The endemic problems of the Gillard Government

'She just can't take a trick, can she.' The comment (it wasn't really a question) came over a dinner a little time ago, and referred to our Prime Minister, hosting CHOGM while the QANTAS war raged on. Someone pointed out that the Government no longer had any share of the airline, and someone else wondered whether or not Bob Hawke could be wheeled out to do his celebrated impasse-breaking act.

I went into a long ponder, about how Julia Gillard had got into the dreadful mess that she and her Government are now in. I ought to point out that virtually all around the dinner table were sympathetic. All had some respect for the PM, and all wanted our first woman in the job to be seen to be doing it well.

Alas, it ain't necessarily so. In my view things were never going to be easy for any Government in this Parliament, because of the numbers. But you can argue that the PM has made things even worse than they might have been by going down the auction path.

The bidding war for government

By that I mean that last year she and Mr Abbott engaged in a bidding war for the support of the independent MPs and the Greens, an auction that she eventually won - not that I ever thought that the coalition was likely to win it.

There was, however, a clear alternative. She was the Prime Minister at the time, and she would remain so until she lost a vote of confidence on the lower house. She was in the riding seat. Given Labor's own sense of itself as the moral force in Australian politics, a deal with a set of independents and another minor party weakened Labor's position. And the whole process looked, and was, grubby.

Worse, it put Labor's new partners onto a much higher rung on the media ladder, and made them seem, at least to many, as the driving force in the formulation of the Government's policies. And while Ms Gillard could say that her promises during the campaign, such as not having a carbon tax, ceased to be relevant once she had entered the deal - that was an awkward argument to put to the electorate, and it has been rejected.

My guess is that she and her advisers were so intent on ensuring that they stayed in office that they ignored the other path available to them; which was to continue as a minority government and dare the others to put them out. There are many examples of this strategy having been employed in Australian politics. Victoria was governed that way for a good deal of the last century. It can work.

To begin with, the independents could have been cajoled with initially vague but eventually specific programs that would have been beneficial to regional electorates like theirs. It would take some time to get the details right, and in the interim, it would have been unlikely for them all to gang up on the Government.

The Greens could be told that there would be no carbon tax (which has proved to possess the soaring power of the famous lead balloon), but that there would be other policy moves which the Greens would support. In my opinion, the Coalition could not have agreed to a carbon tax while the Government showed its sympathy with other Green initiatives - or, realistically, at all.

Had the PM gone down this apparently less attractive path, her Government would still be in power, with a higher level of public support that it now has, and much less lead in its saddle-bags than they currently possess. And it would be facing the prospect of an election in 2013 with more confidence than it now has.

Can she recover? Yes, as so many like to say, two years is a long time in politics. Despite the glow of the Obama visit, she will need some powerful external circumstance, like a massive asteroid strike three weeks before the poll, or a Martian landing.

The 24-Hour news Cycle

And her government is affected by two other major weaknesses as well, and these are inherited.

The first is the '24 hour news cycle:' the notion that the Government must grab the evening television news with a favourable story, usually of its own making. No matter if it's forgotten the next day, because then there will be a new story.

Julia Gillard didn't invent this process. No one did - it has just crept up on us. If you're old enough, contrast it with the last Menzies years. Then the Prime Minister would hold a 'news conference' at which he would say a few words, announcing this or that, and then field questions.

From time to time he would admit a chosen one or two into the presence, and chat over whisky about the world and what was happening in it. Ministers made announcements in their fields of work. But there were no doorstop interviews, no paparazzi, no squads of cameras or microphones thrust into the face.

Does it matter? I think it does. The point of our politics has shifted. A generation or so ago it was understood that Government was there to do things, and that by and large Ministers did them. Yes, from time to time they stuffed up, and were called to account in Parliament and in the media. Yes, there would in time be an election, and we the voters would consider how the Government had fared.

Today it is almost impossible to know what the Government is doing. What passes for politics in the mainstream media consists of allegations and counter-allegations, of pots calling kettles black. Yes, every now and then a big issue comes up for a vote in Parliament, like the carbon tax, or the right way to deal with boat-people, but it is hard to get anyone either there, or in the media, to focus on the real questions inside the issues.

Why? Because nothing is news for more than 24 hours, and this short time-span means the end of real reporting and investigation. Politics is becoming little more than entertainment, devoid of serious thought and analysis.

In the carbon-tax issue, for example, how much difference would the legislation make to carbon dioxide levels - or to our standard of living, for that matter? Why was Australia intent on taking a lead? Which other countries were looking at us as role models?

Or, in immigration, how many 'economic refugees' come through the airports, rather than via unsafe boats from Indonesia? What are we doing about them? Given that most of the boat people finally are allowed to settle here, how is it in Australia's long-term interest to give them such a rough experience when they arrive?

As a long-time student of Australian politics, I find what passes for political comment today to be deeply unsatisfying, and I wonder why television stations seem to think that the every move of the Prime Minister is important -accompanied as it must be, for 'balance', by a corresponding focus on the Leader of the Opposition.

Current Australian politics reminds me, in part, of professional football. The teams have old names, but the players are bought and sold and come from wherever. They learn and practise 'moves' and 'plays,' and we can see them most nights on the television news.

It is not entirely clear to me what 'Labor' and 'Liberal' mean any more, and it seems that a great deal of contemporary politics is simply about staying in power. And all of this has been shaped by another great weakness - the role, size and power of the Minister's private office.

The Ministerial offices

These are large groups of advisers, appointed by the Minister and answerable only to him or her. They cannot be brought before parliamentary committees, and they are not public servants.

There have been fusses about them before, but usually because a Minister has appointed a close relative. The existence of the private office goes back to the Whitlam period. After 23 continuous years of Coalition government there grew a feeling within the Labor Party that the public service was not to be trusted, because most of its members had only ever known Liberal or Country Party Ministers.

So Ministers acquired a small staff whose purpose was to check that the boss was being given the right advice from the department. The Coalition objected to this initiative, but retained it when in office from the end of 1975. The size and scale of these offices has grown over the forty years and they are a now a permanent feature of Australia federal politics.

In my view they are pernicious. They do not aid the business of Australian government.

To begin with, they are focussed on the Minister, and the Minister's needs. What are they? Well, to be seen to be successful, to be in the public gaze, to be rising in approval within the Government, and to avoid flak. What's wrong with that, you ask?

I would argue that the Minister is there to oversee the work of the departments and agencies described in the administrative arrangements order, and to ensure that they are doing what Cabinet has decided, and what their legislation sets out.

The department and agencies need the Minister to be aware of their needs, to be available when matters have to be sorted out and to advance their interests (funding, appointments, jurisdiction problems) in the Cabinet room. They are able to advise the Minister on the best way to achieve particular outcomes.

From the point of view of the Ministerial office, the department's needs are secondary. They are there to do what the Minister wants. The trouble with that is that the business of government is now very large, and that people need to be paid, transfers need to take place, appointments need to be put through in time, and agreements need to be signed, no matter if today we have a new crisis.

I think it is common knowledge around Canberra, at least in public service circles, that today's Government is bumble-footed. Some things aren't being done in time and some are done too quickly. It is not Julia Gillard's fault, because it was not much better, if at all, in the Rudd and Howard periods.

But Ministers are not as close to the work of their departments as they once were, and should be. And their private offices are part of the problem, because they have, to some degree, usurped the role of the departmental secretary and the other senior public servants. The outcome is a lack of competence in the ordinary business of government administration.

The consequence is that each day, each week, there is another small failure. My feeling is that our present Government is likely to suffer the death of a thousand little failures, rather than of one big one.