Response to reader "Wizman" comment

I normally post replies to comments as a comment, but I thought this one deserved a post of it's own.
In response to Even children have depth perception, wizman commented at June 15, 2012 9:54 AM:

i caught you on 720ABC in the afternoon talking about liz constable and her replacement (you and peter kennedy would be a great state politics double act). anyway, with christian porter leaving, will a backbencher get 9 months to show some promise or not? when liz constable goes and assuming barnett wins again at the state election, does the "new member" who may or may not be delivered by parachute get a free ride into cabinet, or again does barnett trust a backbencher? if he continually overlooks the elected members doesn't this just reinforce the opinion that there is no talent, or is it just barnett's "incompetence as leader" at work again?

My response:

Hi Wizman.

Firstly, thanks. I admire PK and would love to work with him (WABN and ABC: Hint! Hint!)

I honestly hope Mr Barnett takes a bit of a calculated gamble by throwing a couple of backbenchers in the deep end, but I really don’t think he will. He reinforced that yesterday in Parliament in an answer to a question without notice – he made way too much of the fact that he has had a “stable” cabinet, effectively making yet another rod for his back. He is a very conservative man who prioritises stability in the public sector.

Unfortunately, that causes two big problems:

1. Retiring Ministers are very problematic at elections. Norman Moore will be in Parliament for a few months after the election (because the LC doesn’t change until May 2013), so that one is not a drama. However, how on earth is the Government going to articulate its Education election promises when their spokesperson can’t speak for the party (because she’s independent) or the future (because she won’t be part of it)? I’m guessing that’s another role the Premier will probably take on in the caretaker period before the election.
2. The other, which I think is the biggest problem and one that Mr Barnett is not fully cognisant of is the huge morale problem brewing in the back bench. Imagine being a 2nd or 3rd term Liberal backbencher who has played all the games and done as you were told for the last 8 or 12 years and hearing the Premier cite Independent and National MP’s as evidence of his available talent. Good leaders are inclusive and lay out a growth path for their ambitious subordinates – and Colin fails to do that over and over again. He needs to remember what happened to Natasha Stott-Despoja and Kevin Rudd – both very popular with the public, but rolled by their immediate constituents – their subordinates – because they weren’t making them feel valuable.

Colin’s reluctance to take a punt on anyone new is not evidence of the depth of the talent pool. It is, however absolute evidence of one of Colin’s worst qualities, which will be his downfall in spite of his many good ones.

Even children have depth perception

My father is good man. He has always been kind and loving and also knows a thing or two about human nature. And he used that understanding to teach me some valuable lessons. As a child, I remember sharing dad’s warm and secure canoe in the middle of a serene section of the Collie River during a camping trip in the area. My memory is that at the time, I had swimming skills but wasn’t a particularly confident swimmer - so guess what he did? Yep, unannounced he rolled the canoe onto its side and tumbled us both into the icy cold river. Within seconds I was doggy paddling strongly toward the muddy banks and from that day on, never again doubted my ability to swim.

It might seem a bit brutal, but it worked. Just like mother birds push their chicks out of the nest and horses nudge their foals onto their feet at birth, there really is something to the old theory of sink or swim.

But it seems much of today’s public don’t agree or at least don’t have the generosity to acknowledge that they do. Sadly, in the hours following yesterday’s resignation of WA’s Attorney General and Treasurer, I heard on talkback and read on news websites the same old tired rhetoric about the depth of talent in our parliamentary backbenches.

Rik Oshea’s post on the ABC’s Facebook page was indicative of many:

“My view? Staggering indifference. Had he stayed we'd still have a serious lack of depth problem. John Tonkin & maybe Sir Charles Court were probably our last real statesmen, not sure we have any great legislators at present.”

This is sad partly because it shows the level of cynicism the public maintain toward our Parliament but mostly because it is just so ill-informed.

The truth is it is very, very hard for anyone other than the Premier, Leader of the Opposition and Ministers of controversial portfolios (like Police) to get enough public airtime to be recognisable, let alone fairly judged on their abilities. Thirty minute press conferences are condensed down to a 7 or 8 second “grab” on TV news, newspaper column space has to compete with ever encroaching advertising to pay their bills and there is simply no way talkback radio can give any time to anyone other than the Premier and his direct nemesis.

The ugliest part of this truth is the vast majority of us would prefer to see a pretty blonde girl talking about the weather than watch an unscripted 3 minute address from any one of our political representatives. And because of that, it’s deeply unfair and often wildly inaccurate when people who have never met or even heard more than a 7 second grab from any of our Members of Parliament to judge their talent or lack of.

