Realising abundance

What will it take to turn around the ACT and realise an abundant future?

Last week’s essay argued the ACT needs to embrace abundance if we are to generate the growth that enables Canberrans to flourish. Today’s essay goes beyond what needs to be done and explores how we can bring about the changes we need.

The reform imperative

Over the last 20 years, public policy has been increasingly reduced to soundbites, quick fixes, and other gimmicks. The pressure of political communication — to have short, clear, potent messages that promise upside without any downside — has completely overwhelmed policy development.

Even as policy messaging has gotten sharper, policy effectiveness has diminished. Parties win government without a viable plan to improve people’s lives or solve their problems. As a result, voters are increasingly losing faith in the major parties and defecting to minor parties and independents. And so our problems so unsolved.

If we want growth and better lives here in the ACT, sharp communications won’t be enough. Winning government without a plan won’t be enough. And there are no simple, quick or painless options to get us there. Solving our challenges requires structural reform: sweeping changes across the ACT government, spanning expenditure, legislation, regulation, process, and culture to bring about deep and systemic change – all built around a clear vision of a better Canberra.

This will require leadership. It must be the whole purpose of a government united in its support for change, several tranches of reform — probably requiring two or three terms of the Assembly — as well as control of the Budget and support from the Public Service. It will also require the adoption of a different governing philosophy across the public sector. None of this can be done from outside government.

There is, in theory, the possibility that legislation could be passed by the Liberals and Greens, without government support, or that crossbench members could demand changes as part of confidence agreements or parliamentary horse-trading. But, without the other powers of government, such changes could only ever be piecemeal and temporary.

Given that structural reform requires executive government, and the current executive is not interested in the reforms we need, abundance will not be realised this term. Which means the task is to build support for abundance over the next two years, so the next government is ready and willing to embrace reform after the 2028 Territory election.

Reform foundations

Structural reform is ambitious and difficult but far from impossible. Australia sustained a structural reform effort that ran for almost 25 years — from 1983 to 2007 — across three governments, countless reshuffles, and a deep recession. It’s instructive to look back at what enabled the success of the reform era.

First, each government had a credible reform agenda: they understood the current economic framework — which had been a bipartisan commitment for decades — was failing and had to change, and they developed policies across the whole of government to deliver the changes that were needed. This shared understanding of the problem and the necessary solution enabled a remarkable coherency across different portfolios and challenges, and even across different political parties.

Second, the reforms were highly salient because they were responding to real problems being faced in the community. Persistently high inflation, double-digit unemployment, low wage growth, and public sector budget pressures were all undermining people’s financial wellbeing and their quality of life. It was not just the politicians and experts who saw the economic framework was failing; people could see it in their lives and knew deep change was needed.

Third, governments had a mandate for reform. The 1983 election was a landslide win for Labor because voters could see that failure and so they embraced an alternative. Later in the reform era, voters had seen firsthand that the long-term benefits of reform were worth the short-term costs: problems were being solved, the economy was growing, and their standard of living was rising. Successful reform created an appetite for further reforms, which is what ultimately allowed the era to continue for as long as it did.

These are the foundations which enabled structural reform to be undertaken so successfully at the federal level: the agenda addressed the most salient issue people felt, and generated a mandate for reform. If we want structural reform in the ACT, it won’t be enough to secure a change of government: we will also need to ensure that the same foundations are present for a new government to build on.

Next steps

To realise abundance in the ACT, these reform foundations will need to be built — and largely built from scratch.

First, reform needs a credible and coherent agenda. This agenda needs to be built on a shared understanding of the ACT’s challenges and agreement on the direction of reform. It must set out what reforms are needed, across the whole of government, to bring about the deeper changes that we need.

This agenda cannot be the work of a single person, party, or organisation. It needs the input of those with experience and expertise. Fortunately, Canberra is blessed with policy analysts, academics, think tanks, and others capable of designing real reform.

Next, reform needs to be more salient for Canberrans. The ACT’s current policy settings are failing to deliver economic growth or better lives, and they are holding people back, but we are not yet in a crisis. The challenge is to convince Canberrans — many of whom are not terribly interested in the ACT Government — of the need for change before we reach the point of failure and crisis.

Finally, reform requires a mandate for change.

A mandate is more than just community support for an idea: it is permission from the community to do something that may be costly and difficult. Permission for something that affects the whole community cannot be given by one part of the community. It has to be supported by a broad coalition of Canberrans: not just aspiring homeowners but existing homeowners; not just businesspeople but consumers too; not just net taxpayers but net recipients as well.

Without broad support, abundance will not claim a mandate; it will only ever be a policy preference of a small cohort, whose reform agenda will be frustrated and ignored.

Conclusion

If we want to restore growth and opportunity to the ACT, and enable Canberrans to flourish, we need to take on the work of structural reform. That, in turn, requires building the foundations for reform: a credible and coherent agenda that responds to salient challenges in the lives of Canberrans, and a mandate for change.

That’s how we can build a better Canberra.

We have now made our case for change. Next week’s essay will bring the series to a close with a summary of what we’ve argued and where we go next.