Centre for Policy Development's Blog, page 101

Visualisation of CPD's 'State of the Public Service' report

Following the launch of CPD's 'State of the Australian Public Service' report, we convened roundtable discussions in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. The presentation shared with roundtable participants is now available here in a user-friendly visual format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public sector myths dispelled

CPD's public service program director James Whelan talks with Business Spectator about our recent State of the Australian Public Service Alternative Report. Public sector cutbacks are an easy political gain, until the services they provided disappear. What lies behind the apparent dichotomy between what the press and politicians say and what the public think?  Click here to listen to the interview in full.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Public Service in the News | Italians protest to protect public service, Indian province promotes quality public services and UK rural communities start to suffer the lack of core public services.

Exclusive: Rural life at 'tipping point' as cuts slash services > A study, by consultancy firm Rural Innovation, concludes that there is "no longer scope to continually pare down key public services" in the face of spending cuts and that the Big Society must be given an opportunity to take control.

Big society urban farming project goes hi-tech > After winning a regeneration grant from Hackney council, a former shelter for domestic abuse victims has been renovated to create a showcase of the potential of hi-tech urban farming techniques, Jonathan Knott reports.

Thousands protest against Berlusconi > In Rome, public service employees, families, school pupils and students took part in the demonstration organised by trade union CGIL under the motto: "Without the public (sector) you're deprived of your rights."

Indian Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister says development of remote areas a priority > Laying foundation of  21,56 Rupees, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah sensitized the administration towards public service and said that prompt response to the needs of people and timeline delivery should be the benchmark of government functionaries. The Chief Minister said that government functionaries have an important role to play in translating the development schemes into reality ensuring benefits of these reach to the people at all levels.

Sri Lankan problems of graduates will be solved through the 2012 budget > Minister Keheliya Rambukwella said effective measures have been included  in 2012 budget proposals to strengthen the public service, the Sri Lankan government expects to recruit another 30 thousand government servants to the public service in 2012.

California marks 100 years since political reforms > The state that has seen pitched battles at the ballot box over property tax reforms, gay marriage, illegal immigration and recalling a governor was not always the standard-bearer for direct democracy, "the people who have the power, they don't want to give it up. They want to be able to write the check for $10 million or $20 million and get a law they want," said former Assembly Speaker  and Democrat Bob Hertzberg.

Mike Steketee | Our National Insurance Scheme is Not so Universal or Even Cost-Effective

Australians often pride themselves on the affordability and efficiency of our healthcare system, particularly in comparison to places like US. However is this pride misplaced?

In a recent article for The Australian, Mike Steketee measured our system against other comparable countries and found Australia lacking.

"In a survey last year by the Commonwealth Fund, a US-based private foundation, 22 per cent of Australians said they did not fill a prescription, did not visit a doctor with a medical problem or did not receive recommended care because of the cost. That compares with 5 per cent in Britain, 6 per cent in The Netherlands and 14 per cent in New Zealand. Of 11 countries, in only the US and Germany was the figure higher."

So where can we improve? A number of measures proposed by Jennifer Doggett in CPD's paper Out of Pocket: Rethinking Health Co-payments were picked up as ways to increase the affordability of cover. If we started to change healthcare with the consumer in mind we could make our healthcare system something to be proud of.

Read the full article in The Australian here

Ben Eltham | The Arts Where Swords Are Mightier Than Pens

In the western world arts and culture are often labeled frivolous and pretentious, the crucial role they play in human development goes unnoticed. However the recent World Summit on Arts of Culture in Melbourne sought to emphasis the power of the arts and highlight their ability to improve lives.

Read Ben Eltham's article on the summit, first published in Crikey here

While policy wonks gathered in Canberra this week for tax and jobs summits, Melbourne this week played host to an international summit for arts and culture. Delegates were reminded that in some parts of the world the arts can be about life and death.

Organised by the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies in conjunction with the Australia Council, the fifth World Summit on Arts and Culture was essentially a conference of arts bureaucrats and cultural policy makers.

The idea of hundreds of arts bureaucrats hanging out and talking about cultural policy might be enough to make many artists run screaming towards the bar. But in fact the program presented some fascinating case studies of the power of arts and culture to improve lives. Some of the international participants showed why, in some parts of the world, the problems posed by making and engaging with contemporary art can be a matter of life and death.

