… The text can be accessed here [link to pdf].
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Why was Tony Jones so persistent in his questioning of Penny Wong over the proprietary of releasing this report to the print media with an embargo. He also questioned whether the government department analysis of Liberal election ideas was apolitical or a Labor election activity
Google news search tells me that Abbott has allocated $11 billion over ten years. Does this mean they can’t spend a single penny before about 2015 if they don’t want to go over budget?
The graph in the press relase does say that the Coalition scheme would mean a reduction from 20% to 13% in emissions growth from 2000 levels. I think we know what Hunt will be out there selling his arse off on.
If that is the standard of writing for Ministerial Briefings Penny Wong is having written for her, no wonder she is pushing poo up hill with a pointy stick.
That would have been a fail at staff college.
haha razor, I’d like to see you digest a whole policy document, write a report on it, edit it safe for public release, and check there are no major blunders in the detail in the time frame for this report. Your mates at staff college wouldn’t have a chance.
But then, I suppose it was staff college which trained the people who briefed JH on Saddam Hussein’s people shredder, right? Sterling work, that.
I’d be a bit worried if the officers and gentlemen of the ADF staff college started putting the elements of style ahead of computer modelling.
Bit too Yukio Mishima for my tastes.
Razor, just once it would be good to see you deal with the substance of a post. The bottom line (and this should have been obvious already) is that Abbott’s plan (if you can call it that) is very unlikely to meet the target of 5%. That means either having to spend mucn more than he has committed to to meet the target or missing the target altogether. I think we all know that this has been cobbled together to give the impression that the coalition is serious about climate change without actually delivering a policy that will either meet the target or efficiently reduce emissions.
I’ve read a lot of what you have written on this site and overall you have come across as somebody that is at least sympathetic to an economically liberal approach to policy. Doesn’t it make you feel at all uncomfortable to see the coalition supporting a policy that would be more at home in a socialist party’s policy kit?
billie@1 I was asking myself that too. I think the answer is that he can be, persistent that is.
Perceptive viewers (ie we LP contributors!) complain all the time about ABC and other interviewers letting people like Abbott and Joyce off the hook as they twist and turn evasively or are simply incoherent. It takes enormous persistence and concentration at the risk of seeming to bully people like that to get sense or a straight answer from them. That’s why they seem to get away with it.
Intelligent interviewees like Rudd and Wong are able to be pursued with a consistent line of questioning and so seem sometimes to get cornered. I think Penny Wong did a great job in sidelining Tony Jones on the modelling for projected increases in ETS targets and associated costs. No sane government would release putative increases for the Opposition to scaremonger over unless targets actually change. I sensed mutual respect there as they duelled their way through the interview. I think Wong is outstanding. She’s got political nous as well as honest to goodness brains.
Government department releases report finding flaws in Opposition policy.
I’m glad all of that politicisation of the public service ended when The Evil Howard left The Lodge.
Patricia, whatever other flaws Tony Abbott has, and they are considerable, lack of raw intelligence isn’t among them.
I’m with Terry. Why on earth is a Commonwealth public service department providing by-definition political advice like this?
Liam, I personally don’t have a problem with governments having access to expert analysis of opposition policies.
The trouble is that the Opposition didn’t have access to the same expert advice in preparing the policy, nor do they get the assistance of such advice to analyze government policies.
One thing about US processes of government that probably is worth thinking hard about is the Congressional Budget Office.
Here, I’ll write the two-line brief for you, with proper APS attitude.
The problem here is that, in contrast to other Departments (Treasury, Education, Transport, Communication etc.) that exist as adjuncts to obvious governmental functions, the Department of Climate Change exists purely as a power base for Penny Wong, which is why it is not a division within the Environment portfolio. It therefore rises or falls not only on discrediting Opposition policies, but in keeping the CPRS afloat as a complex policy to administer that will require a large government department such as … you get the picture.
But the advice has to come from somewhere, Robert. Fulfilling this request has evidently led to a bunch of fairly senior public servants looking through the Opposition’s position for attack material for Parliament and the media. That’s not a healthy situation for an independent APS.
If Wong wants advice like this, she ought to offer a secondment into her own office to one of the economists or modellers Climate Change I assume employ, and they can work with a great big Labor Party badge on.
Public service departments have always provided advice to governments about opposition policies. It is fundamental to the Westminster system. As long as the advice is about policy, it is not political (well of course it is political but it’s still OK under our system of government.)
Public servant do other things that are political. They brief ministers on likely questions the opposition will ask in parliament and they prepare answers to them. They obfuscate on behalf of ministers at Senate Estimates hearings or other parliamentary hearings. They do everything they can to hinder or stop Freedom of Information requests. And when the opposition wins an election and becomes a government, the public service does it for them.
What kinds of intelligences (and how much of each) Abbott actually possesses is moot if what he displays is buffoonery and ignorant reflexive populism
#15 Sam, in the cases of prepared answers to Questions in Parliament, what you’re talking about is the public service briefing Ministers so that they gan go in and obfuscate on their behalf, not the other way around.
It also wouldn’t have been released if it was not politically advantageous for the Government to do so.
