Who Actually Governs Australia?

Australians elect members of Parliament believing that those representatives will decide the country’s direction.

The party or coalition commanding a majority in the House of Representatives forms the government. Its ministers announce policies, introduce legislation, and take public responsibility for governing.

At least, that is how the system is supposed to work.

In practice, considerable political and administrative power has been placed in bodies operating beyond direct ministerial control. Governments can win elections promising a change of direction, only to discover that existing legislation, independent statutory authorities, and entrenched bureaucratic arrangements stand between the decision and its implementation.

Replacing ministers will accomplish little if the power to implement their decisions remains elsewhere.

British historian David Starkey offers an argument that helps explain this problem.

Starkey contends that the constitutional changes associated with former Labour Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dispersed authority away from Britain’s elected Parliament. Courts, appointed bodies, devolved institutions, and international legal arrangements acquired greater influence over decisions previously subject to more direct political control.

His criticism also falls on the Conservatives. They returned to office but failed to reverse the institutional changes they had inherited. In Starkey’s account, they tried to govern differently without first changing the arrangements that frustrated their ability to do so.

The lesson for Australia is that winning an election and possessing the authority to deliver an election promise are not always the same thing.

Consider a minister who promises to change policy in an area administered by an independent statutory authority.

A statutory authority is a body created by legislation. That legislation determines its functions, its powers, and the extent to which a minister can direct it. If Parliament has given the authority independent decision-making powers, a new minister cannot necessarily instruct it to make a different decision.

The voters have changed the government. They have not changed the law, placing power outside the government’s direct control.

The term “quango” is often used for bodies that perform public functions at arm’s length from elected government and rightly so. They include commissions, boards, and statutory authorities. Their precise structures differ. The concern arises wherever they exercise political discretion without a clear line of control running back to elected representatives.

There is a substantial difference between specialists advising a minister and an institution possessing the power to prevent that minister’s policy from taking effect.

Expert advice helps a government make a decision. An independent governing authority can mean the decision is no longer the government’s to make.

Responsibility then becomes an elaborate buck-passing exercise. The minister points to the authority’s independence. The authority points to its legislation. The government insists it wants a different outcome. The public is left asking why anyone bothered making a promise.

One Nation should go to an election with an Australian Sovereignty Restoration program ready to implement.

Before polling day, it should name the quangos and statutory authorities it will abolish, identify the powers it will return to ministers, and publish the legislation required to do it. The bills should be ready for introduction in the first parliamentary sitting.

The commitment must be to abolition, transfer of authority, and implementation, with specified targets and deadlines.

Bodies that exercise governing power beyond effective ministerial control would be dismantled. Their boards would be dissolved and their separate appropriations ended. Unnecessary functions would cease. Essential functions would move into ordinary departments answerable to elected ministers.

Closing a statutory authority need not mean abandoning useful work. Engineers, scientists, inspectors, and other specialists can continue doing necessary work within a department. What ends is the organisation’s existence as a separate centre of governing power.

The legislation must transfer the actual decision-making authority as well. Shifting staff and changing signs on office doors would achieve nothing if the same independent powers survived under a new name.

Where an authority currently makes a policy decision, the responsible minister would acquire that power. Where a department implements the decision, it would operate under clear, lawful ministerial direction.

Australia’s written Constitution and federal division of responsibilities would determine which Parliament must legislate. Commonwealth powers would be restored through Commonwealth legislation, with corresponding state reforms pursued through state parliaments.

The principle is straightforward. Experts advise. Ministers decide. Departments act. Parliament scrutinises. Voters deliver the final verdict.

This would not end accountability. It would restore it.

A minister could no longer blame an independent authority for an outcome the government had promised to change. The power to make the decision and the responsibility for its consequences would belong to the same elected government.

Australians would finally know who was governing them.

“If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.”
– Tony Benn