The work of Lucina Jiménez López is a case in point. Jiménez López is the director of the International Consortium for Arts in Schools in Mexico, where she works on Mexican arts education and cultural policies as a cultural adviser.

"My NGO started with arts into the curricula in several schools in Mexico City, especially the schools where we find learning difficulties among students and also violence," she told Crikey in a break between sessions at the conference on Wednesday.

"After the Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century, we had a very strong arts curriculum, but that was lost five decades ago. Now we're trying to recover the space for arts, but it's not easy, because we don't have a deep comprehension about what arts can bring into education.

"We have a very strong cultural policy in terms of heritage, but thinking heritage as a material good, but thinking on heritage as a live culture, so we're trying to push a little in that direction, thinking about cultural polices but also cultural rights, and the protection of intellectual property of the communities — kind of copyright, but we're talking about collective rights, which is different because copyright belongs to the Anglo culture, but in our communities it is not always related to the copyright because we're not seeing our rights as a good that you can sell."

Jiménez López sees her mission as one of human development, which comes into sharper focus when she gave a presentation about her work in the northern Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, in the front line of Mexico's drug wars. "Fear is an important factor in everyday life [there]," she told delegates in her speech. By working with artists and musicians to reach out to the community in the violence-scarred city on the US border, the arts organisation RedeseArte Cultura de Paz is training arts teachers at the local university to teach in the local community in the suburbs and surrounding villages of Juarez.

"Some of the children belong to families related to violence, some of them were not going to school any more, and they're supporting the program because they want a change." Another child told her she wanted to learn how to kill, "because my sister is making a living killing".

While many of the participants were cautious at first, Jiménez López reported that after being involved for a time in the program, many started to see real change in their own lives: "When they proved themselves they could do it and that they deserved something better, that was the beginning of the change." At the end of the program, another student told Jiménez López that "when I sing I am not afraid".

"We believe that the deepest part of Juarez is getting together and they are getting conscious of the possibilities … we believe that arts education is a human right," she said. "It's hard to believe that changing lives that might be a part of an arts educational process. It's exactly because arts education goes directly to the human being."

The power of art to challenge oppression and violence was underlined by an affecting presentation to the conference by South African playwright Mike van Graan, who began his speech with a eulogy to recently murdered artists around the world:

"Ibrahim Kashoush will sing no more. In early July a few days after leading tens of thousands in a chant against the Syrian tyranny, this folk singer's throat was slit, his vocal chords removed and his body dumped in a river. His compatriot, the acclaimed cartoonist Ali Ferzat, was more fortunate. After drawing a cartoon critical of Bashar al-Assad, Ferzat, head of the Arab League of Cartoonists, only had both his hands broken."

"Egypt's representative to this year's Venice Biennale, Ahmed Basiony, didn't make the trip to Italy. He was cut down by snipers' bullets in Tahrir Square."

It was a poignant speech that should give all Australian artists pause to consider just how seriously cultural policy is taken in other parts of the world.

"What is the murder of an artist if not the ultimate form of censorship?" van Graan asked pointedly. "The sword too often is mightier than the pen."

Public Service in the News | Successful sustainable government programs, Discussions on the role of goverment to monitor corporate behaviour and more resistance against UK public service cuts

Banmujer: Benefitting Over 300,000 Venezuelan Families Since 2001 > One of Venezuela's most important public institutions created as a government run bank with the specific purpose of funding socio-productive business initiatives to assist impoverished women through micro- credit lending celebrated its 10-year anniversary last week.

Banking on the Big Society > Social entrepreneurs have been lionised for a decade, but the downside is that they are now expected to shoulder a growing share of society's intractable problems as government budgets are cut. There is growing concern about just where the funding will come from.

Interview: Paul Boissier > The UK's Royal National Lifeboat Institution chief executive tells David Ainsworth that he likes the idea of the big society but his charity's tax bill has gone up and the VAT relief system for charities makes little sense.

Good, bad or ugly > John Longworth, director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, is wrong to think that "all businesses that create wealth, pay their taxes, and comply with the law are good companies". For the success of a free society ruled by law hinges on how people – companies included – choose to exercise their freedom within what the law permits. There are plenty of legal corporate behaviours that society would be better off without.

