What went wrong?

There was a time when I genuinely believed things were getting better.

I remember the election of Barack Obama in the United States. After the years of George W. Bush, the wars, the divisions and the sense that America had lost its way, Obama’s election seemed to represent something different.

It wasn’t simply that a Democrat had defeated a Republican.

It felt like a rejection of a particular kind of politics.

Here was a Black man becoming President of the United States, speaking about hope, change and the possibility of bringing people together. For many of us watching from the other side of the world, it was difficult not to believe that perhaps history really was moving forward.

I experienced something similar here in Australia when Kevin Rudd and Labor defeated John Howard’s Coalition government in 2007.

Howard had been in power for more than a decade. The Tampa affair, the “children overboard” controversy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the treatment of asylum seekers and the continuing failure to resolve the question of reconciliation with Indigenous Australians had left many Australians wanting something different.

And then came Rudd.

Again, it felt like a turning point.

The conservative government had been rejected and a Labor government had arrived promising a different Australia.

For a while, I allowed myself to believe that perhaps the pendulum had finally begun to swing in the direction of something better.

Perhaps governments could be compassionate without being weak.

Perhaps nations could be powerful without constantly reaching for war.

Perhaps politics could be about improving the lives of ordinary people rather than protecting the interests of the powerful.

Perhaps we had finally learned something from history.

Then, in the blink of an eye, it was gone.

When the pendulum swung back

It is impossible to understand what happened next without considering the influence of powerful media organisations on Australian politics.

Our media landscape had become increasingly concentrated, and some of Australia’s most influential newspapers and commentators were capable of shaping political debate, setting the agenda and determining which issues received attention and which were largely ignored.

Politics was no longer simply about what governments did.

It was increasingly about how those actions were presented to the public.

And then, in 2013, Tony Abbott’s Coalition won government.

For me, this was where much of the optimism began to disappear.

The Abbott Government came to office promising to dismantle much of what the previous Labor governments had introduced.

Climate initiatives were torn up.

Labor’s National Broadband Network was substantially changed from the original model.

And programs and policies developed under the previous government were discarded, sometimes seemingly because they carried the fingerprints of the previous government.

One decision in particular has stayed with me.

The pandemic plan

Following the scares surrounding swine flu and bird flu, the Howard Government had developed a national pandemic preparedness plan.

It was a serious piece of work.

When Kevin Rudd’s government came to office, it did not simply discard it. It strengthened it, committing to further develop Australia’s preparedness.

I know this because I was there.

I was my department’s representative on the team working on the preparedness arrangements.

We were looking at what would happen if Australia faced a serious pandemic and how government could continue functioning under circumstances in which normal face-to-face contact might no longer be possible.

Among the measures being developed was a move towards Centrelink operating without its normal face-to-face services. People would increasingly deal with Centrelink electronically, including lodgements and other transactions over the internet.

Remember, this was before the internet infrastructure we take for granted today.

We were thinking ahead.

The plan also included measures for people entering Australia, including thermal scanning of passengers arriving by plane or boat.

It was not perfect. No plan ever is.

But it was a plan.

And more importantly, it was being continually developed because governments understood that some threats are worth preparing for even when you don’t know when – or whether – they will arrive.

Then came the Abbott Government.

Much of that preparedness work was allowed to lapse.

Years later, COVID-19 arrived.

Suddenly, the world was confronted with precisely the kind of crisis that governments had spent years warning about.

I have often wondered what might have happened if the work we had undertaken had been maintained, updated and built upon.

I don’t claim that it would have prevented every problem Australia subsequently experienced.

But I do know this:

• Australia had already been thinking about a pandemic.
• People had already done the work.
• People had already considered how government would operate.
• People had already considered what would happen at our borders.

I know because I was one of them.

That experience taught me something about government that has stayed with me.

Governments inherit more than buildings, budgets and bureaucracies when they win office.

They inherit knowledge.

They inherit experience.

And they inherit the work of thousands of public servants who spend years preparing for problems that may never happen.

Good government doesn’t throw that knowledge away simply because it was developed by the political party that previously held office.

