Disruption of government business as a good

27 November 2014

If your image of ideal public life is steady as she goes, the big stories of the last two weeks will have been disquieting. They have told of fragmentation, unpredictability and disruption. These qualities are characteristic of times when established institutional processes are breaking down.

The G20 meeting received most attention. The agenda of the conference was carefully controlled to focus on economic growth and to make broader issues like climate change marginal. The Australian Government clearly hoped that the meeting would also give some legitimacy to its budgetary measures.

To these plans and hopes, the unexpected agreement between Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping on climate change, and Obama’s reference to the defects of Australia’s approach to climate change in his speech to students in Brisbane, caused massive disruption. Domestic and international attention was turned away from the central business of the meeting, which was the need to address climate change. When Prime Minister Abbott met French President Hollande a week later, both men sang from Obama’s hymn book.

The following week senators unaligned with the major parties struck down the financial services regulations introduced by the Government. These were seen to favour the big financial players, whose reputation for benefiting themselves at the expense of small investors was already becoming noxious. The unexpected rebellion by the senators was yet another disruption of the Government’s economic policies. It also spoke of the fragmentation and fluidity of the Senate and of the obstacles it put in the way of the smooth implementation of government policy.

These events might be seen to be unrelated. But I would see in them a common theme. They both challenge the belief that agendas can be centrally controlled and that good governance is constituted by discipline and sole ownership of the agenda. They suggest that the ability of political parties to impose their ideological agendas without testing them against the human values they embody is breaking down. The problem does not lie in the disruption but in the way governments act when allowed to have their way.

If this is so, we should ask how we should read the signs of these choppy times. First, we should insist that governments reflect on what matters in governance and not simply on how to govern efficiently. What matters is the human good of people living now and in the future, and particularly of people who are disadvantaged. The

AUSTRALIA

Disruption of government business as a good

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