Trade unions urge West Sussex residents to condemn cuts > TWO trade unions have joined forces to urge West Sussex residents to speak out against "damaging" cuts to the county's youth services. The council has already slashed £2m from its spending on services ranging from community youth work to initiatives to prevent re-offending, and now proposes a further £2m in cuts over the next three years.

L21 Leaders in the public sector conference | Sydney 30 Nov – 1 Dec

The current and future policy and service delivery environment demands that we build a public sector that is resilient, ready and responsive. But what does this mean and how do we do it? L21 Leaders in the Public Sector 2011 is designed to answer these specific questions in a comprehensive, practical, thought-provoking and stimulating way.

Guest presenters include Hon Kristina Keneally, Professor Geoff Gallop and Professor John Brumby. Research Director of CPD's Public Service program, James Whelan, will speak on our recently-released State of the Service Report.

Full details of the conference here >

Ben Eltham | Taxing Times for Labor

The Wayne Swan's tax summit is on this week, but areas of urgent reform and pivotal taxes like the GST aren't even on the agenda.

So can we expect much to come of it? Read what Ben Eltham has to say, first published in New Matilda here

The Australian government is holding a two day tax summit, starting today in Canberra. Hundreds of tax experts and policy wonks from universities, corporations, accounting firms, lobby groups and unions will gather to discuss the structure of Australia's tax and transfer system and the possibilities for reform.

There have already been a large number of submissions made. One of the most interesting is that the government implement one of the Henry Review's recommendations (number 134) to fund a full-time academic research centre that will generate non-partisan taxation research.

Tax is a perennial issue in any political discussion. This tax summit is itself a recommendation of the 2020 Summit in 2008, and just last year former Treasury Secretary Ken Henry delivered a massive report into Australia's "future tax system". That report turned out to be a vastly impressive and politically improbable blueprint for reform; Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan promptly ruled out most of the important reforms almost immediately.

This time around, the Treasurer has taken a proactive approach and ruled out most of the useful areas of discussion before the forum even convened. The Government is not interested in hearing about changes to the GST, to the carbon tax, the mining tax, or even to alcohol excise. Moreover, any recommendations must be revenue neutral, so the debate is not going to address the really important issues around the adequacy of Australia's revenue base.

The truth is that Australia is a low tax nation. The Howard government delivered hundreds of billions of dollars of personal income tax cuts on the back of elevated corporate tax takings at the height of the 2000s boom. The Rudd government followed suit, promising to match Peter Costello's huge tax cut commitment at the 2007 election and continuing to deliver tax cuts in the years afterward. Under Wayne Swan, the federal government still brings in less revenue as a percentage of GDP than during the last term of John Howard's government (not that you would know from the chorus of critics charging that Labor is addicted to increasing taxes).

But Australia can't stay a low tax nation and maintain the sorts of public services we take for granted. Health costs generally rise faster than those in the rest of the economy, so even though Australia's world-beating public health system is highly cost-effective compared to more privatised health systems in other countries, Medicare and the PBS will continue to cost more and more.

Australia's aging population also poses big challenges for healthcare, not to mention government spending in areas like pensions, aged care and community services. And if we want our economy to keep growing, we're going to have to invest in enhancing our dwindling productivity levels through more spending in research and development and higher education. None of this comes cheap.

On the other hand, Australia's current tax system contains vast concessions, carve-outs and special perks for various interest groups and activities. Many of these loopholes are hugely unfair. Superannuation is a case in point: superannuation contributions are taxed at 15 per cent, so low-income earners earning below the tax-free threshold actually pay more tax on their super than they do on their ordinary income. By contrast, super-rich executives earning millions get a big discount, as they would normally pay 45 per cent on their salary.

The other area of vast inequality is housing. Australia's tax concessions to landlords for negative gearing encourage them to record a nominal loss on their rental income in order to gain a tax offset. According to a submission to the tax summit by the Equality Rights Alliance, negative gearing does little to help low-income renters, but represents more than $5 billion in annual subsidies to landlords. The value of the concession accrues disproportionately to high-income earners, as it can be used as an income tax offset — hence, high-income earners in the 45 per cent bracket get a larger tax offset than middle and low income earners.

