The dark side of private-public partnerships

Other government contracts, most notably the Howard government’s contracts with the Red Cross include clauses that prevented the organisation from making “unsolicited public comments”, more appropriate language for the gagging of public debate. Imagine any government trying to pass that one through parliament.

This is not where it ends though. Contracts provide a buffer between the government and the public’s experience of the service provision. If there is a problem with this provision, then the government can legitimately claim it’s not their fault. This distance is invaluable in the protection of the government’s public image.

The unemployed who fell foul of the Job Network’s policies didn’t blame the Howard government; they blamed the non-government organisation and the employee who busted them. The government then can play the compassionate one, overturning the non government service decision or ignore the matter altogether. The service provider’s public image is tarnished, not the government.

So the question is: “where will this lead?” It is certainly an impetus for the continued privatisation of government services. The political benefits for government are easy to see: the greater use of privatisation does lead to cost savings, first from the public wage budget (in the community sector this can be as great as 30 per cent if the New South Wales Public sector awards are compared to the NSW Social and Community Services Employees (State) Award); the certainty of costs is another benefit. There are more oblique benefits to government: greater control of policy implementation will be seen as a boon to any Minister or Cabinet weary of the everyday battle with parliament and their department. Add to this a reduced oversight from parliament of their policy-at-work and the governmental benefits of contracting, as opposed to the more visible financial benefits of government contracting, can become a minor consideration.

What it can also lead to is a steady decline of our rights: our right to open government, our right to equality at law and our right to have control of government available to us currently through the traditional functions of the parliament. These declines have already been commented on with the issue of the Howard government including a "no public comment" threat in its contract negotiations with non-government-organisations in 2003, but an awareness of these concerns is the most important outcome we should be aiming for: both the devil and God is in the detail.