VOLATILE SUBSTANCES: COORDINATING PETROL-SNIFFING PROGRAMS FOR ABORIGINAL COMMUNITIES IN A FEDERAL SYSTEM

Abstract: This paper considers the problems involved in coordinating policy in a federal system. It examines the programs developed to control petrol-sniffing in South Australian Aboriginal communities and analyses the processes which determined policy outcomes. Both intergovernmental and intragovern-mental factors are identified as contributing to the failure to achieve coordination. The particular characteristics of Aboriginal Affairs as a concurrent constitutional responsibility combined with its position as a client-specific portfolio impede efficiency in matters of funding, definition of administrative jurisdiction and political commitment to cooperative action.     

Non‐Departmental Public Bodies Under the Howard Governments1

There has been both continuity and change in the use of non‐departmental public bodies (NDPBs) during the Howard years. In terms of continuity, the statutory authority and its incorporated version, the statutory corporation (in whose development late 19th and early 20th century Australian governments played such an important part), have remained in wide use. In terms of change, however, two other NDPB forms offered some challenge to its popularity. The government‐owned company came to be a preferred form for government business enterprises (GBEs) and, more recently, for many other non‐commercial public activities as well. And the executive agency, first making its Australian appearance in 1999, seemed initially to be another significant challenger, but its numbers, never great, were soon cut back. The article examines these trends, relating them to several relevant systemic inquiries and policy changes, notably the Humphry review of the governance of GBEs, the final settlement (in 1997) of the package of financial management acts, the Uhrig inquiry of 2003 and the system‐challenging pressures that have followed it. Commonwealth participation in joint (Commonwealth/subnational and Commonwealth/private) activities is also noted, as is the lack of ‘fit’ of the Australian experience with international theorising about ‘agencification’. Finally, the article seeks to identify the leading figures within the Howard governments who have been directing both the changes and the continuities involved in these developments.     

Do parties matter in internationalised policy areas? The impact of political parties on environmental policy outputs in 18 OECD countries, 1970–2000

This article analyses the extent to which national policies in the highly internationalised environmental sector are influenced by the policy preferences of political parties. The focus is on policy outputs rather than environmental performance as the central indicator of policy change. Based on a discussion of the relevant theoretical literature competing hypotheses are presented. For an empirical test, a dataset is used that includes information on the number of environmental policies adopted in 18 OECD countries at four points in time between 1970 and 2000. The results show that not only international integration, economic development and problem pressure, but also aspects of party politics, influence the number of policies adopted. The number of environmental measures increases if the governmental parties adopt more pro‐environmentalist policy positions. This effect remains robust even when controlling for the institutional strength of governments, the left‐right position of parties in government, the inclusion of an ecological or left‐libertarian party inside the (coalition) government, and the presence of a portfolio that deals exclusively with environmental issues.     

"NOT A DEPARTMENTAL STATEMENT": A CASE STUDY OF EQUAL OPPORTUNITY IN THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN DEPARTMENT OF TAFE 1978–84

Abstract: This paper traces the background to the 1979 and 1984 equal opportunity policy statements in the South Australian Department of TAFE. It documents the process of policy development and planning for implementation and, through an examination of the content of each statement, evaluates the intentions of the authors. It concludes that there is little evidence of commitment at political and bureaucratic levels to deal with the issues the policies sought to address. By use of documents produced within the department at the time, the paper traces resistance to external pressures for change and failure to establish a firm and realistic program for policy implementation.     

URBAN GOVERNMENT, URBAN POLITICS AND THE FABRICATION OF URBAN ISSUES: THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF URBAN POLICY

An "urban" definition of public policy problems raises great difficulties for the policy maker. If we emphasize implementation as a primary factor in evaluating public policy, we have good grounds for questioning the wisdom of an urban perspective. But urban questions have been and still are major areas of concern in public policy formulation. The ALP federal platform contains a long section on urban policies, reiterating what the Department of Urban and Regional Development (DURD) was striving to achieve under the Whitlam Government. At state level, urban problems have been tackled with varying degrees of success and seriousness, although at this level overall urban perspectives tend to be ignored, for reasons we shall indicate. However urban planning authorities have been tried in most capital cities, and metropolitan plans have been drawn up for all of them. They have concentrated mainly on land use and urban form. By the 1970s a common criticism of such planning was that it left aside many social and economic aspects of urban growth. For example, one (admittedly partisan) government source—the N.S.W. Department of Decentralization and Development—noted "a massive and increasing trend towards socio-economic segregation":
…the remoteness of central city facilities …the cost of commuter transport and the inadequacy of community facilities in low-income outer suburbs are operating to perpetuate economic under-privilege.     

