A Long Time Coming: the Advent of Paid Maternity Leave in Australia?

With the announcement by the federal government of a Productivity Commission Inquiry into the ‘economic, productivity and social costs and benefits' of providing paid maternity, paternity and parental leave, the somewhat surprisingly contentious issue of paid maternity leave is once again on the public policy agenda.

Yet, it is very early days and while the forces in favour of finally introducing a comprehensive scheme are gathering, there are still no guarantees as to what the outcome will be. This paper briefly canvasses the current manifestations of maternity/paternity and parental leave in Australia and examines the ways in which they help or hinder prospects for progress. But before delving into the intricacies of the current arrangements, it is helpful to distinguish between the terms:

Maternity leave refers to employment-protected leave of absence for employed women at around the time of childbirth (or adoption).
Paternity leave refers to employment-protected leave of absence for employed fathers at the time of childbirth (or adoption).
Parental Leave refers to employment-protected leave of absence for employed parents which supplements specific maternity and paternity leave periods to allow parents to take care of an infant or young child.

In terms of existing paid parental leave provisions, these are currently available for just a segment of the Australian female workforce through enterprise bargaining entitlements, discretionary employer policies and via legislation covering public sector employees in all the States, Territories and Australian jurisdictions. There is no uniform, universal provision of paid maternity leave and consequently there is considerable variation in terms of eligibility, duration, level of pay and return to work arrangements.

In terms of unpaid leave, the draft National Employment Standard proposes to extend the current unpaid parental leave period of 52 weeks by a further 12 months per couple. But perhaps this is not the most gender equitable policy change, as we shall see.

What do we make of all of these data and how do we ensure that Australian women get the best possible outcome when it comes to combining their roles as employees and mothers?

If we consider the most recent statistics on the extent of paid maternity leave gained through enterprise bargaining, we can see that there is still considerable room for growth. Less than a quarter of all agreements refer to paid maternity leave. Interestingly, however, the most common entitlement is now 14 weeks, followed by 6 weeks and then 12 weeks. The most common industries to include paid maternity leave in agreements are finance and insurance, followed by utilities and then education. I suspect different factors are at play in each of these industries. For instance, profitability, attraction, retention and mimicking in the finance sector; government influence amongst the utilities; and strong union bargaining in the education sector. By contrast, the retail and hospitality sectors, where women are concentrated, are least likely to provide paid maternity leave. That is why the very recent announcement by Myer to provide 6 weeks paid maternity leave for their permanent employees is significant. It may signal a shift in direction, but probably only for females employed in the large retail firms.

The variability and inequity in outcomes at the workplace level suggests there is a clear need for an approach that overcomes the disadvantages of bargaining and business case arguments if all working women in Australia are to have access to paid maternity leave.

But the availability of paid maternity leave is only one part of the larger equation. The willingness and ability to use the policy is also important and here we see a clearly gendered outcome. In a survey of Australian parents conducted in 2005, we found that of the mothers, 37% took only paid maternity leave (average length of 11 weeks); 68% took a combination of paid and unpaid maternity leave and 76% took paid and unpaid maternity leave and other leave, such as their annual leave. This compares to the pattern for fathers, where 27% took paid paternity leave (average 7 days) and only 7% took unpaid parental leave (14 days). These statistics demonstrate a reluctance among fathers and households to use unpaid parental leave. As a result, the current unpaid parental leave policy, while available in principle to both men and women, in practice is used by women far more than men, producing a very gendered use of leave and care regime. The recent ABS statistics on the low numbers of stay-at-home dads tend to confirm this pattern.

The provision of 52 weeks unpaid parental leave has been a feature of the Australian legislative landscape for some time. The new draft National Employment Standard proposes to increase this by an extra 12 months per couple, on request from the employee. There is also a new right to request ‘flexible working arrangements' for parents of children under school age. As with the extension to unpaid parental leave, the employer can refuse on ‘reasonable business grounds'. On the face of it, these changes are promising, signalling more sympathetic attention to the plight of working families. But, we also need to be careful what we accept - there is a danger for women of staying on leave for too long, but accepting too little (in terms of income compensation) and thus reinforcing the gender pay gap, leave gap and career gap.

One way of beginning to address the inequities in the division of labour and distribution of care responsibilities between the sexes may be to introduce specific paid paternity leave on a ‘use it or lose it' basis; making it financially possible for fathers to take time off work. Many other countries have introduced such ‘daddy leaves' without undermining the whole economy or the social order.

There are many parts to the paid maternity/paternity/parental leave policy picture that need to be considered - funding, duration, eligibility, payment level - but the task is not insurmountable. One hopes that the Productivity Commission will finally settle on a model that fits the needs of 21st century Australian parents - that contributes to equitable homes and families, that generates income and job security for men and women, that enables business to attract and retain their workforce and allows for the question to finally be put to rest - at least until the next inquiry is called.

On April 23, CPD will hold its first 'Common Ground' event on paid maternity leave, featuring Sharan Burrow (ACTU) and Tony Steven (Council of Small Business)  - find out more here

 

Health: the importance of getting principles right

The health debate in Australia is all about managerialism rather than the principles that should underpin and drive a national health system. There is a great deal of movement, but the direction is not clear.

Nowhere are principles such as fairness, universality, social solidarity or citizenship mentioned by the government in its announcement of the establishment of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission. The Commission is asked by the government to provide a blueprint to address ‘The rapidly increasing burden of chronic disease, the ageing of the population, rising health costs and inefficiencies exacerbated by cost-shifting and the blame game'. These are all very important issues, but do we want a well-managed and efficient system that lacks guiding principles? Do we want a high quality universal system for all, or a two-tier system with a high quality tier for the wealthy and a second, and inferior, welfare tier for the poor? Is the Government's objective simply to manage the same set of health arrangements more efficiently than the Coalition? Does the Labor Government hold values and principles in health that differentiate it from the Coalition?

