without any need for hyperbole.

The standard critique of Labor governments is that they're "big-spending, big-taxing". This time the latter accusation is false, but the former is all too true.

If you measure the burden of federal taxes as a percentage of gross domestic product - as you should - it reached an all-time high of 24.2 per cent in the mid-noughties and was 23.7 per cent in Howard's last year.

Under Labor, and with much help from the recession we supposedly didn't have, it fell to 20 per cent in 2010-11 and is expected to have recovered only to 22.2 per cent in Labor's last year.

How could this be when Labor introduced two "big new taxes" on carbon and mining? The trick was that most of the expected revenue from these taxes was returned to taxpayers on the form of income tax cuts, business tax breaks and other "tax expenditures". This is why Abbott's unwinding of both tax packages will do so little to cut taxes overall.

Turn to the spending side, however, and you find spending was 23.1 per cent of GDP in Howard's last year and is expected to reach 25.3 per cent in Labor's last year. That represents average real growth of 3.9 per cent a year.

Both those calculations effectively abstract from Labor's clearly labelled fiscal stimulus spending after the global financial crisis, because it really was temporary.

And that average real growth rate of 3.9 per cent occurred even though, in the last four of its six budgets, Labor professed to be more than achieving its goal of limiting real spending growth to 2 per cent on average over the forward estimates.

How was this trick done? All the restraint was in the "out years", never the present. To be fair, real annual spending growth averaged 3.7 per cent in the 10 Howard years before the financial crisis.

The big areas of growth under Labor were public housing, education and health, not counting the biggest, interest on the public debt.

Treasury projected in its pre-election economic and fiscal outlook that, left to its own devices, spending will grow at the real rate of 3.5 per cent a year in the coming decade, spurred by health, the national disability scheme and the Gonski education reforms.

Labor's problem was that its appetite for increased spending on worthy causes knew no bounds but it lacked the courage to ask the electorate to pay more to cover this expansion.

We'll see how much more courageous Abbott and Hockey prove to be.

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