Why did this policy revolution occur? Indeed, it is still continuing. What is the most fruitful starting point to try to unravel the intertwined causes of the change? Let us now step back from the big picture and turn the focus to the leaders themselves. If these policy changes have transcended political parties, what is it that has provided the linkage between our political leaders that gives us the most explanatory traction?
I suggest that the most useful starting point is not the personalities of our leaders nor their rhetoric, nor the advisory structures with which they have surrounded themselves, nor the pattern of lobby group pressures they have faced, nor the inexorable challenges of the international economy, but what our political leaders have believed, and what their purposes and values have been: their credos. Certainly they have responded to circumstances, but circumstances only create the opportunity for action. After several decades of involvement as a practitioner I still believe that the most powerful factor in political life is ideas, and I suggest that it is the way in which ideas have been mobilised that should be our starting point. What these ideas are; where they have come from; and more especially how they have been understood by, and mobilised by, political leaders is a central part of the story.
I offer four propositions:
The policy dynamism of Australian political leadership in recent decades is a consequence of leaders with developed political credos, committed to policy reform.
The driving ideas of this policy program have been largely derived from Australia’s unusually homogenous, individualistic, egalitarian and rational democratic culture, mediated in various ways through the requirements of leading one of the major political parties.
In developing their policy programs these leaders have been able to draw on a substantial growth in the policy capacity of government arising from expanded knowledge of policy impacts and improved issue analysis. It is this feature that largely explains the major change in policy direction from earlier decades.
In implementing policy change Australian leaders have been able to draw upon executive authority of broad scope, including the authority to reorganise the central government apparatus to achieve improved strategic capacity and flexibility in implementation.
The value of the concept of the leadership credo is that it puts the focus on the explicit and formulated ideas of political leaders as they face the choices that will lead to policy action. It is a key to understanding the meaning leaders give to the circumstances in which they find themselves, and their efforts to reconstruct these circumstances. It is the leader’s credo that will be a key factor in determining whether an opportunity or pressure created by circumstances leads to a particular course of action. As someone who, as a practitioner, has worked with a number of our political leaders in the development and statement of their political credos and who, as a minister, was aware of the ideas driving my own efforts at policy innovation, I am conscious of the significance of these idea sets to the decisions leaders make.
A credo comprises a set of values and beliefs about what is important; what governments can and should do; and how they can be most effective. Over the last 35 years Australian political leaders have worked hard to establish policy agendas; and defining for voters the reality with which they claim politics must deal. Whitlam’s mixed offering of big government egalitarianism and liberal tariff reform; Fraser’s critique of big government and his social liberalism; Hawke’s promotion of consensus; Keating’s championing of competition; reconciliation and republicanism; and Howard’s explicit avowal of a policy package based on social conservatism and economic liberalism — none of these were ‘inevitable’ agendas, all were expressions of the leadership credo of the Prime Minister of the day. All were contingent, in the sense that other leaders would probably have pursued other purposes and policies. Their contingent character is emphasised by the fact that we have clear examples of conflicts between political leaders and their principal official advisers (for example, Whitlam and Fraser with Treasury).
In the development of their political credos, Australian political leaders over this period were both ‘sellers’ and ‘purchasers’ of ideas. Whitlam’s policy program developed over a number of years but, as Prime Minister, he established a policy ‘think tank’ – the Priorities Review Staff – and actively sought and adopted ideas on economic reform such as tariff reduction. Fraser’s speeches over many years reveal a deeply thoughtful approach, drawing on liberal political thinkers he had first met as an undergraduate at Oxford. In office, Fraser assiduously recruited policy thinkers and experts to his political office. Hawke, a former Rhodes Scholar, brought a sharp intellect to a prime ministership that actively sought ideas and political compromise through summits of national business, union and other leaders. Keating’s biographer described the ethos of a leadership and advisory structure in which virtue was to be ‘at once economically sound and politically clever’ (Watson 2002: 89). Howard had worked at ideas for ‘future directions’ over many years, even if, as his recent biographers suggest, he had no deep interest in political philosophy (Errington and van Onselen 2007: 216). Nevertheless he surrounded himself with the most developed strategic, policy and political staff of any of these leaders, and was comfortable characterising himself along the liberal-conservative dimensions.
The recognition of the importance of credos is to some extent an antidote to easy cynicism about politics, because it points to the fact that our leaders have deeper purposes and beliefs, and that there is a linkage between these purposes and beliefs and those of the people they claim to represent, and to whom they are accountable.
Leaders, as we know, are not free (if they seek support) simply to advocate whatever public philosophy randomly takes their fancy. They are constrained by the cultural context in which they appeal for support, by the intellectual world of ideas, and by the institutional setting within which they will seek to lead. Their party’s policy traditions influence the direction of innovation. How Australians think about their country becomes a constraint and an opportunity. The constraining influence of popular values on leadership credos is a key mechanism by which the values of the Australian people are translated into political action.