At the Centre for Policy Development we have been researching options for alternative portfolio policies, particularly in health. It quickly became clear that most of the public debate in health revolved around managerialism - efficiency, cost-pressures, productivity, cost-shifting and fragmentation - while questions about long term structure and purpose were neglected. In ‘A health policy for Australia: reclaiming universal health care', my co-author Ian McAuley and I concluded that:
‘It is ... impossible to find or even to infer any coherent set of principles in our present health policies, particularly on the issue of health care funding. Some services are provided for free, while others receive no government support. Some services are covered by tax-funded insurance, but at the same time there are incentives for people to opt out of sharing and into private insurance. Politicians talk of 'universalism' and a 'commitment to Medicare' while encouraging the development of a two-tier hospital system. Politicians talk about 'individual responsibility' while encouraging people to hand responsibility over to health insurance corporations. Governments, particularly Coalition governments speak vaguely about the virtues of the private sector, but only in a few areas of health care is there a degree of market competition; in general, health care has been cosseted from market forces. Labor politicians sing the praises of bulk-billing while supporting high co-payments for pharmaceuticals.' (p.10)

In that policy paper, we set out some key principles that we believed should guide health policy design.

• A universal system accessible to all. Poor and rich should have access to the same high quality health services from the same public and private providers. We asserted that a universal system should not necessarily imply a ‘free' system.
• Services designed around patients' needs and not historic provider interests.
• Maximisation of individual choice. This should not be confused with the so-called ‘choice' between look-alike private insurers.
• Fairness through universal taxpayer funding.
• Resources allocated to where they are most needed. (Not for example, to acute care and elective surgery which is promoted by the media-savvy at the expense of funding for neglected mental health sufferers.)
• The community actively involved in setting priorities.
• Technical efficiency so that we obtain the maximum benefit from our limited health dollars.
• Subsidiarity, whereby health care is delivered by the smallest or the most local health unit, subject to national policies, national funding and national standards.

These principles were set out based on our own research and extensive consultation with health policy experts. Nowhere has the government attempted to enumerate an equivalent set of principles.

This is not to say that we should be unsympathetic to governments which have to make pragmatic decisions on the basis of perceived or actual public concerns and the self-interest of entrenched vested interests. Governments can only build on what we have at the moment. But in health as in so many areas, we need some clear principles, some ‘light on the hill' which can provide guidance and discipline in the development of our health system.

There is one area in which the government's lack of underlying principles is most obvious. It is its commitment to continue the $6b pa government subsidy to private health insurance (PHI) that was introduced by the Howard Government. It is one thing for individuals to take out private insurance if they so desire, but it is quite a different thing for the government to subsidise mainly wealthy people to jump the queue in access to health services. The government subsidy goes overwhelmingly to the richest in our community. 80% of the top 20% of income earners in Australia have PHI. Only 20% of the poorest 20% have PHI. This $6b subsidy is the heartland of middle class welfare. PHI benefits those who seek elective surgery in metropolitan private hospitals, but disadvantages rural people who don't have access to private hospitals. The 9% administrative costs of PHI are about double the administrative costs of Medicare, including the cost of tax collection. PHI companies do not effectively engage in cost-control. Neither do they effectively manage over-servicing in health, which is widespread in such areas as joint replacement, cataract extraction and caesarean section.

The subsidisation of PHI is threatening our universal system - as the Howard Government intended. At a point when the US government is struggling to get out of the mess that PHI has wrought in the United States, Australia is headed down the same track that the US must abandon. The government has appointed a senior executive from a major private health insurance company as the Chair of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. This surely signals a government retreat from universalism, the founding principle of Medicare over 30 years ago.

To justify the subsidisation of PHI, the government in its announcement of the Reform Commission spoke of ‘maximising a productive relationship between public and private sectors'. It is quite fallacious for the government to claim that subsidising private financial intermediaries like PHIs is necessary to provide a mix of public and private health delivery. Private hospitals in Australia would receive at least $1b additional each year if the PHI intermediaries were cut out of the loop and funds paid directly to hospitals. Veterans Affairs does just that. As a single public payer, it leaves it up to veterans to choose treatment in either the public or private sector. It is nonsense to suggest that financial intermediaries are necessary to support private hospitals.

In Canada, a decade ago, the federal government established a Royal Commission to conduct a dialogue with citizens and to make recommendations to the government on an ideal health service for Canadians. The Commissioner, Dr Romanow, proposed
‘a Canadian Health Covenant that expresses Canadians' collective vision for health care and that outlines the responsibilities and entitlements of individual citizens, health providers and governments in regard to the system. We need consensus on why the system exists, what it is intended to achieve and how its component parts should fit together. This is vital to restoring the public's confidence in the system.'
In referring to ‘consensus on why the system exists (and) what it is intended to achieve', Romanow was in effect saying that Canadians needed to agree on the principles that should guide the design of the Canadian health system. His report underlined the wide support amongst Canadians for the principle of universalism in health.

The Australian government has not spelt out why the Australian health system exists and what it is intended to achieve. Principles must come before managerialism.

If there is one clear but extremely worrying message that the government has given in health, it is that it is prepared to contemplate a retreat from a universal system of health care. Is that really what the government intends? More importantly, is it what Australians want?

The Australia 2020 Summit: dead end or path to the future?

The future is not a place to which we are going, it is a place we are creating. The paths to the future are not found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination. - John Schaar

Last November, the European Union convened a historic summit in the European Parliament in Brussels to consider new ways to define and measure ‘progress, true wealth and the well-being of nations'. The conference reached nearly universal agreement that economic output is a misleading measure of sustainable national progress and well-being and that a new concept of progress is needed that integrates economic, social and environmental dimensions and enables real comparisons between nations. Perhaps most importantly, it agreed that developing clear, honest and comprehensive measures of national progress is essential, not just for better policymaking, but as a fundamentally important democratic issue: a means for better informed citizens, a stronger sense of a shared vision and more transparent and accountable government.

