Policy implementation – get it right!

I wrote six 'success stories' on people who had accessed the Experience+ suite of initiatives. Only one was approved for publication. The rest were spiked. I wrote three opinion pieces (ignored), three feature articles (spiked) and four profiles for the pilot $15.6 million 'Corporate Champions' program, which never saw the light of day.

I rewrote the 'Employer Engagement Communication Strategy' four times. Every time I submitted a version, it was returned requiring a minor qualification. In the end, the strategy was so over finessed it was useless. How will employers ever know about Australian Government policies if DEEWR (now the Department of Employment) is so 'action adverse'?

This was not a small policy. It was part of suite of initiatives to try reduce the projected two percent fiscal gap due to the ageing of the Australian population. I left to work in Career Advice and to carry on my study of generational change in Australia. I had spent about $3000 getting to Canberra but it was money well spent as it taught me a valuable lesson.

I revived my professional writing and job strategy business and have since helped hundreds of people find work.

Back in 1997, Peter Drucker wrote in the Harvard Business Review, 'The dominant factor for business in the next two decades – absent war, pestilence, or collision with a comet – is not going to be economics of technology. It will be demographics'.

The Abbott Government has capitalized on the failure of the Experience+ program and has demonized older Australians and their healthcare needs. The life of a government depends on the public service's ability to implement its legislative agenda.