Unless we are having one of those ‘what would you do if you won untold millions on the lotto’ moments, usually the conversation about replacing the TV, some other household appliance or even relocating to a new household is because there is some perceived failure with the current circumstances. If the TV blew up last night when you turned it on and you want to find out what happened in the next episode of the current reality television craze or Day 3 of the current cricket test, your options are reduced as you’ll have to do something to be able to watch the next enthralling episode. Otherwise, while the new TV or house may be the optimal solution to the problem you might decide, after some discussion and consideration, to retain the status quo as there isn’t enough benefit likely to come your way if you do make the change.
Businesses too have similar conversations. Usually someone is told to research a problem, provide a number of potential solutions and recommend the most favourable. The decision makers in the business then review the evidence the problem exists and the offered solutions and make some decision. And unless the business is facing a similar problem as you did when your TV blew up, they can always use a ‘do nothing’ option that effectively kicks the problem down the road to somewhere in the future. There may be a number of economic or rational reasons to do nothing, however if there is problem, it is unlikely to go away unless change is made at some point.
Our federal political leaders seem to be favouring ‘do nothing’ options at the moment.
Health Minister Mark Butler has been told by the secretary of his department to do more and review less. According to The Guardian,
The secretary of the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing, Blair Comley, has urged the health minister, Mark Butler, to allow public servants to adopt a mindset of more implementation and less analysis in the coming term of parliament, after more than 70 reviews were commissioned, consulted on or published in Labor’s first three years in office.
In advice included in a brief to the re-elected Albanese government, Comley said official reviews could cost more than $25m each, absorbing significant departmental resources and adding to “an already crowded agenda”.
“We have a stock of completed reviews that have consulted widely and include significant recommendations,” Comley said in documents released to Guardian Australia under freedom of information rules.
“I would suggest that ‘Even more doing, less reviewing’ would be a good mindset for this term.
“With each review, stakeholder expectations continue to rise. There is an expectation that government will adopt all recommendations of these reviews.”
It’s fair to suggest that there is a similar mindset across other government departments as well. Three years into government and we are still waiting on promised reforms to environmental law, industrial relations law, building of social and affordable housing, increases to social security payments so people can actually eat, pay the bills and have a roof over their head and so on. While appropriate scrutiny of proposed changes to the law and practice of the government are welcomed and will assist in the avoidance of missteps, if the reviews and stakeholder consultation are designed to ensure that everyone in the country agrees with a decision – there will never be any change.
On the other side of the political fence, new Liberal Leader Sussan Ley admitted the Coalition was ‘smashed’ at the recent federal election. Commentary seems to have coalesced around a number of issues, including the number of female candidates supported by the Coalition’s Liberal Party and National Party (in the various forms those two organisations take around Australia). It has been noted frequently there are more female ‘community independents’ in Parliament than female members of the Coalition Parties and most of the ‘community independents’ are representing electorates that have traditionally supported Coalition candidates, Ley claims to be ‘agnostic’ on how female representation can be increased. The Guardian reported
But Ley’s unwillingness to take a position on the best mechanism to boost female representation meant the question quickly fell to other Liberals speaking in the media this week.
The former prime minister Tony Abbott was quick out of the blocks.
Despite finding just one woman with sufficient talent or aptitude to be appointed to his cabinet line-up in 2013, Abbott rejected quota systems because such a move would contravene “the merit principle that should be at the heart of our party”. He described quotas as “fundamentally illiberal”.
On Friday, the senior conservative Angus Taylor spoke out against quotas, arguing they “subvert democratic processes”. After promising to “crusade” to get more Liberal women elected, Taylor’s prescription was mentoring, recruitment and support of potential candidates and staff. He correctly said the Liberals also needed to do better at other measures of diversity, including recruiting more multicultural candidates.
Taylor pointed to branch level plebiscites in the New South Wales Liberal party, but neglected to mention the feral factionalism and branch stacking which often helps push men to the top of candidate selection lists, especially in winnable seats.
Yet the Coalition has a quota for the numbers of Liberal Party and National Party members that are allocated front bench positions which has been in place for decades. The ALP introduced quotas to increase female representation in 1994 and now has around equal gender representation in Parliament.
Politicians in general seem to have an aversion to appearing on the 6pm news or the front page of the paper unless they are in hi-viz or opening a building or service (sometimes with only a tenuous connection to the government). Reviews and consultation are important but implementation of a program is actually what politicians are paid to oversee. Sometimes the implementation will be less than ideal. That is an opportunity to do it better next time and while a bit of political capital might be lost in the process, the Albanese has plenty of capital to lose.
While doing something is usually a far better option than doing nothing, committing to another review or more stakeholder consultation is putting a lot of cost and busyness in place while nothing is actually achieved. Health Department Secretary Blair Comley is correct, reviews cost time and money that could be better spent on the implementation of new or adjusted programs that potentially could provide great benefit to the community. The Liberal Party was told by the review of their loss in 2022 that they needed to address a perception that they were in essence an old white mens club. Their results in 2025 shows that they didn’t listen and reaped the ‘rewards’ of their decisions.
Words are important, but actions are more important. Countless reviews and stakeholder engagement promote an image of a government or opposition that are too afraid of their own shadows to actually do anything. Busyness is a means of creating fuss about nothing – not actually making the country a better place to live. It would be beneficial to all if the Albanese Government went to the next election with a laundry list of how programs they implemented gave real and genuine support to all Australians and the Coalition supported candidates that actually represented not only their community but the Australian community as a whole.
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