I know I won’t change many minds with this post, but I think it’s a very important point to make.
Journalists and their editors are often blamed for not providing the public with more opportunities to get to know their representatives in their own words - without truncation. But the fact is, like politicians, one way or another journalists get paid by the public and would therefore alter their content accordingly if there was a stronger demand for more open access to our MP’s.

That perpetual conundrum aside, of greatest disappointment to me as someone who knows there are many competent, hard working people who are invisible only because they are confined to the shadows of their respective Leaders, is that rare opportunities to shine a light on them aren’t being embraced.

I’ve made it very clear before that I respect Colin Barnett for his intellect and historical knowledge of all things politics, but his incompetence as a leader never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday, when a lazy journalist rolled out the cliché that he doesn’t have much choice in choosing a replacement for Christian Porter, he cited Ministers Constable, Hames and Buswell as evidence to the contrary. It is telling and deeply disappointing that Mr Barnett’s first and immediate reaction wasn’t to jump on the chance to talk about how he has too many competent backbenchers to choose from.

As I said above, there are a number of others in the shadows – on both sides - waiting patiently for their time to shine. Like my good old Dad, I have faith that many of them will quickly become strong swimmers if they are ever thrown in the deep end.

With regard to the Premier’s next move, I would love to see him undertake a bold reshuffle that sees 3 or even 4 backbenchers thrown in, but unfortunately I think his aversion to risk will see only one new face and a bit of a rearrangement of the deck chairs.

I hope some day soon our political leaders take the time to realise that blaming the media for missing opportunities is a moot point when so many massive ones float past them, the people we pay to set the agenda, apparently without even being noticed.

Those pesky Sherpa’s!

I distinctly recall it. It was early in 2010 - back in the days when the weekly Chief’s of Staff meetings were content rich and consequently, well attended. In fact back in those days, there weren’t enough comfy leather chairs for everyone who attended. Latecomers had to scavenge the nearby office and sit behind me and the other pinstriped ambitious men (and a couple of bright ladies) who were always early enough to secure a front-row seat at the big oval slab of old-growth forest.

Those days are long gone and so it seems, is the commitment to the Premier’s personal commandment on that day that he would no longer tolerate the State’s Public Sherpa’s, oops, Servants (see Sherpa's Revolt for the background of that) speaking publicly about Government policy. That decree had been provoked by a number of government agency bosses who had recently made public statements regarding the direction government should be taking in the future.

As a fairly new recruit to the big table, I remember being both impressed and fully supportive of the directive. To me, the Premier had it right – the Sherpa shouldn’t lead the expedition… our elected representatives should set the policy agenda and the public service should provide the administrative support required to enact the agenda of the government of the day.

Back then, us Chiefs of Staff were told in no uncertain terms to ensure the heads of our respective agencies understood that the media was not the appropriate forum in which to float policy ideas. That seemed to work, for a while at least.

But check out today’s media:

• Police Commissioner Karl O’Callaghan has written an opinion piece for the West Australian Newspaper and appeared live on ABC talkback declaring that juvenile offending is “rapidly spiralling out of control” calling for a higher rate of juvenile detention (and effectively shifting blame to the Courts and Corrective Services for the current juvenile crime rate).

• And Road Safety Council Chairman D’Arcy Holman is again on the front foot by appearing live on radio 6PR proposing all manner of government policy in the area of road safety.

This comes after a couple of weeks during which a Departmental THIN report ruled out keeping our MP’s in touch with current IT trends (Col Pot: No iPad for you!), the Public Sector Commissioner said the Premier’s dismissal of a senior media adviser was not justified and the Economic Regulation Authority contradicted the Premier and Energy Minister’s declaration that a re-merged Synergy and Verve would reduce upward pressure on electricity tariffs.

I really don’t know what happened to the Premier’s dislike of public sector employees publicly leading the state’s policy agenda but with less than a year before the next election, it will be important for him to clarify with the public whether the dog is indeed in control of its tail.

Cost reflective, defective?

We keep hearing it: “cost of living increases will be the downfall of the current State Government.”

This really isn't news - the Opposition and numerous media outlets in Western Australia have been suggesting it for sometime. Indeed, the Premier himself even agreed with the premise this morning when he spoke with Geoff Hutchinson on 720 ABC Perth radio.

But if this proposition has merit and everyone including the Premier knows it, why doesn’t the government just stop increasing the price of water and energy?

The solution isn’t quite that easy - unless we had a Labor government that is.

In fact, one of the truths in Premier Barnett’s explanation of why his government has savagely raised water and electricity tariffs over the past 3 years is because the previous government did what only a Labor Government can - subsidised utility charges.

