Richard Denniss

Democratic constraint and embrace: Implications for progressive non-government advocacy organisations in Australia

The advocacy work of non-government organisations can be either constrained or embraced by government attitudes and practices. Although it is widely accepted that NGOs are an essential component of a healthy and robust democracy, serving as essential intermediaries between community and government, and providing a voice for marginalised groups to make claims on governments between elections, the current dominance of the public choice paradigm in public administration has seen the legitimacy of NGOs come under attack. Questions have been raised about the representativeness of NGOs and the legitimacy of their standing as policy advocates. As a result of this shift many disadvantaged groups that had taken years to organise themselves sufficiently to have a voice have found themselves increasingly constrained and excluded from the policy-making process. The threats that many NGOs are now facing have the effect of reducing government accountability, sustaining existing inequities and, ultimately, diminishing the quality of Australian democracy. 1This article is developed from the discussion paper Silencing Dissent: non-government organisations and Australian democracy, by Maddison, S., R. Denniss, and C. Hamilton, published by The Australia Institute in June 2004. The authors wish to thank the anonymous reviewers at the Australian Journal of Political Science for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Paid Annual Leave in Australia: An Analysis of Actual and Desired Entitlements

Abstract Most full-time employees in Australia are entitled to four weeks paid annual leave. This paper shows that, when compared to other developed countries, four weeks is towards the lower end of the spectrum of annual leave entitlements for full-time employees. Survey data are presented that show that many full-time employees have difficulty accessing their existing leave entitlements. Data are also presented that suggest that the majority of full-time employees would be willing to trade off a small pay rise to purchase additional annual leave. The results presented above raise significant issues for policy makers. They provide a direct counter to the argument that maximising incomes is the most important objective for policy makers by suggesting that community well being could be significantly enhanced not by producing more but by allowing the preference for more leisure to be realised.

Utilising the Transactional Efficiencies of Contingent Loans — A General Framework for Policy Application

The administrative costs of government-provided contingent loans are likely to be substantially lower than the costs of providing traditional financial products via the private banking system. Elaborating on the notion of “transactional efficiencies” (Stiglitz 2014), this paper argues that recent technological developments have increased opportunities for governments to extract economies of scope and scale from the tax and transfer systems of a developed nation state by extending its information, administration and debt collection assets to provide a wide range of low-cost loans to individuals. The ability to recover debts at low cost from future income allows governments to design loan repayment schedules contingent on income levels, which the private sector have proved unwilling to provide and which are welfare enhancing at both the individual and macroeconomic levels. This paper considers the broader range of “contingent” loans and provides examples from multiple countries where tax and transfer systems are already being effectively used as a “bank” to provide such financial services. Where previous discussions have focused on providing positive spillovers or addressing market failures, this paper argues the transactional efficiency of “administrative banking” is itself welfare enhancing. The main barriers to making greater use of the low transaction costs associated with “administrative banking” are likely to be ideological rather than economic.

Minority government and marginal members: new issues for political and policy legitimacy in Australia

A steady decline in major party support in Commonwealth nations has resulted in changing parliamentary compositions, including the growing prevalence of minority government. Such situations pose new questions for notions of government legitimacy within Westminster systems. For instance, is negotiation with cross-benchers an example of government illegitimacy? What is the legitimate role of non-ministerial members when the composition of parliament gives them the final say on the enabling legislation for public policy? What is the legitimate response of the public sector regarding policy-making in the context of minority government? In this paper, we reflect on how a ‘marginal member’ concept can provide new insights into such issues and their implications.

An Introduction to Australian Public Policy: The Australian policy context

Public policy is not made in a void. It is both created and constrained by the political context in which it is developed. To understand how policy is made and where different types of policy work happen requires a developed understanding of the context provided by political institutions. This context is itself a dynamic field, as political institutions and political processes change over time in response to changes in social and cultural values, and changes of government. This chapter outlines the foundational features of the Australian political system, focusing on the capacity for executive dominance and the role played by the parliament in constraining that capacity. It then considers recent debates about ‘reinventing government’, which concern the size of government and the proper focus of government activity, and the implications of this reinvention for the place of citizens in the policy process. It concludes with a brief discussion of the historical context that underpins Australian political institutions, and the values associated with this history that remain a component of the contemporary policy context.

An Introduction to Australian Public Policy: Policy actors and policy instruments

The policy process is initiated, researched, refined, driven and implemented by individuals. While the policy cycle outlined in Chapter 4 provides an overview of the process of new policy formulation, this view of the policy process under emphasises the role that individuals play, either on behalf of themselves or on behalf of an organisation, and it therefore overlooks the importance of both the motives and constraints of those individuals. Policy is in fact made through a set of complex interactions between state and non-state actors. Institutions and processes also play an important role in creating the sorts of policy sub-systems (Howlett & Ramesh 2003: 53) within which individuals have the potential to drive, delay, prevent or modify the passage of a policy from idea to implementation. This chapter begins by outlining the key actors in the policy process and the web of relationships between them, which are understood variably as policy communities and policy networks. The chapter will conclude with a discussion of the wide range of policy instruments available to policy makers, discussing the fact that different policy actors may have different degrees of access to different policy instruments. This suggests that at times the choice of instrument is a function of the sort of policy that actors, or a coalition of actors, is seeking to change.