Some of the same challenges face our own ‘summiteers', the one thousand Australians invited to the Australia 2020 conference this weekend, as they gather to discuss ideas for a long-term strategy for Australia and spell out our own national vision.

 

 

 

 

 

The summit has been criticised as an empty talkfest that will be soon forgotten; but this is unfair on several counts. Australia's recent political history has been characterised by a lack of open discussion of ideas for our future, and few attempts to involve the wider community in them.

So the summit is an exciting and innovative development, and entirely justifiable in its own right; but some of the criticisms will appear more valid over time if it fails to meet three conditions.

First, it must find a way to link the complex problems which cross the rather too neat policy boundaries and discrete questions into which the Summit program is presently divided. Second, it must fit the plurality of its ideas within a larger, more integrated vision for the nation that truly reflects the values and aspirations of its people.

And most importantly, the Summit must be the beginning, not the end, of a wider and more inclusive democratic debate in the Australian community about the kind of country we want ours to be: a debate sorely needed and postponed far too long, that requires the voice of citizens more than experts.

The hard truth is that Australia does not have a national vision, one that is clearly defined and widely shared. We do not even have a consistent way of describing our progress as a nation or in our local communities.

For a vision to become reality needs more than generalisations or ‘feel good' slogans like ‘a fair go for all'. It must be based on shared values, defined and articulated, discussed and agreed in the community, translated into concrete policies and benchmarks, and measured regularly by key indicators. A strategic vision for Australia cannot be created by merely adding together a hundred good ideas.

Knowing where we want to go to as a nation also requires a hard headed appraisal of where we are now, which is another and more unsettling kind of ‘big picture'.

One useful way to do this is to compare Australia with other countries with roughly similar wealth and political systems. When we do this, the picture we get about life and progress in Australia is uneven and often disturbing. As citizens, we have quite a lot to worry about for Australia's future. And it isn't just in climate change. We have significant and growing social problems. We have steadily become a meaner, more unequal country and a poorer international citizen. For a fiercely competitive country in the sporting arena, we are chronic underachievers in some divisions of the international progress stakes.

The table below illustrates the point. It shows Australia's performance on a wide range of progress measures compared to 13 other major OECD countries, with similar wealth and political systems. The columns for overall wellbeing, human rights, peace, democracy and the environment represent an aggregate ranking of the country's performance in many different areas in each of those fields. The key aggregate, overall national wellbeing, is made up of 100 measures in areas including education, housing, health, family wellbeing, crime, violence, employment and ecological health.

	Overall well being	Human rights	Peace	Demo -cracy	Environ -ment	National wealth	Gov't spending	Income equality
Sweden	1	4	4	3	3	12	1	1
Norway	2	4	1	4	7	2	9	2
Denmark	3	2	2	2	2	3	2	6
Finland	4	1	3	1	10	10	3	3
Neth'lands	5	3	8	5	8	5	5	5
Austria	6	9	5	12	1	6	6	8
Germany	7	6	9	9	6	9	11	7
Canada	8	8	6	7	12	4	10	10
Belgium	9	7	7	10	11	8	4	4
France	10	10	12	13	5	14	8	9
UK	11	11	13	8	3	13	12	12
Australia	12	13	10	6	14	7	13	11
Italy	13	11	11	14	8	11	7	12
USA	14	14	14	11	13	1	14	14

Table: How does Australia compare?
National progress indices for 14 OECD countries, ranked by performance, c. 2000- 2007

Australia's performance in this league is very poor. We are 12^th out of 14 on overall wellbeing, with some of our worst areas being child poverty, family support, maternity leave, infant mortality, employment protection, unemployment benefits, working hours, public education spending, disability support, aged care, youth suicide, crime victimisation, public safety, imprisonment, income inequality, health system contributions, housing costs, media diversity and pollution. Our environmental performance is appalling, and shows how much ground we have to make up, not just on climate change, but in biodiversity, and water, land and energy use.

These conditions of the present, unless radically changed, will determine and delimit our future and narrow our options for a shared national vision.

The international comparisons suggest some interesting, and perhaps surprising, conclusions about progress and wellbeing. The countries which have achieved the highest levels of overall wellbeing are also those which perform best in human rights and peace; and in fact, levels of income equality and government spending in a country are a better predictor of national wellbeing than total wealth per head. Indeed the country with the greatest wealth also has the lowest standard of national wellbeing.

To build the future requires at least two conditions: that we understand the present; and that we clearly agree on our destination, the kind of society we want to be. In a democracy these must be collective processes. Five years ago, Canadians launched a revolutionary new democratic program, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a huge national collaboration which aims to do exactly this. It will provide reliable, accessible and comprehensive information to Canadians about the state of their nation, measured against the values that matter to citizens. The OECD has taken up this model on a global scale in its project, ‘Measuring and defining the progress of societies'. Surely this is a fitting commitment for a new Australian government.

REFERENCES:

Overall wellbeing: Horvath, R., 2004, ‘Australia: lucky country or laggard?', Australian Review of Public Affairs. ‘Wellbeing rank' is based on overall performance on 100 indicators across all major fields of wellbeing for c. 2000, cited in Tiffen, R. and Gittins, R., 2004. How Australia Compares, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press. See: http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/0411/horvath.html

Human Rights: Average of ranks in two studies, 1992 and 2007: (1) Humana, a UN endorsed index which compares performance on 30 key human rights, mostly civil and political, some economic and social. See: Humana, C. 1992. World Human Rights Guide; (2) Observer (Guardian) Index, based on reported human rights abuses in ten civil rights areas: Extrajudicial executions, ‘Disappearances', Torture and inhuman treatment, Deaths in custody, Prisoners of conscience, Unfair trials, Detention without charge or trial, Executions (death penalty), Sentence of death, and Abuses by armed opposition group. See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/Tables/4_col_tables/0,,258329,00.html (accessed 20/6/07)

Peace: Global Peace Index, 2007, ‘Methodology, results and findings', www.visionofhumanity.com

Environment: Overall ranking on 13 key environmental measures in five fields: Biodiversity, greenhouse gases, air pollution and petrol use, energy usage; ecological footprint & water usage.