The States, Federalism and Political Science: A Fifty-Year Appraisal

The role of the states within the Australian federation has evolved significantly over the past 50 years. So has the interpretation of that role by political scientists. Until the early 1970s, the states seemed to be declining into financial and policy subservience notwithstanding their continuing primary responsibility for the delivery of public services. They then experienced a political and policy renaissance, accompanied by a more balanced political-science appreciation of the virtues of federalism. Since the early 1990s, the states' trajectory has become more uncertain.     

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: Race and Partisan Realignment in the Contemporary South

Our focus is the regional political realignment that has occurred among whites over the past four decades. We hypothesize that the South's shift to the Republican party has been driven to a significant degree by racial conservatism in addition to a harmonizing of partisanship with general ideological conservatism. General Social Survey and National Election Studies data from the 1970s to the present indicate that whites residing in the old Confederacy continue to display more racial antagonism and ideological conservatism than non-Southern whites. Racial conservatism has become linked more closely to presidential voting and party identification over time in the white South, while its impact has remained constant elsewhere. This stronger association between racial antagonism and partisanship in the South compared to other regions cannot be explained by regional differences in nonracial ideology or nonracial policy preferences, or by the effects of those variables on partisanship.     

Portfolio Budgeting in the Australian Portfolios-Principles and Practice

In the mid-eighties Australia implemented a budgeting system that is similar in its principles to the U.S. PAYGO rule and the now defunct Policy and Expenditure Management System of Canada. Termed as portfolio budgeting, it seeks to encourage greater ministerial participation (a ministry comprising a number of related departments) in the portfolio budget process. It obligates portfolio ministers to offer offsetting savings for funding new policies. Ministers have to thereby set new policy priorities so that only the most deserving new policies obtain funding through the savings identified. Additionally, portfolio budgeting requires ministers to prioritize their ongoing programs so that budget allocation to these programs reflects ministerial priorities. The article examines the practice of portfolio budgeting in the Australian portfolios in light of these objectives. The article suggests that portfolio budgeting has caused greater ministerial involvement in budgetary management. However, there has been little significant change in budget decision making at the portfolio level. The state of play of portfolio budgeting at the national budget process (cabinet and the Department of Finance) offered little incentive to portfolios to provide offsetting savings for new policy proposals. And, the appropriation structure and the organizational and political dynamics impeded ministers from allocating and reallocating their budgets (operating expenditure or running costs) for ongoing programs along ministerial priorities.     

The Economic Policy Agenda in Australia, 1962–2012

This paper surveys Australian economic policy over the last half century, identifying patterns and punctuations in the management of both macroeconomic and more structural challenges. It highlights the extent to which the economic policy agenda has been dictated by economic forces, while acknowledging the ideological preferences governments bring to their task. In retrospect, this half century in Australia has been dominated by macroeconomic turmoil and structural adjustment in the middle decades. Australian governments had to deal simultaneously with the macroeconomic problems of inflation and recession from the mid‐1970s to the early 1990s while also facing the need to dismantle the development framework that had been in place since Federation or even earlier.     

Making the Harder Yards: Environmental Policy Integration in Australia

Solutions to environmental problems such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and land and water resource degradation require long term integration of economic, social and environmental policies. This poses challenges to specialised, hierarchical public administration systems. The study reported here examined strategies, structures and processes to enable environmental policy integration in six Australian states and territories, and some federal arrangements. The study found that the most prominent success factors, barriers and gaps that affect environmental policy integration relate to leadership, long term embedding of environmental policy integration and implementation capacity. Factors deserving further research and policy attention include leadership, cultural change and capacity building; embedding sustainability in structures and processes; development of a long term evidence based approach; strengthening decentralised implementation arrangements; and evaluation of policy integration initiatives.     

THE PUBLIC SERVICES AND CO-OPERATTVE FEDERALISM

A paper of this type clearly calls for some definition of terms. Although "The Public Services" are usually seen to comprise the State Public Services and the Australian Public Service, in reality of course, government institutionalized services to the public go beyond these seven agencies. All the statutory authorities—Commissions, Corporations, Boards and Trusts—are part of public administration; so also are local government bodies. There are in the various public services some agencies which form part of the public service proper (i.e. a Department defined as such under one or other of the Public Service Acts) whereas in others they have the independence of a corporate entity. In South Australia for instance the whole state water supply and sewerage services are provided by one public service department, the Engineering and Water Supply Department. In the other states those services are provided by more than one agency and these range from government departments and local governing bodies to statutory authorities. A similar division of responsibility exists in the road construction area where some states perform their highway undertakings through the agency of a statutory authority, while others prefer the tighter Ministerial control of a government department.     