It builds upon it.

Because governments change.

Viruses don’t care who won the election.

The Hockey Budget

Joe Hockey’s 2014 Budget exemplified the Abbott Government.

It was presented as an exercise in economic responsibility, but to many Australians it appeared to place much of the burden on people who could least afford to carry it.

For me, it seemed to reflect a broader problem.

The government appeared to have difficulty explaining exactly what kind of Australia it wanted to build.

• It was easier to dismantle than to construct.
• Easier to attack than to explain.
• Easier to blame than to plan.

I had retired just before the 2013 election.

About two weeks after the election, I was strolling through the centre of Canberra with my wife when I noticed a number of my former departmental colleagues sitting around in outdoor cafés.

I stopped and asked them what the go was.

Their answer surprised me.

They had nothing to do.

According to them, the new government had no plans, no policies and no clear idea of what it wanted the public service to deliver.

Now, that is only one person’s recollection of one moment.

But it has stayed with me because it seemed to symbolise something much larger.

Governments are not elected simply to occupy ministerial offices.

They are elected to govern.

And governing requires ideas.

It requires preparation.

It requires competent administration.

Most importantly, it requires an understanding that the machinery of government doesn’t exist for the benefit of the politicians sitting inside it.

It exists to serve the people.

The Abbott Government also demonstrated how easily race could become a political weapon.

Ministers used asylum seekers and questions of national identity to appeal to fear and division.

Instead of asking how Australians could be brought together, politics increasingly discovered the electoral usefulness of dividing them.

• Us and them.
• Australian and foreigner.
• Taxpayer and welfare recipient.

Those divisions were politically useful because fear is an extraordinarily effective political commodity.

After two years, Abbott was gone.

Malcolm Turnbull replaced him.

For a brief moment, many Australians hoped that a change of leadership might bring a return to moderation, competence and perhaps a little political sanity.

Turnbull certainly offered a friendlier face.

But changing the face of a government does not necessarily change the government itself.

The internal divisions remained.

Political instability remained.

And before long, Turnbull was gone too.

Then came Scott Morrison.

And somehow, the situation became even more extraordinary.

Morrison’s Coalition won the 2019 election against expectations.

What followed was one of the most turbulent periods in recent Australian political history.

There were serious questions about the government’s economic management.

Then came COVID-19.

There was the government’s handling of the pandemic, the confusion over responsibilities between governments, and the extraordinary spectacle of a prime minister secretly appointing himself to multiple ministerial portfolios (when not holidaying in Hawaii or not holding a hose).

There was Robodebt, a scheme that pursued welfare recipients for alleged debts and which was ultimately found by a Royal Commission to have been unlawful.

There was the government’s attempt to bring religion more prominently into Australian schools.

And through it all there was an increasingly familiar pattern: political management seemed to matter more than good government.

By this point, something had changed in me.

I was no longer simply disappointed with individual politicians.

I was beginning to question the system itself.

Because perhaps the problem wasn’t Tony Abbott.

Perhaps it wasn’t Malcolm Turnbull.

Perhaps it wasn’t even Scott Morrison.

Perhaps something much more fundamental had happened to Australian politics.

Perhaps governments were increasingly asking a different question.

Not:

What is in the best interests of the Australian people?

But:

What will keep us in power?

Those are two very different questions.

And once political survival becomes more important than public service, democracy begins to change.

Government becomes a contest between competing interests rather than an instrument for the common good.

Ordinary Australians begin to wonder whether the system belongs to them at all.

And that brings me back to the thought that began this whole journey.

I had once believed that changing governments could change the direction of a country.

I believed that when people rejected an unpopular government and elected something different, they were demanding something better.

But perhaps I had misunderstood what was happening.

Perhaps the real change was not simply from Labor to Coalition.

Perhaps it was the gradual realisation that governments were no longer necessarily governing for the people, but increasingly governing for those with the greatest power and influence.

And if that was true, then the question I began with – What went wrong? – had become something much bigger.

Who was government actually working for?

To be continued…