Democracy: Source: World Audit, 2004, http://www.worldaudit.org/democracy.htm

National Wealth: GDP per head in 2000, OECD (2002)

Government Spending: Total government outlays as % of GDP, 1990-1999, ranked from highest (Sweden, 63.2%) to lowest (USA, 36.2%), mean at 47.8%. OECD Source: OECD, Historical statistics 1960-1995, 1970-1999.

Income Inequality: Luxembourg Income Study, Gini coefficients. Figures for mid to late 1990s. See: www.lisproject.org/keyfigures/ineqtable.htm. Income and wealth figures are cited in Tiffen and Gittins, above.

Table Compiled By: Adjunct Professor M. Salvaris, RMIT University October 2007, salvaris@optusnet.com.au

 

Participatory Governance and the Indigenous Agenda: From Rhetoric to Reality

The Rudd Government is off to a good start with its determination to right the wrongs of past decades and to confront a set of seemingly intractable indigenous issues; a determination to move quickly from symbolism to action. But what will determine success?

Indigenous disadvantage is one of several examples that the Australian Public Service Commission identifies as a highly complex policy problem; one that is "highly resistant to resolution" (see its recent publication Tackling Wicked Problems) Just when you think you may have the policy solution, more complexities are likely to appear. Complex issues, and particularly sensitive ones such as indigenous policy and delivery issues, will require moving beyond consultation to a more active engagement with those likely to be affected by decisions. This is sometimes called "participatory governance" or, in the OECD's words, "active participation".

Fundamental ingredients

The literature here and overseas suggests several necessary (though perhaps not sufficient) key ingredients for successful creation of participatory policy mechanisms.

Three such ingredients stand out: strong leadership, trusting relationships and the willingness of those with power to share it. In the context of indigenous issues, strong leadership can be ticked off at this stage, occurring from the top - from both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. However, this commitment will need to be maintained for a very long time and, importantly, be imbued with a determination to see desired changes achieved on the ground. Leaders of government teams on the ground will need the right cultural attitude and expertise if their endeavours are to succeed. For instance, there is much evidence from the recent government trials of whole of government approaches in indigenous communities that attitudes at the top have not always filtered down. Frequent turnovers of staff working with communities have not assisted.

The second fundamental ingredient is trusting relationships - without this, genuine collaboration of relevant parties is impossible. Trust has been described as both the lubricant and the glue: it facilitates the work of a collaboration as well as holding it together. The concept of trust has only recently found currency within the Australian Public Service - it essentially involves behaviours where the expectations of each party are clear and there is confidence that what is committed to will be delivered. In the context of indigenous communities, a "trust culture" will be difficult to build up and maintain unless these communities have a genuine opportunity to influence government decisions.

The third fundamental and related ingredient that the literature has been identified for participatory practices to work relates to the willingness of government to share their decision-making power. This is so much easier said than done, especially for those officials who have been so used to "managing" a consultation process and seeing it as a process essentially under their control.

The report of the 2005 Select Senate Committee on Indigenous Affairs expressed some concern about the extent of the power inequality between negotiating parties in the context of government-indigenous Shared Responsibility Agreements which dealt with respective responsibilities of aboriginal communities and governments; a concern particularly that the provision by government of basic infrastructure facilities, such as housing repairs or a health centre, could be traded away.

Some implementation challenges

Even with strong leadership from the top, with a building of trust and also effective power-sharing arrangements, other more practical challenges remain to be overcome if effective partnering arrangements between government and non-government players are to be realised. Implementation challenges explain why it is not at all surprising that there is so often a gap between the rhetoric government now uses on participatory governance and the reality witnessed on the ground.

There are at least five important implementation difficulties to overcome.

The first is reshaping respective accountabilities of the players. Important and increasingly complex accountability questions arise around who is accountable to whom and for what in the process of bringing more non-government players into the policy development and decision-making process. Can the principles of individual and collective responsibility as well as accountability to the taxpayer through Parliament hold when the boundaries between what governments and communities do are more blurred? Can there be multiple accountabilities? And how far can ambiguities in partnership arrangements be tolerated?

As the boundaries across sectors blur, there is an inescapable tension between vertical accountability mechanisms traditionally inherent in the Westminster system and horizontal accountability in terms of responsiveness to citizens. The challenge now is to reshape governance processes and practices so that this inevitable tension is minimised and managed; and to gain collaboration in clearly defining respective roles and responsibilities. Essential elements needed here include that: expectations of all parties are agreed and explicit; expectations balance respective capacities; reporting arrangements are credible; and there are carefully designed and appropriate monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

Second, is the need to pay attention to an alignment of organisational structures. Too often when governments set out to put participatory governance mechanisms

in place, they are observed to be operating in the context of traditional structures and processes (for instance referral back by government officials on the ground to head office). Yet these practices may not align with the purpose of participatory governance (for instance, where more autonomy in decision-making is needed by officials working with communities on complex and/or sensitive issues). A key implementation issue, therefore, is to redesign public sector institutions and practices to align more with the new participatory and interactive framework.

When governments engage with indigenous communities, there is an additional issue: it can be anticipated that there will be a deep divide between the types of structures and processes governments use to obtain results and ensure accountability, on the one hand, and traditional indigenous governance arrangements on the other. If these are not understood by all parties, and addressed early on with some collaborative alignment attempted, then all the commitment that can be brought to bear on the task at hand will not be enough to ensure implementation success.

