The IPA's long march through the bureaucracy
Article (1,173 words) posted on 05 Sep 2018 by Rosie Williams
A version of this article was originally published in IndependentAustralia. I recently wrote about the Abbott Government's attempt to abolish the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner which also takes in the role of Privacy Commissioner. While the legislation intended there be two Information Commissioners (to rule on Freedom of Information disputes) and a separate Privacy Commissioner (to rule on privacy disputes), the continued cuts to the office has left a single Commissioner, Angelene Falk doing the job intended for all three roles. At the same time, Susan Pascoe the Charities Commissioner was leading her team through similarly turbulent times as the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profit Commission had also been put on the chopping block. Former Commissioner Susan Pascoe recounts this period: It was impossible to ignore the contested political backdrop. As Commissioner, I was responsible for a start-up venture that was threatened with immediate abolition should the government change. During the caretaker period in August 2013 I sought advice from the Australian Government Solicitor. The advice was unambiguous: as a statutory office-holder, I was legally required to implement the ACNC Act until Parliament repealed or modified the legislation. As an independent officer of the Parliament, not an appointee of the government of the day, I could only be removed with parliamentary approval. Of course, this put me at loggerheads with the newly elected Government in September 2013. Once the Administrative Orders were published we noted that the ACNC Act sat within the Treasury portfolio alongside the other financial regulators, and the Charities Act sat between Treasury and Social Services, as the Minister for Social Services had responsibility for civil society. We met with our substantive Minister, the Assistant Treasurer, Sen. Arthur Sinodinos, in November 2013. He courteously explained the government's preference for Ministerial decision-making rather than arms-length bodies, and further communicated that he was deferring to the Hon. Kevin Andrews MP, Minister for Social Services, on policy leadership in the charities area. The Sydney Morning Herald explains the push to close the fledgling regulator as coming through Ted Lapkin, a former research fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs who became an advisor to Kevin Andrews. Sarah Dingle took up the case for regulating the charities sector pointing out how little is known about the 'river of gold' flowing out of government coffers through tax concessions available to charitable trusts. Set against such observations, the Catholic Church strongly opposed oversight with the Victorian arm of the Catholic Education Commission having ongoing disputes with the ACNC due to their close ties to the Labor party in Victoria. Surviving the early efforts to abolish the charities regulator, one can only imagine the feeling among such battle-weary staff when former Institute of Public Affairs' Senior Research Fellow, Garry Johns was selected to replace Susan Pascoe as Charities Commissioner at the end of her five year term. Johns was well known for his extreme views publicly advocating the abolition of the ACNC, calling for mandatory contraception for welfare recipients and questioning the public benefit of environmental and LGTBIQ charities. Labor's Andrew Leigh described Johns' appointment as '...like putting Ned Kelly in charge of bank security.' After failing in their attempt to abolish the charities regulator, the interests powering the Institute of Public Affairs seem to have decided 'if you can't beat em, join em', a philosophy that might explain the number of appointments in regulatory positions given to people with ties to the think tank. Tim Wilson's placement as Commissioner for Human Rights off the back of the IPA's campaign for the 'right to be a bigot' is probably the most tendentous example. Gary Johns who recently resigned as Public Service Commissioner while under investigation for partisanship based on his communications with the IPA Director John Roskam is another. While not directly tied to the IPA, the recent appointments of three 'long-time staffers and close associates of coalition governments' (according to Veronica Burgess in The Manadarin) have raised the ire of left as Scott Morrison moved Phil Gaetjens to the Commonwealth Treasury, Michael Brennan to the Productivity Commission and Simon Atkinson to Treasury as deputy secretary of the fiscal group. What is common to these occurrences is that it is the left that seeks to establish regulators on behalf of the common good and protect the vulnerable from anti-social interests. It is equally obvious that it is the right that so often strategises to undermine, then take over these institutions, strengthening the reach of the powerful at the expense of the poor and vulnerable.
A bureaucracy striving to 'balance' right and left or be non-partisan is not making a neutral or just decision but opting to provide as much power to the elite as they do to the poor and vulnerable who are the majority. This can only lead to increased economic and political inequality. If Australia wants to move forward as a fair and just nation, we need to dispense with the false equivalence of balancing the right and left as though this balances equal rights. It is this false equivalence that provides the hegemony facilitating the appointment of Commissioners who are known to have held that very role in contempt when any right-minded individual would expect such opinion would automatically preclude them from candidacy. |
