Minister for Irresponsibility


Edition 1SUN 16 FEB 1997, Page 129
Minister for Irresponsibility
By RICHARD FARMER 
THERE was a time when ministers of the Crown took [responsibility] for the way government administers things, but that was all long ago when people even believed that the House of Representatives was an important component in running the country.
Nowadays, when the relevance of the Lower House has been reduced to determining once every three years which party becomes the government, ministers are prepared to take the credit when things go right but not the criticism when something goes wrong.
The very institutional framework has been changed to try to make the people believe that is how things should be.
The cover for the new system of ministerial care but no ministerial responsibility is the notion of statutory offices where legislation gives an unelected person a power to make decisions in a supposedly independent fashion.
There have long been a few such positions in Australian government where politicians thought there was a good reason to put a buffer between them selves and some decision making.
Police commissioners are an obvious example where government ministers wanted someone else available to take the rap should it be necessary.
The independent governor of the Reserve Bank is another.
Having interest rates set by someone with a statutory charter lets a Treasurer take credit for creating the favourable economic conditions which allow rates to fall, while deflecting the anger when they increase.
Not just ministers see merit in separating the good from the bad in this way. For senior public servants, laying out some grand policy plan for the advancement of an aspect of government is stimulating and exciting work.
Actually putting a policy into practice can be tedious and even difficult. Little wonder that the head of a department favours a system of divorcing policy from administration.
Perhaps the most dramatic illustration of the retreat from ministerial and departmental secretary responsibility was in civil aviation.
Virtually the whole of the old Department of Civil Aviation was fobbed off into a statutory Civil Aviation Authority with an unelected board made responsible for setting the rules, policing them and making a profit from ensuring the skies were safe.
When the new order did not work because of the inherent conflict between running a business of air traffic control and regulating airlines and pilots, the one statutory authority was instead split in to two.
The new Transport Minister, John Sharp, was not happy with the board members given the responsibility for air safety that he inherited.
For almost a year now he has been trying to replace them with selections of his own.
It would be far preferable for him to move the Civil Aviation Safety Authority back into his own ministerial department and let the responsibility lie where it should be. With him.

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