Political attention over the past few
weeks has been fixed on the drama of
the Abbott government’s first budget –
the winners and losers, the problem of
broken promises, the prospects in the
Senate. Beyond that, though, the budget
reinforces another trend of potentially great
significance for the quality of Australian
democracy. Since its beginnings, the
government has made a series of decisions
that mean public scrutiny of its policies and
their implementation is more difficult.
As soon as the Coalition took government last
September, it set about distinguishing itself
from its defeated, discredited predecessor. It
would be a “no surprises, no excuses”
government, Tony Abbott promised , and his
first weeks in the job were designed to project
an image of methodical deliberation. “Never
before in Australian history has there been
such a quiet transition to a new
administration,” veteran correspondent
Laurie Oakes wrote admiringly. “Abbott and
his team ignored the hungry media beast’s
demand to be fed.”
Within months, though, Oakes was accusing
the Coalition of “thumbing its nose at voters”
by avoiding media scrutiny. The new
government, it soon became clear, was even
more determined than its predecessors to
control the flow of information to the media
and the public.
The earliest decisions set the tone. All requests
for interviews with Coalition frontbenchers
would need the approval of the prime
minister’s office. MPs were banned from
engaging in political commentary on
Facebook and Twitter. The code of conduct for
ministerial staff gained a new clause, also
banning political commentary on social
media. One disenchanted senator, Ian
Macdonald, accused Abbott’s office and his
chief of staff, Peta Credlin, of “obsessive,
centralised control.”
Next, the government introduced rules
covering public servants’ use of social media
in their official and private capacities. “The
sweeping new rules will even cover public
servants posting political comments
anonymously, including mummy bloggers on
parenting websites,” marvelled the Daily
Telegraph. Public employees were expected to
report breaches by their colleagues.
The move was supported by the Human Rights
Commission’s new “freedom commissioner,”
Tim Wilson. “Ultimately,” he said, “public
servants voluntarily and knowingly choose to
accept these limits on their conduct when they
accept employment.” In other words, if they
didn’t like the new restrictions, they had the
freedom to resign.
The government also tightened freedom of
information, or FOI, procedures. After the
previous election, in 2010, at least seventeen
departments released the briefs they had
prepared for the incoming government,
providing valuable information to journalists
and the public about policy positions and
challenges. No such release came after last
year’s election, reported Crikey ’s Bernard
Keane, and officials were unable to explain
the logic behind the reversal. FOI requests for
the briefings were also refused .
In May, the attorney-general’s department
declined to release a $400,000 report by
KPMG examining three of Australia’s federal
courts. According to the Australian’s Sean
Parnell, it justified its decision on the novel
grounds that to make it public “would have an
impact on the proper and efficient conduct of
the department” because “it would impede the
provision of frank, independent advice from
professional services firms to inform policy.”
Such an open-ended exemption would justify
withholding any consultancy report to
government. As Parnell put it, “tactics of
secrecy and obfuscation have returned to the
fore in Canberra.”
Meanwhile, the under-resourced Office of the
Australian Information Commissioner was
taking 250 days, on average, to finalise
requests for external reviews of decisions to
refuse FOI requests. On budget night the
government neatly disposed of this problem
by abolishing the office. In future, appeals
against FOI refusals are to be handled by the
Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Attorney-
General’s or the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
The office was created in 2010 to address the
long turnaround times and expensive appeals
in the working of the FOI system; its abolition
is likely to make it harder and more
expensive for FOI users to extract
information.
The government’s resistance to disclosure is
having an impact not only on what
information is released but also on what is
produced, and by whom. Recent conservative
governments have been much more active
than the Rudd–Gillard government in
moulding the senior sections of the public
service to their liking. The most disturbing
example is the Abbott government’s
insistence, immediately on taking office, that
Treasury secretary Martin Parkinson resign
his position, with effect later this year. Both
John Howard and Peter Costello advised
against the forced resignation, and
Parkinson’s predecessor, Ken Henry,
described it as unprecedented in the
department’s 113-year history. “No
government has ever thought it appropriate to
remove the head of the Treasury,” he said,
“and put in somebody who they think is of… a
more comfortable political character.” If that
was Abbott’s motive, he said, then it was
“disappointing” and “a historic action.” But
according to the Conversation ’s Michelle
Grattan, a key factor was Parkinson’s earlier
role as head of the Department of Climate
Change.
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