Lobbying and minority government in Australia: The concept of the marginal member

Within Westminster-based majority parliaments, the presence of minority government runs contrary to the conventional wisdom. Over the last 40 years, however, there has been a steady voting trend away from major parties in many of these parliaments. The complex composition of the Australian Senate after July 2014 reinforces that non-ministerial marginal members continue to be a vital part of the political landscape. This article introduces the concept of the marginal member and examines the potential influence of these members for legislative outcomes and lobbying success. In doing so, the article provides a heuristic through which to identify avenues of policy influence and presents a range of strategies for lobbyists working with marginal members within minority-government contexts. 在英式多数制议会内，少数党政府的存不符合传统的智慧。在以往40年里，许多英式议会出现了一种偏离多数党的稳定趋势。澳大利亚参院2014年之后的复杂构成，说明非内阁边缘成员依然是政治格局中有活力的部分。本文提出了边缘成员的概念，考察了他们对立法结果及游说成败的潜在影响力。本文提供了一种关于政策影响渠道的思路，以及在少数党政府的情况下如何游说边缘成员的一系列办法。

The Role of Contingent Loans in Providing Equitable Access to Legal Aid

Legal advice is expensive and the while it is highly likely that the pursuit of a claim for compensation or redress through the courts will take a considerable amount of time there is no such certainty around the likely outcome of such a case. Access to capital and appetite for risk, therefore, play a central role in understanding the willingness of individuals to use the courts to resolve disputes. Having outlined the very limited scope of government funded ‘Legal Aid’ in Australia this paper presents survey data on the nature and extent of ‘unmet demand’ for legal services which shows that the cost of legal services is the main reason that a large number of Australians choose not to pursue legal redress for damages they believe they have incurred. The paper then outlines the design of a Legal Expenses Contribution Scheme (LECS), a suggested contingent loan which could be used to fund cases for damages that have been deemed by a panel of lawyers to pass a ‘merit test’ which includes the likelihood of success. The inclusion of an external evaluation panel is likely to reduce the risk of adverse selection and moral hazard in the operation of the scheme. At the conclusion of a case the recipient of the LECS loan satisfies their obligation by either paying to the Commonwealth a percentage of their income over the length of the loan, with payments set at a higher rate for recipients on higher incomes. Recipients would also have the option of repaying the loan immediately in a civil action with an advantageous and sufficient award of damages. Where a matter ends badly for a LECS recipient they would be shielded from extreme poverty or bankruptcy and have the opportunity to rebuild and continue to contribute to the community while repaying their loan.

An Introduction to Australian Public Policy: State or market II: The economics of public policy

‘The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.’ John Maynard Keynes (1936: 383) Governments choose to intervene heavily in some markets and lightly in others. The sale of heroin is forbidden in Australia while the sale of alcohol is heavily regulated. Advertising tobacco in Australia is illegal but advertising junk food to children is allowed. While the choices available to policy makers are often framed in terms of a preference for ‘free markets’ or ‘regulation’, the reality is much more subtle, and more interesting. This chapter considers the role of economics in influencing the choice between state provision of services, market provision based on a belief in Adam Smith’s (1776) ‘invisible hand’, and the myriad of regulatory structures that can exist in between. The chapter begins with an overview of some major economic concepts that are useful for most policy workers, and considers the economic arguments regarding when markets are likely to be more or less effective in solving policy problems. To conclude, the role of economic language in framing, and influencing, policy debates is discussed.

An Introduction to Australian Public Policy: Models and theory for understanding policy

Thus far in this book we have considered definitions of policy, the political context in which policy is made, and the ideological and economic forces that influence and constrain policy work. In this chapter we build on the discussion in the introduction that considered policy as authorised choice and policy as structured interaction to look at some theoretical approaches to understanding how policy is made. The most influential of these approaches is what is known as the policy process model . In the first half of this chapter we provide an outline of this model and address its uses and shortcomings for those engaging in policy work. In the second half of the chapter we outline some of the key theoretical tools that are needed in order to develop a richer understanding of the policy process. Both the theory and the practice of policy work are central to the broad field of ‘policy studies’. The various sub-fields of policy studies have together produced a vast ocean of theoretical and empirical literature. It is only possible for us to dip our toe into that ocean here, but in doing so we will provide an overview of the key theoretical concerns that have preoccupied the field. Rationalism and incrementalism A key area of policy theorising that will be considered in this chapter is the body of work that sees public policy decision making as either rational or incremental in style.