A whole-of-government approach could improve policymaking

A whole-of government approach to intergenerational reporting would improve outcomes across the nation, CEDA CEO Melinda Cilento told the audience at the AICD Australian Governance Summit.

In a session on the governance of government, Ms Cilento challenged the audience to reframe their view of government beyond just the ‘government of the day’.

“I tend to think about government as the system of government – it's the elected government, it's the public service that supports it and in the case of a federation like Australia then it's the interaction between different levels of government,” she said.

“If we're thinking about improving the governance of that, I think you've got to look at it as a whole system and then think about what you can do to improve the way the whole system is operating to deliver effective outcomes and build trust.

“If you look at where trust is at the moment, there is a mismatch around where community expectations are and how government is being governed, because there isn't trust in the community.”

Speaking on federation, Ms Cilento highlighted that long-term strategies could help address Australia’s ageing population and result in better outcomes.

“Looking at a whole-of-government intergenerational report where we can see where the problems are going to emerge, and then we set policy with a long-term view to that,” she said.

“Because otherwise what happens is you end up with some perverse incentives that are created for different parts of the system.”

In terms of policy reform, Ms Cilento advocated for a process of continual improvement.

“I think there's still a mentality in some of our policy discussions where we say let's have the ‘Big Bang’ reform,” she said.

“I actually think we've got to adopt a different model now, which is continually evaluating policies and updating them and working to make sure that they're fine-tuned to be right for now.”

She also called for more nuance in the public debate.

“At the moment I think one of the reasons people are really frustrated is they understand the issues are complex, but they're sort of being served a simplistic narrative,” she said.

“Too often there’s a narrative that says there's no losers because no one wants to have an honest conversation, because it's difficult.”

Ms Cilento spoke of working in the spirit of collaboration, and how combative politics is not always conducive to good policy reform.

“Let's start getting out there and of saying, ‘what is it we're trying to achieve?,’” she said.

“Challenge the opposition as well to say, ‘this is what we want to achieve’ and actually build some compromise into the system instead of having this process at the moment where compromise is not part of the conversation.”