The sign in the window: Lessons from Davos?

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Julius Caesar Act one, Scene two.

 

Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie

Which we ascribe to heaven

Alls Well that Ends Well, Act one, Scene one.

 

The speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on 20 January 2026 (link here)  reverberated globally. I recommend reading it in full, or even better, watching it (link here).

David French, writing in the New York Times (link here) suggested that Carney:

delivered what might be the most important address of Trump’s second term so far. To enthusiastic applause in Davos, he articulated a vision of how the “middle powers” — nations like Canada — should respond to the great powers.

For middle powers, according to French:

Carney sees this reality clearly. “Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons,” he said. “Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited.” Integration, he said, has become the source of their “subordination.”

And then

Carney’s conclusion was clear: “The powerful have their power. But we have something, too: the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home and to act together.”

In a complementary opinion piece, Ezra Klein (link here) focussed on Trump’s transactionalism [transnationalism], and explored the implications of Carney’s reference to Vaclav Havel’s example of the fruit shop owner under communist rule who posts a sign in his window proclaiming ‘workers of the world unite’:

“Havel called this ‘living within a lie,’” said Carney. “The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.

There has been a considerable reaction within Australian policy circles to the Carney speech as one of our Five Eyes partners has in effect taken down the sign in the window, and is prepared to both tell the truth about key issues that go to the security relations and has indicated that it is already moving to decrease its reliance on what Carney calls the hegemon. The Treasurer made clear (link here) that the Carney speech was being taken very seriously at the highest levels of the Australian Government, and the implications of the current US administration’s foreign and domestic policy approaches are increasingly making it clear to Australian policymakers that Australia too will have to adjust its policy settings, reduce its reliance on the US as the single source of its security guarantee, and ultimately that Australia must adopt a more self-reliant stance. The discussion of these issues in the mainstream media has been muted, but  it is clear that momentum is building (link here and link here and link here).

The issue I wish to explore however is to ask the somewhat sensitive question: what lessons for Australian policy opportunities, if any, might Indigenous interests and their allies take from Mark Carney’s analysis of the rupture in the post war international order under the Trump administration? Or to put this another way, what is the best strategy for Indigenous interests and for Governments to adopt in dealing with the outcomes of what is almost universally recognised to have been a violent and unjust process of colonial subordination of Indigenous peoples in a process that has been ongoing for two and a half centuries.

My short answer is as follows: it is time for Australian policymakers, the advocates that seek to influence them, and the critics that seek to criticise them, to focus on substantive policy reforms instead of ephemeral performative announcements raising unrealistic expectations and potentially harming community cohesion both within Indigenous Australia and beyond. Here are my reasons.

My analysis of the performance of governments in broad terms is that the election of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972 initiated a decades long project of incremental reform policies grounded in social justice and aimed at progressively including Indigenous Australians under the carapace of the nation’s protective and facilitative institutions. One might list numerous examples of the substantive reforms put in place between 1972 and 2015.

However, over the past decade governments have reversed course, and are no longer serious about pursuing structural or systemic reforms. I would struggle to list any substantive reforms in this period, and see little prospect of any for the decade ahead. Instead, they have resorted to a broad policy framework of articulating the rhetoric of reform and social justice, while not investing the political capital required to drive substantive reform. This has become a feasible and viable strategy through the adoption of two symbiotic strategies.

The first strategy is public relations management aimed at neutralising difficult issues with the appearance of action, the allocation of ad hoc funding to silence squeaky wheels, and using the considerable heft and footprint of government to throw dust in the air and evade responsibility wherever possible. The rapid acceleration of the media news cycle and the considerable investment of government in hiring media staff to engage with journalists and media outlets including social media has the ability to overwhelm all but the largest and most sophisticated corporations and organisations.

The second strategy derives from a poorly understood dynamic in political behaviour across the political spectrum, and one which is deeply embedded within high level interest group competition and dynamics; that dynamic can be summed up in one word: transactionalism. In my experience politicians are not only transactional in their approach to politics and policy, but they also assume that virtually all their interlocutors both inside and outside the political domain, are themselves transactional. And mostly they are right, because interest group activities are heavily professionalised and interest groups have been trained (like Pavlov’s dog) to be transactional. Moreover, the reality is that no-one ever gets everything they want, so the process of giving and taking becomes the de facto default for policy engagement. Given this dynamic, the way is open for governments to engage transactionally with both bona fide advocates and potential critics in ways which in effect buy their silence. Board appointments, privileged access to government processes, denial of access, selectively overlooking administrative or other flaws, and of course the use of funding and the implicit threat of cessation or cuts to existing funding are all tactics that governments resort to almost as an everyday practice.

