Delivering Policy Reform: Anchoring Significant Reforms in Turbulent Times

230 Pages·2011·1.38 MB·English

by  Evert A. Lindquist

Delivering Policy Reform
Anchoring Significant Reforms in Turbulent Times

Delivering Policy Reform
Anchoring Significant Reforms in Turbulent Times
Edited by Evert A. Lindquist, Sam Vincent & John Wanna
Published by ANU E Press
The Australian National University
Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
Email: [email protected]
This title is also available online at: http://epress.anu.edu.au
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Lindquist, Evert A.
Title: Delivering policy reform [electronic resource] : anchoring significant
reforms in turbulent times / Evert A. Lindquist, Sam Vincent, John
Wanna.
ISBN: 9781921862182 (pbk.) 9781921862199 (eBook)
Series: ANZSOG series.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Subjects: Policy sciences.
Public administration.
Other Authors/Contributors:
Vincent, Sam.
Wanna, John.
Dewey Number: 320.6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover design by ANU E Press
Printed by Griffin Press
Funding for this monograph series has been provided by the Australia and New
Zealand School of Government Research Program.
This edition © 2011 ANU E Press
John Wanna, Series Editor
Professor John Wanna holds the Sir John Bunting Chair
of Public Administration at the Research School of Social
Sciences at The Australian National University and is
director of research for the Australia and New Zealand
School of Government (ANZSOG). He is also Professor
of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University,
and formerly principal researcher with the Centre for
Australian Public Sector Management and the Key
Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith
University. Professor Wanna has produced about 40 books
including two national textbooks on policy and public management. He has
produced a number of research-based studies on public management including:
The Reality of Budget Reform in the OECD (2010); Comparing Westminster (2009);
Westminster Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the
Pacific (2005); Yes Premier (2005); Controlling Public Expenditure (2003); From
Accounting to Accountability (2001); and Managing Public Expenditure (2000). In
2009 Professor Wanna completed a study of service delivery in the Australian
Government entitled Policy in Action: The challenge of service delivery. His most
recent book, produced with Tracey Arklay, is The Ayes Have It: The history of
the Queensland Parliament 1957–89 (2010), a major legislative study of historical
significance. Professor Wanna has held many Australian Research Council
grants over the years, but also conducts research independently and through
ANZSOG. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics,
public expenditure and budgeting, and government–business relations. His
political commentary has appeared in The Australian, The Courier-Mail and The
Canberra Times and on Sky News as well as ABC Radio and TV. The ANZSOG
ANU E Press, which he edits, is now approaching 30 titles. See <http://epress.
anu.edu.au/titles/anzsog.html>