ASSURING HOSPITAL STANDARDS: THE INTRODUCTION OF HOSPITAL ACCREDITATION IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: The system of hospital accreditation that has developed in Australia involves a quasi non-government organization, the Australian Council on Hospital Standards (ACHS), "surveying" hospitals and issuing certificates to those which meet published standards. The surveying process has the potential to influence the internal hospital balance of power between doctors and the hospital administration, and to place additional demands on statutory health authorities. The ACHS was set up formally in 1977 following a protracted process of discussion, research and inter-organizational conflict that had its origins in proposals framed in the 1920s. The roles played by the sponsors of accreditation (the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Hospital Association) and by its detractors, especially the Health Commission of New South Wales, are explained using concepts developed in theories of inter-organizational relations.     

THE MANAGEMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNMENT RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

One of the minor curiosities of public sector analysis in Australia is that rather little attention has been paid to the tools and instruments that could provide a more effective management of government research and development. Once government R & D is mentioned, we immediately think of the large statutory bodies such as CSIRO or the Atomic Energy Commission, but the subject extends widely beyond these two bodies. The Australian Government, federal and states, provides 70% of all the funds for Australian R & D, and the government itself performs, in its own laboratories and statutory authorities, 54% of the total R & D carried out in Australia Of OECD countries, these percentages of government activity are exceeded only by Iceland, New Zealand, Portugal and Turkey. Virtually every federal department and every department of each state government performs R&D. Apart from the "big two" of CSIRO and Atomic Energy, the Post Office, Defence, Health, Housing, and Minerals and Energy all have research laboratories, and the last major survey of Australian R & D in 1973 listed 22 federal departments and 130 organizations in the State Governments performing R & D. A recent article in this journal correctly noted a shift from "ends to means" in Australian science policy. The present article proposes a specific means of managing this almost unique public involvement in R & D in Australia.     

EXEMPT PROPRIETARY COMPANY ANNUAL REPORTING REQUIREMENTS: PUBUC INTEREST OR BUREAUCRATIC EMPIRE-BUILDING?

Abstract: Australian small business enterprises, operated as exempt proprietary companies, are exposed to numerous statutory requirements. The Corporations Law Simplification Taskforce has proposed a number of changes with the stated objective of minimising the statutory burdens faced by small business. One of the recommendations of the taskforce is that most exempt proprietary companies be exempted from the requirement to supply key financial data in annual returns lodged with the Australian Securities Commission. This paper provides a review of the existing statutory responsibility for exempt proprietary companies to prepare annual returns including key financial data and lodge them with the ASC. A common justification offered for the introduction and continued maintenance of annual reporting requirements has been the protection of the public interest. The “public choice” theory of regulation provides alternative explanations for the regulation, including the promotion of producer interests or the promotion of the interests of the regulatory agency responsible for the administration of the legislation, the Australian Securities Commission, and other government departments such as Attorney-General's, Finance and Treasury. The existence of alternative explanations raises the possibility that the regulation is not motivated exclusively by the public interest. Indirect evidence of the usefulness of the annual reporting requirements was gathered with a consideration of the quality of the key financial data disclosed in annual returns. More than 40% of the annual returns lodged by a sample of exempt proprietary companies, during the years 1986 to 1989, contained key financial data which was inconsistent with being extracted from a properly prepared balance sheet (where assets minus liabilities equal shareholders' equity). The possibility that the maintenance of annual reporting requirements is not in the public interest, and the limited reliability of key financial data disclosures made, offers some support for the recent recommendations of the Corporations Law Simplification Taskforce that annual reporting requirements for small business enterprises be modified.     

CHANGES IN AUSTRALIAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICIES: FROM ENDS TO MEANS

Abstract: Growing awareness of the implications of science and technology for a diverse range of public policies has recently focused attention on Australian science policy and administration. In analyzing recent developments in this area, it is useful to distinguish between two main dimensions of science policy, one focusing on science as an end in itself, "policy for science", the other denoting the use of science as a means throughout government, "science in policy". After characterizing key features in Australian science and technology performance, and salient phases in the evolution of science policy machinery over the last twenty years, it is argued that concern has been aroused about the inadequate use of science and technology in pursuing policy objectives. Modification of the imbalanced attention so far devoted to science as an end in itself, and encouragement of its integration as a critical means potentially relevant to the growing demands of changing, complicated policy areas, have been major themes underlying recent reviews and institutional reforms.     