I understand only too well that interest groups have no choice but to engage with governments on policy matters, but if you are a less powerful interest group, you will face much greater challenges in gaining access, in being heard, in persuading governments to act, and if devising the most effective strategies to achieve your ends. If an interest group is divided or worse, incoherent due to multiple voices, the inevitable result is that none will be heard and no action will result. If an interest group is not strategic in building alliances and building networks within the policy domain in advance of seeking some action, or not strategic in focussing its human and financial capital on issues that make a difference, then it is effectively daydreaming. The problem is that daydreamers are often susceptible to self-delusion, and this risk is exacerbated when governments use their considerable armoury of tactics to persuade individuals or organisations that they are being listened to when they are not.

Of course, we elect governments to govern under the implicit contract and assumption that they will act in the public interest broadly defined. Unfortunately, government and politicians too are vulnerable to being captured by powerful interests and the result is that they do not always act in the public interest, but rather in favour of private interests. We cannot assume that government, and the bureaucracy that no longer understands how to provide policy advice without fear or favour, are altruistic. In these circumstances, there is much to be said in favour of citizens minimising their engagement with governments, and devising ways to build mechanisms to provide support within local communities and engaging with NGOs and philanthropists. This applies as much in the Indigenous policy domain as to the wider domain. Arguably Australians expect too much of governments yet invest too little to holding them to account.

If indigenous interests wish to see governments at all levels shift away from performance politics and towards driving substantive policy reform, they should in my humble opinion begin to invest much more in building their own policy and political capability. This will mean building policy and political alliances both within and beyond the Indigenous policy domain. It will take time. And most importantly, it will mean focussing on what is real and feasible rather than on ideological slogans that may have conceptual merit but have no relevance in the real politik of modern Australia.

Non-Indigenous Australians would do both Indigenous interests and the nation a service if they were prepared to look behind the rhetoric of governments, assess policy on its substantive coherence rather than the rhetorical and ideological flim flam thrown up by those engaged in performance politics, and express their views on the basis that all Australians have a stake in ensuring that all policy is truly inclusive, is effective and is making a difference.

We should all take the signs in our windows down and stop living within the lies that underpin the ongoing blot on the Australian political landscape.

 

26 January 2026

Deflection and inaction: the Australian Government’s formal response to the Productivity Commission Review on Expenditure on Children in the Northern Territory.

  

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action…

Hamlet Act 3, scene 2.

 

Last week, the Australian Government released its formal response (link here) to the Productivity Commission (PC) report on Expenditure on Children in the Northern Territory. The Australian Government commissioned the PC to conduct this research following on from the recommendations of the Royal Commission into the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory 2017 (Royal Commission). The PC commenced its study on 1 April 2019 and publicly released its final report on 8 April 2020.

 

I wrote a post analysing the import of the PC report in April 2020 (link here). It is worth re-reading that post in conjunction with the Government’s formal response. The analysis below complements that more detailed response, which in turn relied heavily on the PC report.

 

The recent Australian Government response notes at paragraph 3:

Consistent with the Royal Commission’s findings, the PC’s final report outlines that the Australian and Northern Territory Governments make funding decisions in relative isolation, leading to fragmentation, inefficiencies in service delivery, and significant overlap in expenditure effort.

 

In my April 2020 post, I characterised the PC report in the following terms:

The PC study report is a stunning document. It focusses on one strand of government service delivery (children’s services) in one jurisdiction (the NT), and lays out in forensic and stark detail the extraordinary complexity of the funding and service delivery arrangements, the extent of the overlapping funding, the ongoing existence of gaps in funding, the absence of coordination both between jurisdictions and within jurisdictions (see pages 112- 116), the underutilisation of agencies’ regional networks who of course have most direct contact with citizens, and the lack of internal coherence in funding decisions by both levels of government...

… What is crystal clear — even from a cursory reading of the report — is that the system for funding and delivering children’s services in the NT is not fit for purpose. What is particularly arresting is the PC’s documentation in various places (eg page 306) of the long history of previous reports and inquiries whose analyses and recommendations have not been taken on board by governments.

 

I went on to argue that the implications of the PC report’s forensic examination of just one sliver of the policy domain impacting families (predominantly Indigenous families) in the NT was that similar issues would apply much more broadly.

 

To what extent then does the Australian government response suggest that there has been or is a serious attempt to address the shortcomings identified by the PC?