Again, it is not easy to turn this rhetoric into reality. There are many Australian examples of where there was good intent and there was genuine engagement at the initial stages of the project, only for there to be a switch back to old patterns and relationships in the later stages of implementation when government resumed the role of a more dominant player - a situation at odds with genuine participatory arrangements.

Third and related, there is the really difficult issue, in the shorter term at least, of gaining and maintaining the appropriate cultural environment. This was found to be particularly relevant in the case studies analysed in the Connecting Government report (MAC 2004) especially so in evaluations of the COAG Indigenous Trials. A growing academic literature on indigenous governance, in Australia and elsewhere points to the importance of gaining a ‘cultural match' in ensuring successful policy implementation.

Jim Cavaye, an expert on community engagement mechanisms observed a few years ago approaches which amount to: "we are from the government and we are going to engage you" rather than there being an understanding of the value of investing in relationships from building up a partnering approach. (2004:94)

Fourth, the extent to which the public service has the relevant skills and capacity to engage with non-government players in the policy process is a real issue and was recently acknowledged by the Australian Public Service Commissioner in her 2005-06 State of the Service Report.

...the APS needs to build its capacity to effectively and successfully engage the Australian community. This will include recruiting for and developing strong relationship management skills, the willingness and ability to listen to the views of others, and conflict resolution and management skills

(2006:248).

In more specific terms, a government commissioned evaluation of the COAG Indigenous Trials raised a series of relationship issues in building partnerships, including indigenous partners identifying a basic set of required skills for government officers. These included: good listening; acting in good faith; high levels of good will; willingness to share power; recognising and acknowledging intra-community and familial relationships and how these impact on leaders; understanding the pressures on communities; being honest and open; and being human (Morgan et al 2006). These are the skills that can be expected to be ones all public servants involved in participatory activities will need to acquire.

Alongside the building of internal government capacity is the equally important task of ensuring that those whom governments engage, also have the necessary resources and capacity to participate fully. Non-government bodies also need to assure government that they have the capacity to be responsive to broad consumer and community needs.

An interesting, if radical, question arises here in terms of the boundaries around the participatory activities of public officials. For example, would there be occasions when officials could be expected to be supporters, if not actual initiators of citizen or community empowerment?

Finally, there is much scope to ensure appropriate evaluation of policy initiatives and their implementation. The OECD indicates that to date there has been little evidence of countries making progress in developing appropriate evaluation frameworks. There are many possible reasons for this, one being that active citizen participation is most required on complex and sensitive policy issues which, so far, have not been coped with by standard program evaluation methodologies. But it is likely also to be because of a lack of clarity with respect to the purpose of citizen participation.

Professor Brian Head, in the context of participatory initiatives, has recently asked some relevant questions: is the purpose to be about outcomes only or is it to also be about processes and how well relationships are developed? Is the purpose to learn and/or to generalise from a particular instance? Is it about auditing and compliance, or to provide some encouragement to participants? Or is it some combination of these? (2006). One could also ask: from whose perspective is the evaluation to occur? Only the government's or also that of non-government players? If also the latter, is the purpose of their participation and their respective roles, responsibilities and accountabilities understood and agreed? To what extent would non-government players have a say about the place, method and timing of the participatory processes?

Concluding Observations

It is important to note that an active participatory approach is not normally to be expected in most policy and delivery government processes. But it is now generally agreed that this approach becomes necessary for dealing with complex and sensitive issues, such as those surrounding indigenous matters. Hopefully this will be taken as a given when the newly established and bi-partisan Commission considers its next moves.

Whatever the actual level and mechanisms of involvement of non-government players in policy processes that governments decide upon, it is of paramount importance that expectations on both sides be well understood and aligned. If, for example, the government wishes to consult only now and then but not actively to engage throughout the whole policy process, that needs to be stated and understood at the outset. If the government has already made a decision which is irrevocable but then wants to engage the community within that context, that also needs to be clearly stated and understood before communities participate in discussions on any next steps.

Relatedly, clarity of language and intent and avoidance of rhetoric is essential. Incorrect and inappropriate use of terminology such as ‘collaboration', ‘partnership', ‘engagement', apart from causing inefficiencies in process, may result in negative outcomes, reduction of trust and/ or reduced community engagement potential.

At its heart, successful engagement requires the management a few basic tensions for governments: There is the tension of balancing the vertical accountabilities of the Westminster system with the horizontal responsibilities of government out toward communities. But there is also a tension between attempting to pursue the most immediately efficient practices on the one hand and, on the other, spending the required resources to gain trust and collaboration over what can be lengthy periods of time with the aim of achieving more effective and long-term outcomes.

Moving in the direction of a more participatory governance framework will require careful management - governments will have to build new structures and ways of working. They will need to develop new skills, new capacities with new and different types of relationships and interactions. Into the future, at least in the case of indigenous issues, we can expect participatory governance and partnering relationships to become mainstream activities for governments and their officials, no longer something to be dabbled in on the side.

* First published in the Public Sector Informant (Canberra Times), this article is an edited version of a forthcoming Issues Paper on Participatory Governance for the University of Canberra's ARC Project on Corporate Governance in the Public Sector: an Evaluation of its Tensions, Gaps and Potential. The author is alone responsible for any views or errors in this paper.

REFERENCES

Australian Public Service Commission (2007), Tackling Wicked Problems: a Public Policy Perspective, Commonwealth Government

Cavaye Jim (2004) "Governance and Community Engagement: The Australian Experience", in Lovan, RW, Murray, M and Shaffer, R (eds), Participatory Governance, Ashgate, England.

Head Brian (2006) "Network-Based Governance - How Effective?". Paper delivered at Governments and Communities Conference, Centre for Public Policy, University of Melbourne, September.

Management Advisory Committee (MAC) (2004) Connecting Government: Whole of Government Responses to Australian Priority Challenges, Commonwealth of Australia.

Morgan Disney Associates (2006) Synopsis Review of the COAG Trial Evaluations, Report to the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination (OIPC), November.

