Built to last? History shows us the art of reform that’s both bold and enduring
- Written by Pat Leslie, Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
Reform, while never an easy task, is probably more difficult now than it used to be. Not only is declining trust a problem, belief in governments’ ability and willingness to affect real change is also in decline.
There’s also the tyranny of the election cycle. Often real reform takes much longer than the three-year terms, not to mention assessing whether any given policy decision was effective.
The attitudes of voters are also unpredictable: just ask the prime ministers who proposed the last eight referendums, all of which failed to win popular support.
So what does it take? Australian history shows lasting reform is about building coalitions, managing the stakeholders who can make or break your reforms, and having the somewhat magical ability to read the moment correctly.
Method 1: building it from scratch
First, there’s the hard way: start from first principles. This means reckoning with existential political questions: who do we represent? What vision of Australia do we want to manifest?
From there, you develop policy to fit the vision and communicate it with the public (ideally in a highly compelling way). The party wins in an election and implements the policy in government.
While the policy may be in place, you then have to win the public debate for keeping the policy long term, so your reforms are not immediately repealed when you lose power.
The origins of the modern system had its roots not in pension reform, but in finding a work-around between the government and unions to enable wage increases without causing inflation. Workers could take the pay rise as deferred payment through superannuation schemes.
What turned this negotiation into a lasting policy reform was that politicians in Bob Hawke and Paul Keating recognised the opportunity the Prices and Incomes Accord represented.
Seizing the opportunity for real reform relies on the combination of opportunity and political expertise, during periods political historians call “critical junctures.” According to academic Emily Millane, modern superannuation occurred during one of these periods. The timing and sequence of events had to be just right, or little would have happened at all.
What not to do
When politicians sell the policies to the Australian public, they’re making a bet with history. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.
Most governments can pass legislation for any policy reform they like, provided they have the numbers.
But this cuts both ways: what is stopping the next administration from winding back your reforms? This is where the “shadow of the future” constrains politicians in the choices they make. Why spend your time on big reforms when you know they likely won’t survive?
One example of a policy that was developed, debated publicly, enacted, and then swiftly canned by a new administration is the Turnbull government’s reforms to the Australian Education Act, popularly known as Gonski 2.0.
Under this scheme, the Turnbull government made school funding allocations more needs-based and addressed long-standing inconsistencies in funding across each state. This included tackling controversial “special deals” for the Catholic and independent sectors.
Gonski 2.0 played by the book. Procedurally, the bill passed through the Senate without compromising its main intent.
But the reform’s fatal weakness was political: it failed to account for the organised stakeholders who stood to lose out.
From the outset, Catholic school bodies mounted a fierce campaign against the new arrangements, arguing they would be worse off relative to independent schools.
When Scott Morrison replaced Turnbull in August 2018, the political calculation was straightforward: a well-organised lobby was threatening to cause trouble at the 2019 election — and with the Opposition Leader Bill Shorten also siding with the non-public schools, the pressure was mounting from all sides.
Morrison’s response was to offer a $4.6 billion compensation package to the Catholic and independent sectors, thus gutting the reforms.
As Adam Piccoli of the Gonski Institute said bluntly at the time: “This is purely a political fix to shut down a powerful lobby group.”
The lesson is stark. Good policy and procedure are usually necessary, but not sufficient for lasting reform.
It is not always possible to account for the decisions of your successors — but you can try to shore up political support to make repeal too costly to attempt.
Better in hindsight?
Finally, why does it seem like modern politicians have no great reforming ideas? Well it’s probably because it’s too soon to tell.
Our evaluation of policy success and failure is dependent on our point of view. Some policies look good at first, and their flaws become more obvious later on, while others grow in appreciation over time.
From the perspective of modern readers, Medicare and perhaps even superannuation seem obvious solutions to obvious policy problems, but they were far more contested in their early years.
The currently embattled NDIS is a good example. It may one day prove to be a keystone no-brainer Australian social policy, if it survives.
And for the government under Anthony Albanese, its noted incrementalist approach may, in the end, add up to more than the sum of its parts. But we probably won’t know until it’s long disappeared in the rear-view mirror.
Authors: Pat Leslie, Senior Lecturer, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University
