Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Making public policy
society organisations (e.g. the Australian Council of Social Service) or consumer
lobbies (e.g. CHOICE). These interests represent stakeholders that stand to be
affected in some way by government policy. In general, policy makers seek to consult
with affected interest groups (usually through their representative organisations)
in the formulation and implementation of policy. Politically powerful interests can
wield significant – and sometimes disproportionate – influence. Australian examples
include the first Rudd Labor government’s attempt to introduce a Minerals Resource
Rent Tax and the Gillard Labor government’s national gambling reforms – these
measures were staunchly resisted by industry interests and subsequently wound back.
An evidentiary basis?
In an ideal world, policy responses would have some kind of evidential basis. This
might mean a combination of empirical research, statistical analysis, comparative
policy studies, public consultation, evaluation studies or other forms of evidence
that can be made available for independent scrutiny. 11 However, ours is not an
ideal world, and the evidence base for many public policy choices is often selective,
sometimes even to the point where decision makers find themselves accused of
‘policy-based evidence making’ – a pejorative converse of the term evidence-based
policy making.
‘Policy-based evidence making’ means working backwards from a predefined
policy position with the aim of finding evidence that supports decisions that have
already been made. 12 It is possible that the growing trend of governments engaging
private consultancy firms to produce commissioned research as an input into policy
development has contributed to the perception that evidence is often crafted to fit
policy preferences. 13 Itisalsonotunknownforspecialinterestsorlobbygroupsto
produce commissioned research (of varying quality) in support of their advocacy
for policy change.
Policy making is subject to bounded rationality – meaning that the decisions of
policy makers are constrained by a variety of factors, such as the tractability of the
problem at hand, the availability of information and the time frame within which
decisions must be made. There will be times when the ‘evidence’ either fails to
support, or directly contradicts, the preferred policy positions of governments, and
it is not unknown for contradictory evidence to be suppressed in order to ‘protect’
policy settings that are based more in ideology or moral conviction than in any
objective appraisal of the circumstances.
Finally, if evidence is to have an impact on policy governance and management,
systems that are capable of incorporating new information into decision making are
11 Davies and Nutley 2000; Pawson 2006.
12 Marmot 2004; Sanderson 2002.
13 Howlett and Migone 2013.
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