Robert, my lack of clarity there. I see Abbott as supremely evasive in argument and Joyce as incoherent. Fran’s point is better – what both display is their “ignorant reflexive populism.” Abbott uses tortuous casuistry to argue the barely morally tenable while Joyce blusters and crashes through. I’m hoping that intelligent journos are doing a Virginia Trioli in their heads with Joyce at least.
Listening to Fran Kelly putting the case for the good sense of Abbott’s new climate policy this morning when supposedly interviewing a US commentator I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath. She shut up, of course, when he likened it to the worst of Republican “do nothing, but reward the polluters” policies.
Liam, there’s nothing wrong with the Westminster system of having public servants support their ministers with up to the minute briefings. They are there to serve our elected government and ensure the implementation of policies we’ve voted for.
Sam’s right. There’s an even handedness of a sort. Imperfect but workable democracy.
@11 Liberal Party policy is to establish a Parliamentary Budget Office, along the lines of the CBO.
I was puzzled too why the ABC got its knickers in a knot about the perfectly reasonable origins of the analysis, until I realised that was how The Australian newspaper reported it. Breathless finger pointing – ooh look, the policy analysis was done by public servants!!!
How utterly ridiculous.
TONY JONES: If that is the issue, let me ask you this: is it now standard practice to pass confidential departmental briefing documents to the press, or to sections of the press, I should say, as part of a media strategy to undermine the Opposition’s position?
PENNY WONG: This is not a media strategy. This is about bringing some accountability and honesty to this important policy debate, Tony.
Sure Penny, like this?
‘the department rang Denniss to confirm that he wanted advice to the minister, and the department’s lawyers said this was covered by the request, it was excluded on the instruction of departmental head Martin Parkinson and his deputy Blair Comley.
Not easily deterred, Denniss fired in another request asking for documents prepared to help inform Wong and her advisers of the details, merits, limitations and criticisms of the ETS.
• The response: : he may be able to get what he wants if he hands over $256,586.98, although, catch-22, if he proceeds with his request, the department may decide it involves an unreasonable diversion of resources.’
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/labours-in-the-ministry-of-truth/story-e6frg6zo-1225824638788
Matt @ 20, that – or something like that – is what they all say, right up until the point that they’re elected.
The Victorian ALP wasn’t going to use taxpayer money on political advertising once. Now Baillieu’s saying the same thing. Does anyone actually believe them?
This is definitely a bit of a grey area, and there’s no one correct or definitive answer, but I personally think it’s perfectly legitimate and appropriate for the Government to get analysis of the Opposition policy (for want of a better word) from the Department. They after all are supposed to be the experts. This isn’t partisan political stuff.
What is politicising of the PS is that Wong released the advice, thereby claiming their expertise as a cloak for her. That’s who’s at fault here, but it takes a brave Secretary/permanent head to resist a Minister doing this and to remind them of the necessary conventions to make a washminster democracy work.
The waters have already been extremely muddied – I’m sure Ken Henry, for instance, won’t have a job should the Coalition be elected. That’s not any aspersion on his integrity, rather a reflection of the fact that for most of the term, the Government has been very happy indeed to leverage his advice and role as part of the policy formulation process in public.
Liam, Please inform us all of your complaints when Ministers in the Howard Goverenment did this.
They’re only happy to release it publicly when it suits them. If they released it under all circumstances, then the PS wouldn’t be politicised.
I think there would be a good case for some sort of equivalent of the US Congressional Budget Office, which would subject all parties’ policy to scrutiny, and be transparent about the results and methodology.
Mercurius @ 154
“Racist trolling earns you permanent moderation. Bye-eeeee!”
I suppose that means you are purging your library of Charlton’s
Two flies up a wall: the Australian passion for gambling.
Perhaps it might have been more prudent to call for him to support his proposition, and then string him up, if he could not produce a decent defence of it – as for instance Charlton whereupon it might become fair comment. (You know, fair trial first, that sort of vague concept).
Marks claimed that
Two flies up a wall: the Australian passion for gambling was equivalent to Iain specifying the long-standing cultural affinity to gambling of Chinese.
The superficial similarity is plain. Both decalre cultural stereotypes, but you ignore context. To begin with, the first is a claim by an Australian writer about Australians. It’s also meant as something positive. Who utters the claim and how it is read by its likely audience(s) are key to the cultural character of claims.
Making claims about another ethnic group that are stereotyping and likely to be read as negative, in a setting where there is longstanding animus is an entirely different matter.
Of course Fran, but that is why I suggest that the person advancing the proposition should be called on it. For all any of us know he may have a reasonable reference which could make his comment ‘fair comment’ rather than something else. Put another way, if someone in China wrote about Australians and gambling in the same way, given the amount of $$ we spend and the media coverage given to gambling sports such as the nags and dishlickers, would that be racist? Or fair comment.
It might have been better to dispute/argue the salient points related to this thread and just call him on the comments about gambling, which seemed to be throwaway to me.
And Hmmmm, I dunno how I got it in this thread anyhoo.
*sigh*
And apologies.
Marks said:
It sounded like he just wanted a cheap shot — everyone knows the Chinese like their gambling and they are gambling on AGW or something like that.
If he’d had some cred the benefit of the doubt might have applied.
I think the last few comments are on the wrong thread.