 

The short answer is that the Governments response is deflection rather than action. It reflects the deep-seated inability of governments to come to terms with the deep structural issues confronting disadvantaged Australians in remote regions. Instead of a new strategy, backed by political will and determination, what has been served up is ‘more of the same’ clothed in layers of bureaucratic sophistry and verbiage.

 

In the words of the Government’s response (paragraph 7):

The Australian Government supports in-principle the PC’s final report, including the areas of reform outlined. However, while holding significant merit, the PC’s suggested reforms also introduce additional operational and strategic complexity. As a result, detailed consideration of each recommendation, including risks, timing, policy alignment, capacity building and resourcing requirements by each agency will be essential for steady, realistic and informed planning and implementation.

 

Sir Humphrey Appleby could not have said it better!

 

The response proceeds to consider in detail each of the PCs four suggested areas of reform, namely: coordinated funding underpinned by regional plans; longer term funding for service providers; better data at the regional and community level, and stronger supporting institutions. While the response points to a range of processes, some more developed and serious than others, there is no overarching commitment to see these reforms comprehensively implemented.

 

I don’t propose to undertake a forensic critique of each element of the response; however I will comment on two issues of current relevance mentioned: the new framework for closing the gap, and the role of evaluation.

 

At paragraph 31, in relation to the PC identification of better data as an area for reform, the Government response states:

The Australian Government recognises that accountability and access to the data being interpreted is another critical consideration to drive transparency. An example of the Australian Government’s commitment to this can be seen through the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. One of the four key priority reforms the National Agreement is centred around is ‘building better data and sharing access to the right data to support Indigenous communities to make informed decisions with us.’

 

This is all good and well, although it reflects the implicit strategy of the Government to deflect calls for greater transparency into processes of greater data provision and sharing at local levels, two quite separate issues. More fundamentally however, the National Partnership provides for a series of processes designed to deliver shared decision making with Indigenous interests on service delivery, and for structural reforms to mainstream government agencies to enhance engagement with Indigenous interests. Yet there is no indication here that DSS has engaged with Indigenous interests in devising the Government’s response to the PC report as a whole. This bodes ill for the quality of the implementation of the national agreement.

 

At paragraph 33, the Government’s response states:

The NIAA’s IAS Evaluation Framework is also a notable example of how the Australian Government is taking a continuous improvement approach to evaluation, and is designed to ensure evaluations are high quality, ethical, inclusive and focused on improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

 

Yet the crucial issue is not the quality of myriad evaluations of small scale programs of limited strategic significance, but the use of evaluation to assess the overarching effectiveness of Government programs impacting (in the present case) disadvantaged children in the Northern Territory, most of whom are Indigenous.

 

Another example of (almost) seamless deflection…

 

In this context, it is worth noting that the response makes no mention of the PC report dated October 2020 on an Indigenous Evaluation Strategy, which incidentally recommended an independent evaluation capability across the Australian Government for policies and programs that impact Indigenous citizens. The Government has not formally responded to this report, and makes no mention of this fact in its response.

 

Finally, the most serious problem with the Government response to the PC report is not what is included, but what is omitted.

 

There is just no serious, comprehensive and thought through plan for substantive policy reforms, notwithstanding the fundamental shortcomings identified in the PC report.

 

In my April 2020 post, I outlined two potential approaches to substantive policy reform which would need to extend beyond children’s services to a range of related service delivery and policy domains:

The first approach would be  for Indigenous interests to implement a targeted strategy that picks out five or six of the key reforms identified by the PC (of course there may be others), and to make them core principles and advocate continuously for their implementation and ongoing retention at both national and jurisdictional levels….

…The second (and much more ambitious) approach would involve a fundamental reconceptualisation of the service delivery funding system to take decisions on grants and contracting out of the hands of politicians and place them in the hands of substantively independent service delivery purchasers (SDPs).

Governments would appropriate block amounts of funding over multiple years to say 20 regional SDPs across the nation for key social services, and provide broad (and public) guidance in terms of overall priorities. In turn, the SDPs would make funding decisions on service delivery within their regions, and report on progress to both the public at large and governments.

 

Neither substantive policy reform approach is seriously contemplated in the Government response issued last week. Nor is there anything else that might address the fundamental shortcomings in the architecture of service delivery identified by the PC report.

 

The Government’s response to the PC report is both a lost opportunity, and unfortunately and most seriously, given the lack of commitment to substantive reform, it seems likely that it is a portent of what we are likely to see when the first implementation plans under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap are released in July this year. Bureaucratic deflection and incessant process clothing underlying inaction are habits which are extraordinarily difficult for governments to break.