What You Need To Know About | CIS

Politicisation – the attack on merit and our way of life

Hosted by Karla Pincott, What You Need to Know About is the podcast that covers exactly that. Hear from CIS' experts on the key points of their research, providing you with concise and insightful overviews of complex topics. In each episode, we break down intricate policy issues, economic trends, social challenges, and more, delivering the essential information you need to stay informed in today's fast-paced world.
 
Join us as we cut through the noise and dive straight into the heart of matters that shape our society. Whether you're a policy enthusiast, a curious mind, or just someone looking to grasp the essentials without getting lost in the details, What You Need to Know About is your go-to source for bite-sized yet comprehensive insights.
 
Karla Pincott
Karla Pincott is the Director of Communications at the Centre for Independent Studies, and the Managing Editor at BusinessWoman Media.
 
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Below is an excerpt from Scott Prasser paper, which can be read here. Types of politicisation in government
Making senior appointments based on partisanship, personal relationships, loyalty;
Political patronage — rewarding personal and political loyalty in appointments to government advisory boards and committees;
Allocating public finds for political advantage;
Public servants’ direct political involvement in campaigning and party activity;
Appointments of those politically aligned but based on merit selection criteria (“meritorious mates”);
Appointments on grounds of equity or ‘representativeness’ in addition to/or even instead of narrow position ‘merit’ criteria;
Public servants serving in ‘political’ roles in developing policy (as distinct from sharing work with ministers);
Development of a ‘responsive’ public service through contractual employment (giving ministers what they want as distinct from what they need);
Expansion of ministerial roles and offices into more and more areas of administration through expansion of ministers’ offices and powers to oversee and supplant public service functions (giving directions, preparation of cabinet submissions, co-ordination).

Rental and Housing Affordability with Peter Tulip

We need to relax zoning restrictions to allow more housing. At a society level, this requires more acceptance of higher density and less opposition to new development. We need to put more weight on the interests of renters and future home buyers andless weight on the interests of nearby residents. This rebalancing will shift the incentives for elected governments to act.
Societal pressure over the issue of housing affordability is growing, but needs to be encouraged. Were the Victorian government inclined to do something to improve housing affordability, there areseveral measures it could take.
One increasingly popular and effective approach is for the state government to set conditions that apply across local plans. For example, NSW removed limits on the construction of granny flats. New Zealand’s ‘Medium Density Residential Standard’ requires large cities to permit up to three storeys and three dwellings on all existing residential parcels of land. California’s AB 2011 allowed medium-density residential development to proceed by right in commercial zones. American research lists dozens of similar reforms.
Minimum standards can prevent the worst restrictions. However, their uniformity is a limitation: different levels and forms of density are appropriate in different areas.
Granny flats are not efficient in the inner suburbs, while high-rises are not efficient on the outskirts. In practice, blanket over-rides such as Auckland’s Unitary Plan have tended to increase density most on the outskirts; whereas Melbourne arguably most needs development in inner suburbs.
A more flexible approach is for the state government to set and enforce construction targets for local councils, allowing each council to decide how the target should be met. Councils could choose a small number of high-density developments or a larger number of medium density developments.
Either choice improves housing affordability. The important thing is that councils need to allow more housing. The quantity should be decided centrally; the type can be decentralised. An approach like this is followed in NSW and many foreign jurisdictions, including England, California and some Canadian provinces. However, most of those targets are too low and inadequately enforced.
The rationale for the state government over-riding local councils is that the councils are biased against development. They represent nearby residents, not the direct beneficiaries — thenewcomers moving into the area – nor the indirect beneficiaries, the renters and future home buyers who pay lower housing costs. Local governments will act like a cartel, restricting supply and driving up the price of housing. That benefits local property owners, but this is more than outweighed by the harm done to potential residents from outside the area and future generations.
- Peter TulipRead the rest of the paper here:https://www.cis.org.au/publication/rental-and-housing-affordability-submission-to-the-victorian-legislative-councils-legal-and-social-issues-committee/
 
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Heeding expert advice

During the Covid-19 pandemic, state and territory leaders afforded great responsibility for decisions about managing both the impact of the virus and the expectations of a fearful public to unelected public health experts. Severe restrictions imposed on movement and association at the behest of these experts — Chief Medical Officers (CMOs) — lasted for many months.
The exceptional circumstances of the pandemic hardly formed part of the regular routine of government. Indeed, so exceptional was the pandemic that dependence on advisors with medical and public health expertise might well have been unavoidable if government was to be effective.
Faced with the need to assuage public fears, there was also a need for the public to hear what medical experts made of the pandemic and the dangers it posed. Most Australians readily complied with state-imposed edicts, apparently confident that governments were acting only in the best interests of citizens.
However, many expressed concern that as the pandemic ran its course, political leaders appeared to be doing one of two things. Either they followed the advice of medical experts blindly and without regard to the social, economic and community impact of the imposed measures; or they ignored expert medical advice because of concerns about its likely impact would fuel worries that they were not doing enough to keep citizens ‘safe’.[1]
These concerns only compounded as, during the course of the pandemic, medical experts began to fall out with one another, thereby dissolving any notion of universal medical consensus about how best to manage contagion.[2] As the pandemic ran its course, populations bowed to the dictates of chief medical officers. The will and wishes of the demos were subordinated to the opinions and directions of the knowledgeable few.
While the Covid-19 pandemic provides a rare, if egregious, example, of their doing so, the ceding by elected representatives of decision-making to health bureaucrats is just one example of the problem that Adrian Pabst, a political scientist, has described as double delegation — “whereby representatives elected by citizens delegate power to unelected officials who are part of a professional political class.”
Read the rest of the paper here: www.cis.org.au/publication/autho…rust-the-experts/
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The New Superannuation Tax with Robert Carling

At the time of recording, the details of the proposal are still not known in full. However, enough was revealed at the time of the government’s original March 1 announcement and in subsequent elaboration, that we are able to sketch an outline of the new tax.
The proposal is that beginning with fiscal year 2025-26, every individual’s total superannuation balance aggregated across as many super fund interests as they may have will be tested against a $3 million threshold.
If the government perseveres with this, the proposal needs substantial modification to remove its more draconian features.
Read our research here: www.cis.org.au/publication/super…hould-be-shelved/
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The raised pension age, with Simon Cowan

In this TARGET 30 Research Report CIS modelling shows that reforming the pension could deliver income gains of more than $5,900 a year to almost 98% of pensioners. These reforms would also reduce the cost of the pension by $14.5 billion a year.
“With four out of every five retirees on the pension, and pensioners with over a million dollars in assets getting the same payment as those with almost nothing, the pension clearly needs reform,” says Simon Cowan, research fellow and co-author of the report,The Age Old Problem of Old Age: Fixing the Pension.
Read more here: www.cis.org.au/publication/the-a…ng-the-pension-2/
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