Whatever happened to smaller government?

I have a cutting from the Melbourne Age
dated Friday 1
March 1996 that I rejoice in.

It’s headed “Choose a change for the
better, for all Australians” and by-lined “John Howard” – but I wrote much of
it as a good little campaign staffer.

It opens “The choice that Australians face
tomorrow is clear. It is a choice
between more of the same and a change for the better – more of the same
mismanagement, unfairness and deceit that have been the marks of the Keating
Government, and a change for the better under the coalition”.

It closes with “I seek the support of
Australians in restoring at the nation level a government of trust, honesty,
integrity and down-to-earth common sense”.

Nine years later?

Well, nine years later I still believe in
that mixture of optimism and down-to-earth common sense Ronald Reagan showed
when he said “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the
problem.”

Have a look at John Howard’s
administration. Government is very much
the problem them – from two fronts.

Ministers seem to have problems exercising
their duties. It doesn’t matter if we’re
talking about the case of Cornelia Rau or Rod Barton’s claims about Iraq. They say they weren’t told or didn’t
know. They engage in legalistic
hair-splitting and public servants take the rap.

That means ministers can’t control their
departments, don’t know what is happening and that bureaucracy is out of
control.

It suggests that John Howard and his
Cabinet can’t run government – even though they’ve had nine years to come to
grips with beast.

Look at this case study from Monday’s Age – here.

The embattled
Immigration Department has come under attack on another front, with National
Party whip John Forrest describing it as “out of control”.

Mr Forrest is
furious at the manner in which the department, searching for illegal workers,
is raiding fruit farms in his northern Victorian electorate of Mallee, and so
far he has been unable to get answers from the minister, Amanda Vanstone.

“When the
department does a raid it is disgraceful how they behave,” he told The
Age yesterday. In a recent 4am raid, there was a forced
entry and broken doors and windows.

Based on the
department’s conduct, “I can well believe they might knowingly lock
someone up, like this unfortunate lady (Cornelia Rau),” he said.

Raids happened
in his area an average of once a week, he said. Senator Vanstone had told him
raids were carried out by immigration staff accompanied by state police and
required a warrant from the department secretary or his delegate.

He had written
to Senator Vanstone last December after a raid in which a grower had asked to
see the warrant and the officer “went to his satchel, pulled out a warrant
and signed it there and then”.

Senator Vanstone
had not responded, even though he had spoken to her personally, and she refused
to discuss the issue with local media. “I’m a bit disgusted,” Mr
Forrest said…

Then there’s the matter of the type of
government John Howard runs.

Back in 1996, John Howard said he would
govern “for all of us”.

I believe in small government – and used to
think that was what the Liberal Party stood for.

Instead, we have the highest taxing
government in Australia’s history – a government that rather than trusting taxpayers with
their own money takes it from them and wastes it on bureaucrats who deliver
programs that benefit a favoured few. A
very strategically chosen favoured few.

The Howard Government doesn’t seem to be
able to run these programs, either.

We’ve seen the service it gives its own
parliamentarians like Mr Forrest. What
about the public.

Human Services Minister Joe Hockey has made
an extraordinary admission,
reported in The Australian on Monday:

“An army of bureaucrats will be permanently
deployed to deal with constituents’ complaints to the nation’s 226 federal MPs
and senators, in a major effort move to improve the standard of government
services,” Patricia Karvelas wrote.

“Under the plan by Human Services Minister
Joe Hockey, federal representatives and senators will each be allocated a
departmental local liaison officer responsible for fast-tracking the resolution
of complaints.”

The solution to bureaucracy is –
bureaucracy?

Joe’s kidding? Apparently not. Read on:

“Electorate
officers now deal with complaints, often facing long delays dealing with problems
ranging from payment mistakes to the filling in of complicated forms.

“The Howard
Government was forced to rethink the way it dealt with complaints after a
series of embarrassing revelations that Centrelink had made 1.13 million
mistakes, most involving payments, during four months in 2003, and that
one-third of families were finishing the financial year with a welfare debt.”

Hang on.
All MPs and Senators already have three staff to deal with these
issues. Ministers have dedicated staff
to deal with these issues and so do departments. So why can’t they?

It couldn’t be that the Howard Government’s
policies of taking money in tax to hand back as political bribes – and this is
a prime example of these – don’t work?

John Howard uses government to play
favourites – such a complex game that no one really understands the rules.

Ronald Reagan scorned big taxing, big
spending liberal governments. Liberal in
a different sense to John Howard Liberal – but that’s what we have here in Australia.

A big taxing, big spending government. And it doesn’t work.