Integrity in public policy

 

Alas, ’tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor’d mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,
Made old offences of affections new;
Most true it is that I have look’d on truth
Askance and strangely:

Sonnet 110

 

I am in the process of preparing for a month-long break and am unlikely to post much (or anything) until October.

My posts have become slightly more irregular as I have been finding it increasingly challenging to find issues across the Indigenous policy domain which I felt were significant enough to invest the time necessary to write a post. I generally try not to replicate analysis which is available in the media. It is not that there are not issues playing out, or developments occurring, but I find myself unconvinced that they will have serious systemic impact or that I have not already written about them either directly or tangentially.

As an aside, it is worth mentioning that this is the 350^th post on A Walking Shadow since December 2015, and there is much that is worth exploring should readers feel inclined to use the search function or scroll through the Blog Archive on the right hand side of each post.

I came across the quote below from a blog post (link here)  by Scott Sumner (link here), a libertarian or classical liberal economist from the US. It struck me that his analysis applies as much to Australia, and to the Indigenous public policy domain, as to the US, and because it goes to fundamental values which in turn shape the norms that underpin our formal institutions, it is worth amplifying. It particularly applies to the remote Indigenous policy domain where the interface of traditional Indigenous cultural values, regional and highly parochial mainstream political cultures, and a deep-seated reluctance by national political leaders — and the institutions they effectively control — to address policy issues on their merits, have created and sustained what I have previously described as a social and governance catastrophe (link here).

Sumner states, inter alia:

In my view, people focus far too much on individual issues and far too little on the essential role of integrity in the political process.  We should demand that politicians tell the truth.  We should demand that politicians refrain from corrupt practices.  We should demand that politicians adhere strictly to not just the letter of the law, but also its intent.  If we need to pay much higher salaries to attract the best people, then we should do so.  History has shown that a lack of integrity in the public realm leads to very bad outcomes in the long run.  In the end, integrity is the only way to prevent a country from becoming a failed state.

Sumner’s quote struck a chord with me both because it points to a fundamental value necessary for public policy to be effective (beyond meeting the short-term interests of politicians). But it also hints at the existence of other values that we normally consider as relevant to interpersonal relations, but which have under-appreciated potential systemic or structural implications in policy contexts. For example, values such as respect, transparency, inquisitiveness, innovation, persistence, trust, and patience.

Each of these values are important in shaping effective public policy yet are undervalued and under-acknowledged in public discourse around policy issues. They seem to me to be particularly worth emphasising in cross-cultural policy contexts such as obtain in the Indigenous policy domain where the risks of miscommunication and misunderstanding are heightened. To provide just one example of how a commitment to substantive truth telling is important, I was pleased to see the Australian Financial Review publish yesterday an oped article (link here) by an economist, Cathal Leslie, who had previously worked for the Productivity Commission on Closing the Gap issues, and who made the point that the institutional framework for closing the gap fails to focus on or address a crucial determinant of Indigenous wellbeing while focussing of other issues of marginal significance.

Finally, it is perhaps worth mentioning the relationship between the quotes from Shakespeare and this blog again. I provided a brief explanation in a post dated January 2016 (link here) and refer interested readers there for that explanation. That post also laid out a rationale for the Blog which may be of interest to some readers. Whether I met the aspirations laid out there is for you, the reader, to determine.

 

27 August 2025