Australia's diversity advantage

Kevin Rudd's recent refusal to countenance his Immigration Minister's eminently sensible suggestion to remove the reference to Don Bradman from the Australian Citizenship Test shows that our new Prime Minister is still afraid of the political power of conservative cultural warriors.

The most out and proud of these was, of course, former prime minister John Howard, who, highly placed sources suggest, was personally responsible for the question that asks prospective Australians to name the ‘greatest Australian cricketer of the 1930s'. The culture wars, in which he and his cronies championed an Anglocentric, militaristic and sport-centred version of Australian history and society against a ‘leftist' view of Australia that had supposedly led us into moral relativism and cultural separatism, were a central theme of Howard's years in power.

Howard's cultural warriors like to portray this as a common sense return to "old ideas [or traditional values] that should never have been discarded", and invariably misrepresent Australia's multicultural policies as weapons wielded by "cultural elites" against the "host country". What such voices shout so loudly to disguise are their fear of difference, and their evident inability to recognise value in any cultural tradition other than that of their own experience. Their calls to reject multiculturalism in favour of social cohesion are misguided at best, but, more often, are completely disingenuous, setting up a false opposition between the two concepts. Social cohesion and multiculturalism are, in Australia, two sides of the same social/cultural policy coin: Australian multiculturalism was a tool by which to achieve and manage social cohesion in the face of increasing, and increasingly inevitable, cultural diversity.

Despite the attempts of reactionaries to conflate the two terms in the public consciousness, ‘multiculturalism' and ‘cultural diversity' are not the same thing. One - multiculturalism - is a policy response to the other - the increased racial and cultural diversity within nation states which is an inevitable, social reality in our globalised world. Perhaps the former needs a re-think and a re-focus in the face of some obvious failings and inadequacies - as does any social policy after more than three decades. But the latter, which results from the free movement of people, is the inevitable outcome of globalisation and must be embraced as readily as was the free movement of goods and money.

When reactionary voices call for the abandonment of multiculturalism and the reinstatement of social cohesion, they are deliberately misusing language to disguise their real agenda: the rejection of cultural diversity itself and a return to the Anglo-conformist policies of the White Australian past.

Conformity, in the more politically correct guise of popular conservatism, was at the heart of Howard's culture wars, which reached their zenith with the content of the Citizenship Test, and the history curriculum that the Howard Government put together in its last, desperate months. These highly prescriptive documents sought to dictate once and for all exactly what it meant to be Australian, and offered the narrowest and most exclusionary definition our young nation had ever seen.

Howard's concession speech on election night alluded to what he saw as his great achievement in making Australia a "stronger, prouder" country than it had been when he took power, and his recent addresses to the American neo-conservative elite have continued this theme. The former PM and his ideological bedfellows doubtless believe that Howard left Australia "a stronger, prouder and more prosperous nation than it had been twelve years earlier". But they're wrong.

Conformity is the enemy of everything Australia is and needs to be in the twenty-first century. It stifles creativity and innovation, threatens security and peace, undermines individual and social health, and limits economic growth.

After more than a decade of leadership that relentlessly pushed conformity on the Australian people, it's time to reassert the power and potential of cultural diversity. The subject was conspicuously avoided by the Australian Labor Party in the lead up to last year's election, a deliberate tactic adopted by Rudd to avoid being wedged by Howard in a debate that was seen as unwinnable. It worked. But now that he's in power, Rudd must pull his head from the sand and re-engage with an issue that goes to the heart of Australia's future.

What this doesn't mean is a revival or continuation of the culture wars. The back and forth accusations of self-appointed cultural warriors do little to advance the debate, and rarely make sense to most people.

What it does mean is re-framing the debate in terms everyone can understand and, crucially, in a way that does not divide Australians into "us" and "them". Just as the climate change debate took a decisive turn with the release of Nicholas Stern's report on the economic impact of global warming, so the diversity debate can only be won when the arguments are removed from the emotive realm of the culture wars and repositioned within the framework of a rational, evidence-based argument that demonstrates both the inevitability and the potential of diversity in our everyday lives.

Of course, while climate change, or global warming, is a scientific phenomenon, the concept of cultural identity is much more nebulous. Arguments about diversity and social cohesion are complicated by the intensely personal, and often highly emotional, responses of people to any perception that government or the state is attempting to impose upon their individual sense of self. In the face of myriad different interpretations of the role of cultural identity, and opposing views of the rights of individuals to maintain divergent cultural traditions while participating in and contributing to a single "national" culture, applying the scientific logic of the Stern Report to the issue of a culturally diverse but socially cohesive Australia may appear to be impossible. But the value of cultural diversity can be measured, and proven, against many apparently disparate policy objectives.

The Rudd Government is urgently engaged in developing a series of policies and programs that seek to build human and social capital, to increase productivity, and to encourage innovation in business, all in the pursuit of continued economic growth and the security of Australian society in the face of globalisation. Embracing diversity is the only sensible approach by which to make progress on these very worthy goals.

The best local and international research backs this up. Philippe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, makes a forceful case for cultural diversity, demonstrating that its greatest economic benefit is the generation of new ideas and innovative entrepreneurship: "Instead of following the conventional wisdom, immigrants tend to have a different point of view...as outsiders, they are more determined to succeed". Legrain points out that twenty-one of Britain's Nobel Prize winners arrived in the UK as refugees. Similarly, in The Rise of the Creative Class, Richard Florida explains the benefits of cultural diversity in attracting talented people to areas in need of economic regeneration, noting that "...regional economic growth is powered by creative people, who prefer places that are diverse, tolerant and open to new ideas".

Moreover, while diversity is often blamed for insecurity and mistrust, insistence on conformity can actually be counter-productive when it comes to social cohesion. A society that celebrates diversity rather than insisting on a conformist way of life is more likely to make people of different backgrounds and beliefs feel welcome, and more able to accommodate a plurality of views. As Rosemary Hollis of Britain's Chatham House has pointed out when speaking of the "homegrown" terrorist threat within the UK, people who feel included in society are less likely to become violent or radicalised.

