Jobs for Mates: Everybody Knows

(Spot the references and paraphrasing of Lyrics  from Leonard Cohen songs– if you can)

Everybody knows the fight is fixed, the poor get poorer and the parties get rich and that’s how it goes  and everybody knows.

Start as a staffer in a political party. Prove your loyalty. Build your network. Get rewarded with an appointment, a board role or a safe preselection. Then step into Parliament and/or eventually into a well-paid role that profits on the connections you’ve built.

Sometimes that’s OK, as the person is truly worthy of being an MP or a Senator or perhaps an ambassador. There are often times, however, when the person is not worthy, when the process of selection is not transparent and reeks of cronyism, of nepotism and of all the other ‘isms’ that describe something that is obviously wrong.

The mighty ship of state then becomes crewed by less and less abled sailors.

And it’s one of the key reasons trust in politics is wearing thin.

We’ve seen how this plays out in practice. The controversy around appointments to bodies such as the Administrative Appeals Tribunal under a Liberal government contributed to widespread criticism of perceived politicisation and ultimately to institutional reform under an equally nepotistic Labor Party.

We’ve seen senior figures move from Cabinet into defence consulting roles. We’ve seen political staffers move into taxpayer-funded advisory positions, government boards and eventually into Parliament itself.

And over time we see a political class that nearly always preselects from within itself.

But there needs to be a crack in this very thing, that’s how the light gets in.

When those folk making policy have spent their entire careers inside politics then the system is reduced and the thinking is limited. And real-world experience is missing - the experience that comes from running a business, playing sport at the highest level, serving in the military, teaching kids, practicing law, reporting on news, practicing a trade etc -  or just dealing with the highs and lows of life outside a media cycle. All that becomes less common in the place where decisions are made.

That’s how you end up with policies that struggle or with knee jerk reactions to crisis and to the various economic messes created overseas and delivered here.

That’s how costs blow out, how regulation misses the point and accountability is questioned. And it is why voters are increasingly sceptical about the system.

You can say that I've grown bitter, but of this you may be sure, the elite have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor, there's a mighty independent judgement coming.  Independents have risen in part because they offer a different pathway. They are more likely to come from outside the political bubble. They do not owe their position to factions or party machines.

Political culture is built on relationships, networks and informal influence as much as formal structures. Even the well-intentioned can become part of those networks simply by participating in them for too long. (One reason I left the COSBOA CEO role is I had, over the years, become too close to those I was criticising and/or praising.)

This is where the problem is now entrenched. As political parties lose members and their base of active participants shrinks, they are drawing from an increasingly narrow skills pool. That shrinking base reinforces the “jobs for mates” dynamic, because there are fewer external pathways into politics and fewer people with outside experience entering the system. In effect, the shortage of pathways strengthens the insider network.

When there is a skills shortage efficiency declines.

We see fewer members of the parties, fewer worthy candidates and a tendency to recycle the same types of skills and people through important civic roles.

Breaking that cycle needs independent appointment processes, transparent selection criteria for public roles, meaningful cooling-off periods between politics and lobbying and the increase of worthy independent candidates to widen the conduit into Parliament itself.

Because if we keep drawing our political class from the same shrinking pool of ideologist and the self-interested, we can’t be surprised when the outcomes are increasingly disconnected from the needs of the people.

No need to summon up a thunder cloud as we have independents with miles to drive and promises to keep.

Perhaps we can stick our little pins in a relevant voodoo doll? Because unless things change, unless we get a minority government with worthy independents on the crossbench, then we’ll  never be singing  Hallelujah. (Now sing it – you know you want to.)