THE PROLIFERATION OF PORTFOLIOS

Abstract: A comparison of contemporary lists of Cabinet ministers with those of the 1850s or 1900s shows a substantial increase in the number of portfolio titles and the appearance of many new titles. However examination of the record of the designation of new portfolios shows very little by way of pattern. Initially Victoria made the innovations, and overall Victoria and New South Wales account for two-thirds of new titles. But long periods of time have elapsed between the first and final adoption of a new title, and some titles which might have been expected to be attractive were introduced relatively late in the day. Murray Edelman's view that much government activity is directed to providing "symbolic reassurance" is not substantiated, with the possible exception of the 1970s when an unusually rapid and extensive round of portfolio initiation took place. It is suggested that more detailed study of why particular portfolios were brought into use might be rewarding.     

THE SOUTH AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT AND THE INDUSTRIES ASSISTANCE COMMISSION

Abstract: One frequent source of inter-governmental conflict within a federation is the different economies of the constituent units, and State governments in Australia have increasingly become aware of the regional consequences of Federal policies in areas such as tariffs. This is of particular concern to South Australia which, compared to other States, has a greater than average reliance on manufacturing industry, especially those industries which depend on a relatively high level of tariff protection. The industrialization of South Australia from the 1930s onward was based on a complex interaction between government and business, and thus in the 1960s when the revitalized Tariff Board and later the Industries Assistance Commission showed that they were committed to lowering the level of tariff protection, the new Premier's Department became the focus of the government's interest in tariff matters. From January 1974, following the creation of the IAC, to 1976 was the high point in the State's involvement in the making of Australian tariff policy, both in terms of the number of inquiries calling for submissions and in the capacity of the government to participate. The staffing and organization of individual departments concerned with tariffs were strengthened, and an interdepartmental Industry Inquiries Screening Committee was established to coordinate government submissions. Since the 1976 Inquiry into Shipbuilding, the government's involvement with the IAC has tapered off, partly as a result of the feeling that the greatest gains are won at the “political” rather than at the “administrative” level Although it is difficult to assess the success or otherwise of the South Australian government's venture into the making of tariff policy, a number of consequences for the State may be identified. The regional point of view was at least placed before the IAC; the State public service was strengthened; the already close relationship between business and government became even more intimate (despite differences in ideology); and some of the crude protectionist views held in the early 1970s have been replaced by a commitment to a long-term reconstruction of industry.     

Barriers and Opportunities for Primary Care Delivery Systems: A Case Study from the County Council of Uppsala, Sweden

Reallocation of resources from hospital care to primary care outside the hospitals is one of the leading ideas in Swedish health policy. Since the middle of the 1970's a system of long-term planning at the county level has been the main instrument of realizing this aim. In this case-study of the implementation of a current long-term plan in the county of Uppsala, the problems of health policy planning in a situation of economic crisis are illustrated. The attempt at planning according to the rational model is shown to have been impeded by, among other things, the incremental strategy of budgeting, which was natural in the days of affluence. In the present situation of low economic growth and strong political demands for restrictions on the growth of the health care sector, particularly as regards the hospitals, incremental budgeting will probably have to give way to a more comprehensive form of planning, such as the mixed-scanning strategy.     

Exploring Social Capital: as Concept and Practice in Australian Public Health Policies and Programs

Over the past twenty years interest has grown in the concept of social capital in international and Australian public policy. We explore how social capital is understood as a concept and used in practice for guiding policy development and program delivery in South Australian public health programs. The empirical research compared policy makers’ and practitioners’ understandings of social capital and how theories about social capital and health inequality were translated into practice in three case study projects. It found that there are shifting discourses between social capital and related concepts, including community capacity building, and social inclusion/exclusion. Policy makers reported less use of the concept of social capital in favour of social inclusion/exclusion reflecting changing political and policy environments where terms come into favour and then go out of fashion. In this transition period the two terms are often used interchangeably although there are some conceptual points of difference.     

Unequal Voices: ‘Strategic’ Consultation in South Australia

In 2006, the South Australian government undertook the largest consultation ever to take place in the state. Over 1600 South Australians were involved with the consultation on the revision of South Australia's Strategic Plan (SASP). This ‘big‐picture’ consultation was a significant attempt to connect with, and gain feedback from, the South Australian ‘community’ on the Rann government's vision for the state. This article is the first formal evaluation of the 2006 consultation on the SASP. To critically evaluate the consultation process, this article uses Pratchett's framework which examines participative processes through the two principles of responsiveness and representativeness. The article concludes that the state government's rhetoric about the success of the consultation obscures a number of deficiencies and tensions that underpinned the consultation process. This critique of the South Australian consultation provides some key insights for the current trend for strategic planning at the state level in Australia.