Contents
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Part I. The reform challenge
1 . Delivering policy reform: making it happen, making it stick . . . . 1
Evert A. Lindquist and John Wanna
2 . ‘Don’t waste the crisis’:
the agenda for public-policy reforms in a turbulent world . . . . 13
Aart de Geus
3 . Making reforms sustainable:
lessons from the American policy reform experience . . . . . . . 27
Eric M. Patashnik
Part II. National reform initiatives
4 . How to design and deliver reform that makes a real difference:
what recent history has taught us as a nation . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Paul Kelly
5 . The ‘new responsibility model’ for New Zealand
public-sector CEOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
The Hon. Bill English
6 . A portent of things to come:
lessons from a reforming minister . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
The Hon. Lindsay Tanner
7 . The agenda for achieving a world-class public sector:
making reforms that matter in the face of challenges . . . . . . . 75
Stephen Sedgwick
8 . Collaborative reform:
lessons from the COAG Reform Council, 2008–2010 . . . . . . 91
Mary Ann O’Loughlin
9 . Entrenching ‘Rogernomics’ in New Zealand:
political and academic perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Jonathan Boston and Sir Roger Douglas
10 . Institutional renewal and reform:
the challenge of the Commonwealth of Nations . . . . . . . . . 109
The Hon. Michael Kirby
Part III. Tackling and anchoring reform initiatives
11 . Tackling cartels: lessons for making and entrenching reform . . . . . . 123
William E. Kovacic
12 . The overhaul of Australian immigration practices, 2005–2010 . . . . . 131
Andrew Metcalfe
13 . Getting integrity reforms adopted internationally . . . . . . . . 145
Jeremy Pope
14 . Sustaining water reform in Australia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Ken Matthews
15 . Up in smoke: combating tobacco through legislative reform . . 181
Rob Moodie
16 . Improving road safety:
perspectives from Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission . . 193
Janet Dore
17 . Epilogue: rules for reformers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Paul ’t Hart
Foreword
This volume of essays had its origins in our thinking about the global financial
crisis—when, in 2008, the major economic shock emerging out of the mortgage
and financial sector in the United States swept around the world with disastrous
consequences. High-risk sub-prime lending in the United States might have
precipitated the crisis, but its full impacts affected almost every nation and
every industry sector as banks collapsed, credit dried up, share markets and
property markets fell spectacularly and government budgets took a big hit in
deficit and debt levels. The crisis suddenly and unexpectedly posed a major
threat to international and domestic policy settings.
In Australia, we tended to see the crisis as a consequence of poorly regulated and
badly managed markets that went spectacularly out of control. Professor Joseph
Stiglitz, while recently in Australia, said that the phrase the ‘global financial
crisis’ was a peculiarly Australian term invented to label the credit crunch as an
exogenous shock. Indeed, we all know that the term was very carefully chosen
by the Rudd Government as a way of describing the impact of the economic
crisis on Australia, hinting at the fact that its origins, in their view, had nothing
to do with anything happening in Australia. It is almost a unique label that we
use in this part of the world to convey the impression we caught the infection
from elsewhere.
The global financial crisis, of course, gave rise to immediate policy challenges
about how we anticipated the looming problems, how we chose to react to them,
and what we actually did to alleviate the worst aspects of the crisis and in
what order we did them. Now, as we start to come out of that global crisis,
and with fairly good performance in this part of the world, we ask ourselves
how appropriate the interventions were, how well they appear to have worked,
and when we can expect to be ‘through the crisis’. But once the impact of the
present crisis fades—if it does, as we hope—governments have to again think
about their policy futures. How do we conceive of longer-term policy resilience;
how can we enhance our capacities; how should we protect and reinvigorate our
regulatory and assurance systems; how should we pursue strategically informed
interventions; and which proactive programs are necessary to deal with future
social, economic and environmental challenges?
Thus, this volume concerns the conception and development of new policy
regimes, including the creation of new policy responses to longstanding or
emergent dilemmas. We are interested in exploring future needs and challenges
and how we might better address them, asking what are the right policies to adopt
to address current and future challenges? But in rising to meet these challenges,
it is very important that we take a complete view—a ‘whole-of-policy’ approach;
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Delivering Policy Reform
a longitudinal analysis of an entire policy trajectory or entire policy life cycle.
This in turn involves working out not only how to bring about a particular
reform, but also how to make it work, how to make it stick and how to anticipate
its adaptation. Reform must be durable, dependable and defendable.
Contributors to this collection assess policy from various vantage points: the
processes of formulation and development, the administrative dimensions of
implementation and delivery, the issues associated with evaluation and feedback.
They also explore the types of problems that emerge within policy fields and
program activities. These include not only some of the political obstacles that
arise after reforms have been adopted, but also the obstacles that can actually
stop policy from working, or sometimes, to be more positive, the political forces
that build up and support that reform and its continuation, and perhaps trigger
further reforms. They are generally asking what is happening with (and to)
various policy reform scenarios and their specific program components? How do
we assess what works effectively, what should be preserved or enhanced, what
should be reversed or redesigned? The dimensions they explore are crucially
concerned with the relationship between the current contours of the policy
choices (the objective or intent, the design, the instruments and implementation
and outcomes) and the problems they are meant to address.
So, in this volume, we are analysing not just how to get a reform through Parliament
or through the Government (the enactment phase), but also the whole life of the
reform and the challenges that arise during its existence. We are asking how do
the challenges facing our communities translate to government as demands for
strategic policy reforms that propel policy settings in new directions? How does
good policy come about? How do governments and especially public servants
design and broker reform proposals and packages that are smart and feasible
and able to actually address contemporary challenges? How do we incorporate
good features and practices of implementation that are sustainable in the longer
term? If a particular policy is going wrong during its lifetime, how do we bring
about improvements without at the same time resurrecting all the opposition to
the reforms and opposition that might bring them unstuck?
These are the questions this collection of essays seeks to address and answer.
Our contributors have exceptional expertise and qualities to enable them to
reflect and comment on these issues with authority. They each emanate from
different backgrounds and address different policy sectors. But the themes
they explore are consistent. We have included contributions from leaders in
political life and the Public Service, from investigative journalists, national and
international scholars, and representatives from national and international non-
governmental bodies including the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development. While Australia and New Zealand have in the past been
x