TOPIC 2.1: What is Political Responsiveness?

Exploring definitions

There are a number of ways to look at this topic, including thinking about the consultative processes that government uses to become informed about community needs (covered later in Unit 3); the development of policy (covered in Module 1 of this unit); the influence of the party system; and, the ‘managerialist’ approaches to public administration. The latter two topics will be explored in this topic.

Soon after Federation, the party system replaced the individual approach of members representing their electorate. This simplified the process of coalescing the ideas in the chambers and made the process of passing legislation simpler. The parties selected candidates who ran on a party ticket with a shared ‘policy’ agenda. A local member then had to persuade the party to adopt measures, which would satisfy the member’s electorate. The damage to our democracy as a consequence of adopting a party system is a possible loss of responsiveness, and a vulnerability to non-elected ‘king/queen makers’ wielding disproportionate influence over policy. A case in point is that, when in power, the Labor party was accused of being influenced by faceless people, many of them not even members of parliament (E.g. in the struggles between Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd), but, in reality, all parties have influential, non-elected individuals, who wield power.

Political representation is a complex matter so how must your representative vote when they return to Parliament – how will they determine the public will? One approach is the top-down approach where the party machine markets the policy from the centre, as determined through internal party consensus, or direction.

An alternative is ‘participatory governance’ where government provides far more scope for the voices of citizens and community groups to be heard in developing policy. Policy decisions remain firmly in government hands though (ANZSOG, 2023)^[1].

An example of this is the federal electorate of Indi where in 2013 an independent won against the odds by defeating a high-profile MP, makes an interesting case study in the effectiveness of the approach. Indi has remained in the hands of independents at several elections since. In the 2022 federal election, this was repeated in several other seats where so-called “teal candidates” displaced leading Coalition MPs (Nethery, 2022)^[2].

Of more direct impact on public servants is the practice of placing CEOs and SES staff on employment contracts linked to political objectives. The traditional security ‘veil of tenure’, resting between politicians and public servants, to ensure ‘Frank and Fearless’ advice may have been compromised. This approach is akin to the US system where the President brings their own administration with them and the administrators depart when the President’s term is over.

The strengths of SES performance contracts are that: first, they can drive the bureaucracy to respond to the government’s agenda; second, they ensure new people bring new thinking into the system; third, that they allow a sympathetic interlocutor between politicians and the bureaucracy; and fourth, perhaps make it easier for the minister to jettison poor achievers.

The downside is that contracts could lead to a weakening of the public service’s neutrality, short term decision making, over-responsiveness, cronyism and ethical concerns from a focus on outputs, perhaps at the expense of the means.