This point was made forcefully in the recent Four Corners program, Dangerous Ground, in which Sally Neighbour canvassed the views of Australian Muslims who have suffered increasing prejudice over recent years, and of those community leaders who are working to overcome the dangerous sense of marginalisation this has produced.

Until the return of cultural conformity under Howard, Australia had largely avoided the kind of "ethnic tension" which has often threatened social cohesion in many European countries. This is largely due to Australia's proud, if recent, tradition of recognising diversity as a positive force. Since the embrace of multiculturalism by the Whitlam and Fraser Governments in the 1970s (perhaps the only issue on which these bitter political foes agreed at the time), the Australian approach to immigration was one of give and take, rather than the "with us or against us" mentality that was espoused by Howard and his xenophobic neo-conservative cronies.

Unlike the policies of many European countries, which saw immigrant populations as separate from the mainstream and, in many cases, did indeed lead to the creation of cultural silos.

Australia's approach to multiculturalism always involved an equal emphasis on cultural rights and social responsibilities. The Australian covenant offered respect for individual cultural identity and the embrace of diversity in return for a commitment to the rules and mores of the new, or "host", nation and an active contribution to its cultural development and social cohesion. For more than two decades, this covenant put Australia in the vanguard of the international approach to managing cultural diversity: it is this, not the destructive conformism of the Howard years, that produced the harmonious multicultural society that is now held up as a model for other, more culturally fractured, Western nations.

In order to recover Australia's diversity advantage, the Rudd Government should make a clean break with the sullied recent history of cultural diversity debates, and perhaps consider replacing the sadly discredited term "multiculturalism" with one that accurately reflects the objectives of maintaining social cohesion in a culturally diverse society. Such an approach must, most crucially, reject the stultifying conformity called for by reactionaries in the culture wars, and stress the benefits to all Australians of a pluralist, diverse, creative and innovative national culture.

A strong first step might be to establish an Office for Diversity and Social Cohesion (ODSC) within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, to replace the Office for Multicultural Affairs which was abolished in the first Howard Government.

This office could then oversee a whole-of-government approach to promoting creative diversity and economic growth within a socially cohesive and peaceful Australia, ensuring our cultural diversity is both nurtured and exploited to the ultimate advantage of every Australian, from every walk of life.

There will always be those who want to lock our borders, put up walls and retreat from the reality of the modern world. It cannot be done. Technologies of communication and transport won't be contained; at an ever-increasing pace, people will move around the world in search of a better life, as they have since time immemorial. Australia, a country of immigrants, must leave its conformist era behind and once again embrace the diversity that has been, and will continue to be, our greatest source of strength.

Unpacking social investment

A few years back, the South Australian Housing Trust conducted a pilot scheme entitled the ‘Mental Health Supported Housing Project', in which ten homeless, mentally ill adults were provided with housing and casework support for one year. The entire project cost $220 000, which was four times what probably would have been spent on temporary accommodation and support for these people over this period. But at the same time, $1.16 million was saved because they fronted up to hospital much less often, with hospitalisation rates dropping from 9.7 days per client per month to half a day a month. Thus, for that year and those ten people alone, there was a net reduction in spending of around one million dollars.

Many people are familiar with the argument that if we take a ‘social investment' approach to spending on the disadvantaged, it will pay off for the whole of society in the longer term. Such an approach can have a number of elements: an emphasis on prevention and early intervention; a willingness to spend more and to work with people over a longer period; and the application of a well-coordinated suite of measures to bring about change - measures such as counselling, stable housing, education, employment programs, mentoring and the building of social connection. It is based on a belief that everyone has strengths and the potential to develop and contribute to society.

There is, for example, the well-known Perry Preschool Project which ran in the US in the 1960s. In a poor black community, struggling preschoolers were given extra help in the classroom and their parents were given advice at home. The subjects were then tracked (along with a control group) until they turned forty, and it was found that for every dollar spent on the project, the state saved seventeen dollars through higher employment and home-ownership levels, reduced crime and so on.

But the outcomes of the Mental Health Supported Housing Project put an interesting spin on the social investment argument.

For a start, the benefits to the wider society were immediate, in contrast to the long-term Perry Preschool Project. The savings in hospitalisation costs occurred straight away, whereas the social investment argument usually stresses future savings to be gained from current spending (and in politicians' and economists' minds, future benefits tend to be heavily discounted).

Rather than assuming that this case is exceptional, perhaps we should look more closely at other cases to see if there are benefits from the investment (or costs from non-investment) occurring much earlier than we tend to think. After all, this makes intuitive sense: if people have serious unresolved issues in their lives, there are likely to be resultant costs from the time these issues emerge.

So returning to the example of interventions to help children who are struggling at preschool or early school age, a closer look at immediate costs to society of not intervening might reveal the following. For a start, if such students get little out of their schooling from that point on, the thousands of dollars the state spends each year on each student are substantially wasted. And given that a large proportion of failing students become angry and disruptive, there are also likely to be significant costs to other students and their learning - from class disruption, bullying and negative peer modelling - as well as costs to staff and the system from teacher stress and sick-leave. (And these are just the school-related costs; there may be others, such as family stress and childhood crime.)

But such costs within schools tend to get lost in the everyday complexities of school life, and the students' failure to learn only surfaces as a public issue when they drop out of school early or fail to move on to further education, training or employment.

A second factor that the housing project highlights is that the benefits to society from social investment don't just occur when the direct beneficiaries are young, malleable and less ‘damaged'. There may be a higher ‘return' on investment in the very young, but an absolute saving is just that - an absolute saving - and it isn't any less so, or less worthy of implementation, because the returns in another area are greater.