The Equality Rights Alliance's submission puts its finger on one of the big problems of Australia's tax system. "The underlying problem is that capital gains are only lightly taxed," they write. John Howard's government slashed rates of capital gains tax in the 1990s, for instance, meaning that income from investments or money in the bank is taxed much more lightly than income from wages. And yet, quite obviously, poorer people have fewer assets and earn the majority of their income in wages.

Another obvious example of our inequitable tax system is the family home. Baby boomers have routinely enjoyed 200 and 300 per cent capital gains on their houses in recent decades, owing to the asset price bubble in Australian housing. You may well think that your mum and dad shouldn't have to pay any tax on their family home simply because it happens to go up in value, but the reality is that if they owned shares or other forms of equity, they would have to pay CGT. There are also tax breaks for housing investors in terms of land tax. According to Australia's leading academic expert on home affordability, Judith Yates, the value of tax concessions across the entire housing sector was more than $50 billion in 2005-06, of which $45 billion went to owner-occupiers.

The benefits of tax concessions for houses are highly skewed towards the wealthy. In her submission to the tax forum, Yates writes that "households in the top income quintile receive an average benefit of $161 per week (equivalent to over $8,000 per year) for … the exemption of the family home from the CGT. This is more than seven times the average net benefit received by households in the lowest income quintile." Removing this exemption would not only help to address housing affordability, it would give the government tens of billions extra a year with which to make the tax system fairer.

Negative gearing has become its own industry and the property sector has many zealous defenders. But some taxes and charges have few friends. Stamp duty, for instance, represents one of the largest revenue sources for the states and territories, and yet most economists agree it is inefficient and economically damaging. The Henry Tax Review wanted to radically reform the entire state-based stamp duty system altogether, replacing it with a broad-based land tax which would have been far more efficient and more equitable. But the Rudd government took fright and immediately ruled it out. Land taxes are still off the agenda for this summit.

It's no wonder that much of the media discussion leading up to the tax forum has been disappointed, even negative; this column by Alan Kohler is typical. If you can't talk about the GST and you can't talk about housing tax concessions, there's not a great deal of hope that the big picture issues will be addressed.

And that represents a lost opportunity for a government which desperately needs to grasp every opportunity that comes its way.

Perhaps talking down expectations is the way Labor governs these days, burnt by the vaulting — but undelivered — ambitions on display early in its first term. But the tax forum should have been a chance to frame Labor's governing philosophy, to win back the intellectual initiative, and to present a grander vision for the future of our society.

A bold government might have seized the chance to advocate for reforms that would broaden the tax base while reducing taxes for the middle class, much as John Howard and Peter Costello were able to do in the run-up to the 1998 election. And the Henry tax review is only a year old, and remains full of worthwhile ideas ripe for adoption.

But bold ambition (except in regards to meeting Labor's surplus target) has never been Wayne Swan's forte. He might be Finance Minister of the Year, but he still struggles to explain Labor's success story in managing the economy. It could be because no-one is listening anymore. Or it could be, as I've suggested before, because he doesn't really try.

 

John Menadue & Arja Keski-Nummi | Hysterical Political Debate Ignores the Fears of Vulnerable People

Now is the time for leadership, not focus groups. However it seems that leadership on the matter of asylum seeker policy is strikingly absent on both sides of the political spectrum. We have a government unable to communicate or develop good policy ideas and an opposition bent on promoting misinformation and fear. Given these circumstances can refugees really expect fair and humane policy implementations (like onshore, in-community processing) anytime soon?

CPD founder John Menadue and Arja Keski-Nummi believe that despite the toxicity of the current debate progress can still be made, and within a decent time-frame too. They write, "In more difficult circumstances after the fall of Saigon, Malcolm Fraser, with the co-operation of Gough Whitlam, appealed to our better angels. We responded decently and generously." If both sides of politics appealed to the angels of their better natures then, why not again now?

Read John and Arja's piece in The Sydney Morning Herald here

Ben Eltham | Trading the World Away…..the Rot at the Core of Markets

Anyone who believes that the mantra 'greed is good'  no longer resonates in a post GFC world and needs to think again. CPD Fellow Ben Eltham takes a critical look at the destabilizing role of speculative short-sellers and day traders, particularly in light of the now viral comments by self-styled independent trader Alessio Rastani.

To read Ben's full article in The Drum click here