Ideas@TheCentre
Policy short-terminalism
Every commentator in the land has had their say about the unprecedented dismissal of a first-term Prime Minister. The consensus is that Mr Rudd was destroyed by the same forces that made him Prime Minister – by the polls and the media-driven ‘machine’ politics that dominate contemporary public life.
In public policy terms, this is truer and far more significant than has yet been realised. Recall just three of the policy disasters that drove the nails into the Rudd government’s political coffin, all of which were based on short-term electoral considerations.
‘Retail politics’ got the government into trouble right from the start. To help win the 2007 election, Rudd promised to ‘do something’ about grocery and petrol prices. When he ditched the ineffective fuel and grocery watch schemes, cynical voters concluded that this was a ‘do nothing’ government.
Then there was Rudd’s ill-conceived pledge to force the states to fix public hospitals by the middle of 2009 or hold a referendum on a Commonwealth takeover at the next federal election. This broken promise entrenched the government’s reputation for over-promising and under-delivering.
Finally, the Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT) was announced with little prior discussion of the issue. Having over-spent on stimulus measures, the RSPT was conjured up to put the election-year budget forecasts back in the black by 2013. The perception of a panicked revenue-grab terminally damaged Rudd’s credibility with a cautious electorate.
Beyond the political theatre, the Rudd saga teaches a number of lessons.
First, bad policy geared towards the electoral cycle is bad politics. Policy short-termism has proved, at the national level at least, to be politically terminal.
Second, good governments need to develop principled and well thought out policies to retain the public’s trust and confidence.
Third, Rudd’s demise has not changed the fundamentals. The spinmeisters are still in charge in Canberra. The major parties are still addicted to focus group based politics and cannot be relied on to formulate long-term policy agendas.
But there is one bright spot from a parochial perspective. Amid all the spin and tea-leaf reading, independent think tanks such as CIS can play an increasingly important role, and can nudge the political process in the right direction by formulating good policy in the national interest.