The beneficiaries of the housing project are probably at the other end of the spectrum from five-year-olds receiving assistance and, even with the provision of housing and casework support, their lives are unlikely to be highly productive according to conventional measures (for example, being employed, raising families or being active in community life). But despite this, the case still demonstrates the substantial savings accruing to society from such an investment. If it were extended to the whole homelessness sector, it would generate savings of hundreds of millions of dollars on health costs alone. And this is aside from the most important benefits from such interventions - reduced stress, injury and illness and increased happiness for the homeless themselves.

Finally, this case starkly illustrates how, when society has to deal with the adverse life circumstances of a particular disadvantaged sector, it usually doesn't have a choice between spending or not spending on them. Rather it's a choice between deliberate, considered spending and automatic, somewhat ‘accidental' spending. In this case, the accidental spending (on hospital costs) was not only far greater than the deliberate spending, it was also much more limited in its benefits to both the people concerned and the wider society.

And yet it's still likely that the response of many people to the idea of investing more in the disadvantaged will be: yes, that all makes sense, but at the moment we can't afford this spending because we need to keep inflation in check, or invest in physical infrastructure, or whatever the focus may be. But ‘not spending' is not an option: we either spend it deliberately (and more effectively) or we spend it accidentally (and less effectively). A problem doesn't just go away because it's not a budget priority.

So whether the issue is homelessness or mental illness, substance abuse or unemployment, domestic violence or educational failure - or most likely a combination of these and other factors - our failure to invest in sustainable solutions to such issues faced by the most disadvantaged members of our society not only means suffering and lost opportunities for these people, it also saddles society with substantial, continuing, avoidable costs in areas like health care, crisis assistance, welfare payments, police, courts and prisons, as well as foregone tax payments.

As a nation, we can be smarter than this.

 

 

5 2020 ideas in 5 minutes

Ahead of the 2020 Summit, this instalment of ‘5 ideas in 5 minutes’ presents a selection of the ideas floated by participants so far:

1. The idea: Open-access government

Who: Miriam Lyons

2020 Stream: Future of Australian governance

“We need wide-ranging reforms to the way that government owned or funded information is made available to the public, based on the following principles:

* FOI requests should be a last resort: online publishing should be the default practice for most kinds of potentially useful information. Restrictions on access should be subject to a well-defined and limited set of exemptions, specified in a revised FOI act.
* In general, taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for the same information twice - circumstances in which cost-recovery charging will be imposed should be limited and well-defined.
* These reforms should take in the ABC and SBS, Commonwealth-funded university research, and data held by government agencies and statutory bodies.
Investigation of strategies for making much more government data available to the public at low or no cost should be incorporated into the terms of reference of the ICT purchasing review recently announced by Lindsay Tanner”Read more: http://cpd.org.au/node/4585

2. The idea: research grants made conditional on open dissemination of results, with an opt-out clause for commercialisation

Who: Joshua Gans
2020 Stream: The productivity agenda
“There has been a trend towards encouraging, and even mandating, commercialisation of scientific knowledge as a pre-requisite for receiving government funding. This, however, can conflict with how future knowledge is created; something that requires maintaining the ability and incentives for current knowledge to be disclosed and used in an unfettered manner. To provide an appropriate balance, my idea is that grants should require open dissemination but with an option to ‘opt out’ of such requirements by refunding monies should conflicting commercialisation properties present themselves. Giving scientists and commercial funders a menu of public support options and requirements will improve the mix and efficiency of scientific knowledge dissemination.”Read more: http://www.economics.com.au/?p=1406

3. The idea: Randomised Policy Trials

Who: Andrew Leigh
2020 Stream: The productivity agenda
“Randomised trials are the gold standard in policy evaluation. Overseas randomised trials have taught us much about early childhood intervention, improving school attendance, job training, health insurance and neighbourhood spillovers. Yet Australia does very few randomised policy trials. To remedy this, the federal government should establish a fund to support states and territories in conducting randomised policy trials. Indigenous policies, education policies, and social policies ought not be driven by rhetoric and ideology, but by bold, persistent, experimentation. Policymakers should be more modest about the limits of their knowledge, and more rigorous in putting policies to the test.”Read more: http://andrewleigh.com/?p=1874

4. The idea: Community Broadcasting Foundation to become the Community Media Foundation

Who: Elliot Bledsoe
2020 Stream: Creative Australia (youth summit)

“Australia has one of most advanced community broadcasting sectors in the world but we are currently lagging behind when it comes to community media convergence. With some support, Australia’s community media sector can easily meet the challenges of the digital age. The solution is simple:
* Expand the definition of community media; and
* Establish an additional funding stream for online activities.
The first step is to expand the operations of the Community Broadcasting Foundation and provide additional funds to support online community media. Reconfiguring the CBF into the Community Media Foundation will boost the diversity of projects and opportunities afforded to Australians to express themselves, while promoting training, technological innovation and new techniques for building community dialogue.”Read more: http://plastikkpoet.blogspot.com/search/label/Comm...

5. The idea: Better online tools for communication between the government and the governed

Who: Brett Solomon
Stream: Future of Australian governance
“A contemporary healthy democracy relies on an engaged citizenry who not only inform but also actively create our political reality. Apart from the periodic opportunity to vote, for too long we have been excluded from the processes that result in the key decisions that we make as a nation. The good news is that inclusive and deliberative processes break down the barriers to political engagement.
Sincere financial and political investment is required in accessible means to allow multi-channel pathways to engagement. What better way, than to employ new and online technologies to engage the broadest constituency at the deepest level. This allows the free flow of information both ways between the government and the governed, but also the formal incorporation of community consultation in the decision-making process.
New technology has revolutionised the way we do everything - from shopping to communicating - now, it is also revolutionising the way we do politics. A transparent and accountable online interface between the governed and our governors will be essential to a vibrant democracy and our shared 2020 future.”Read more: http://www.getup.org.au/2020/idea.php?ideaID=68