Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Australian Politics and Policy
required. This is a perennial problem for public sector organisations, which often
fail to use evaluative data generated in the course of delivering public policy to
make adjustments to policy settings and/or to the service delivery architecture. 14
Practical policy formulation
It is government’s role to set policy objectives, and it is the duty of the public
service to advise government about the technical, political and economic feasibility
of those policy objectives, including any risks that might arise in their implementation.
Having ‘advised’ government, the public service is obliged to give effect
to government policy by developing an implementation strategy (in consultation
with the government), including formulating a budget, identifying relevant internal
and external capability and undertaking appropriate consultations with affected
stakeholders.
It is also the responsibility of the public service to manage any risks arising in
the implementation and operational phases. Policy implementation can be subject
to a wide variety of constraints, such as short time frames, availability of resources,
technical practicability, a lack of appropriate legal authority (an example being the
Gillard government’s ‘Malaysia solution’, which aimed to develop a regional strategy
to redirect boat arrivals in Australia), inability to pass enabling legislation in
parliaments (an example is the Turnbull Liberal–National Coalition government’s
withdrawal of proposed corporate tax cuts legislation in 2018) and community/
stakeholder resistance. The public service often bears the brunt of any fallout
associated with ineffectual or misguided policy formulations (such as the Rudd
government’s GROCERYchoice and FuelWatch initiatives).
In Australia, public servants typically acquire their policy skills ‘on the job’ in
theformof‘craftknowledge’. 15 Indeed, it is unusual for Australian public servants –
unlike their North American counterparts – to enter the public service with formal
training in public administration, public policy or political science. Although
increasing numbers of public servants now undertake postgraduate qualifications
in disciplines related to public policy, there remains a degree of scepticism among
public servants about the relevance of academic learning to the ‘craft’ of public
policy making. 16
Policy practitioners who seek to learn about the policy process will discover
an extensive theoretical literature, aimed primarily at academics, that is not easily
translatable to the real world situations confronting them. 17 This literature is also
14 Banks 2018; Stewart and Jarvie 2015.
15 Adams, Colebatch and Walker 2015, 104; Rhodes 2016, 638.
16 See Katsonis 2019.
17 Cairney 2015, 23; Maddison and Denniss 2009, 82.
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