As a former Chief of Staff to both a Water and an Energy Minister in this government, I’m only too aware that this is a genuine problem for Mr Barnett and his (small L) liberal colleagues. The previous Labor government’s decision to repeatedly freeze tariffs and let the gap between the true cost of supplying our utilities and what we all pay for them increase was political genius. Regardless of whether it was done strategically or not, this move was destined to become a mighty large thorn in the side of any conservative government that followed them – and it has.

The key to this quandary is that any Labor government is acting well within the realm of its core ideology to take money from one part of the budget and use it to subsidise utility charges - or education, health, police - whatever. That's exactly what die-hard Labor voters want their governments to do.

In contrast, a pure liberalist view is that each element of the budget should be cost neutral. In a perfect liberal world, school fees would fund teacher's salaries, police would carry a mobile eftpos machine to charge anyone they help, people would pay the full cost of any health services they might use and yep, you guessed it – we would all pay the true cost of every drop of water and watt of power we use. In short, blue-blooded liberals believe in a “user-pays” system.

But the problem is that neither theory works in its pure form. To the average voter, too much government cross-subsidisation smells a bit too much like communism and on the other extreme, the public would simply refuse to pay $25 for a bus ticket to work just to ensure the public transport service breaks even.

So over time, both sides of the political divide have compromised their core values a little in order to appeal to the increasing number of voters who sit somewhere in the middle of each school of thought. For example, successive Liberal governments in WA have ruled out introducing toll roads (which should theoretically be OK with their supporters) and Labor governments have implemented various user-pays policies (that normally wouldn't be supported by its supporters).

So given that the voting public seems fairly comfortable with this fuzzy grey blob between the red and blue edges, why does the Barnett government keep telling us that we should all pay a true cost for our utilities?

Hmmm… to start with, our Economist-turned-Premier and his very (small L) liberal Treasurer Troy Buswell started their term with very big plans. The then Treasurer was eager to prove his economic credentials by lowering taxes and duties and our statesman-like new Premier had grand visions of an infrastructure boom under his watch. They knew that to achieve these goals, they would have to keep recurrent costs low and reduce any unnecessary drains on the government's coffers. It’s also only fair to recognise that they also knew they had to deliver a truck-load a of cash to their new "partners" every year in the guise of the Nationals’ Royalties for Regions scheme.

So when Mr Barnett and Buswell sat around the big table with treasury geeks and started to frame their first budget, they were somewhat shocked to learn that the former government had made the conscious decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars keeping the prices of water and energy low.

Immediately, the little L liberal in both men came to the fore. The Premier and Treasurer agreed that not only were these subsidies contrary to core liberal philosophy, they were also tying up wads of cash the new government could use to help deliver the big ticket items they had been dreaming about.

As the first budget got closer, the Premier and Treasurer finally took the brave decision to boldly set an agenda of eventually removing all subsidies from utility tariffs – and agreed to big jumps in prices across the board.

So, like any budget decision - positive or negative - a couple of media people bounced it around and soon after, devised the amazing, brilliant, happy, happy "cost reflectivity" plan. As time went by and the budget day media was finalized, this spin was refined to include lines about the need to get tariffs up to cost reflectivity in order to attract more competition, which in turn would put downward pressure on prices (go figure).

Now, I've had a bit of fun with that but in all seriousness I don't think the first decision (or even the resulting spin) was much of a mistake for the current government. Tariffs hadn't increased for a number of years and the government did have some big plans for the extra cash. In any case, the bill shock was only 6 months into a 4 and a half year term and if the government had slowed its increases from then on, I suggest we wouldn't be talking "cost of living issues" now.

But unfortunately old habits die hard.

As we know, every year since, the government has implemented more increases and then reinforced the same old explanation: cost reflectivity is vitally important in order to increase competition - which will eventually reduce costs. The decision to continue to ‘sell’ cost reflectivity as a holy grail has left the government in a very ugly position with only one budget and 11 months before the next election.

An Economic Regulation Authority (ERA) report released only last week confirmed that residential electricity tariffs are still 23% away from being cost reflective. In spite of this, the Premier said on radio this morning, “the big hits in electricity prices are behind us” and went on to reassure the public that there would only be a “modest increase” in this year’s budget.

Old habits do indeed die hard.

This is an ugly problem for the government and creates two very uncomfortable questions that the Premier will no doubt have to try to answer sooner or later:

1. If the tariffs are raised by only a nominal amount this year, doesn’t that mean we are no longer closing the gap to cost reflectivity - and with further increases in the cost of fuel and labour expected over the 12 months following this year’s budget, isn’t it possible that a small increase could even take us further away from cost reflective prices?
2. If cost reflectivity is no longer a priority and the government has decided that cross-subsidies are now ok, why do we need to have any price rise at all? In fact, couldn’t we cut tariffs a bit?

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

They say it isn’t easy being green, but I reckon the next 11 months will prove it’s probably tougher being blue.