Australia's National Competition Policy 1995-2005

Abstract

Between positive structuralism and post-modernism lies an epistemological gap in which much understanding is lost. This is particularly true of the study of government policies. The National Competition Policy was one such: a vast program of change of Australian law, governmental processes and regulation; it changed thousands of pieces of legislation, brought new institutions of government into being, ruled governments and cost livelihoods. Thinking about the National Competition Policy falls into that epistemological gap. This thesis sets about rendering the National Competition Policy thinkable by developing an epistemology: thick reflexive description. It proceeds to describe the National Competition Policy in that way, bearing in mind the Scylla of theory contingent abstraction and the Charybdis of volume. It starts by defining in precise terms what the National Competition Policy is taken to mean including its institutional, constitutional and legal context, and its prior history. Finally the thesis sets out accounts, both by year and by topic, of the National Competition Policy’s implementation and also of reactions to it. A thick study does not seek to prove or disprove. Its results are simply observations, which may run counter to alternative descriptions. Questions may be answered and it may provide the opportunity for reflection. It may throw up hypotheses for later testing or even for measurement against evaluative criteria. This thesis concludes with such responses. It asks whether the National Competition Policy achieved change and answers that it did very little that was not in train already, although it overcame some barriers due to the federal/state vertical fiscal imbalance. On the point of whether the National Competition Policy was good for Australia, it concludes that despite much official literature, no study has been able to demonstrate that it did. On the theoretical point of whether the National Competition Policy implemented neo-liberalism it concludes that it was the expression of pre-existing neo-liberal politics but conceded the place of the public interest to a greater degree than erstwhile. There was a price for even that in the rise of irrational politics. When applied to the question of whether the National Competition Policy rewrote federalism, it suggests that while it further developed techniques of its working, albeit at the cost of democracy and accountability, it did not rearrange its fundamentals. Many observations are made possible by the thick reflexive description of the National Competition Policy. For example, it is surprising how uncritical the various estates of the Australian polity have been of the Productivity Commission. That body was mistaken about the benefits in the beginning and concealed its inability to evaluate at the end. It was deployed as a partisan tool of government to defeat political critique. Most importantly, this thesis observes how ill-researched the basic thrust of competition policy is. The goodness of competition is assumed and any wrongs committed in its name attributed to implementation of the policy. Show more