Ken Henry’s mishap

In the Saturday Age Michelle Grattan commented on the recent Ken Henry “mishap”. If you missed it, Ken Henry, Secretary of the Commonwealth Treasury, gave an in-house speech that was leaked to the media, and subsequently (and due to the leak) published on the Treasury website, saying “…the Government’s water and climate change policies would have been better if Treasury had been properly consulted over the years. In the (leaked) address, Henry also warned about the hazards of “bad” policies as the election approaches.”Grattan notes that in the Westminster system public servants need some secrecy from the public to provide frank advice to the Government, but that recently the public service has become a black whole, and the public policy debate becomes more stunted.I think that Michelle has the wrong end of the stick here. The Westminster style system exist for good purpose, if public servants fear their policy advice will become public, then there will be pressure to not provide that frank advice, and just provide the advice the Government wants.

If we want robust debate of policy ideas in the public arena, we need a institutional framework that will provide that. the media has a central role in that debate. We need more journalism looking at substantive policy issues, and not just press release journalism. We also need more organised policy advocates and analysts, such as think tanks. To some extent that role is fulfilled in our system by academics, but there is a role for more policy think tanks than the rather meagre crop in existence at present.