Tag Archive for: Democracy

The case for an Australian National Security Council

For the past decade, successive prime ministers have been grappling with the question of how best to organise the Australian government to face a widening array of oft-interconnected national security issues. Now, with a shifting strategic environment coming into sharper focus and a newly sophisticated Australian Defence Force coming into being, the time is right to reconsider and renew those efforts.

That means thinking deeply about Australia’s institutional infrastructure for making decisions about national security, and particularly the decision to go to war. The first step is to ask why Australia, almost alone amongst allies and close friends, has thus far resisted forming a secretariat or council of dedicated National Security staff.

In their own way, prime ministers Howard, Gillard and Rudd each tinkered with Australia’s system for going to war. Howard began to build the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as a place where national security policy could be coordinated, and brought across Angus Campbell (now a Lieutenant General and Chief of Army) to the Department’s Office of National Security, where he was to provide advice independent to that of the military.

Gillard launched a national security strategy that for the first time aligned the goals and budgets of disparate agencies and departments. Better coordination was her priority—‘My message to the community is if you see a silo, dig it up’—but it came with little additional funding, the judgment that the age of terrorism was over, and a Defence White Paper that declared all was better in the world than the government had thought.

It was Rudd who turbocharged the effort. In 2008 he appointed Australia’s first official national security adviser (current ASIO Director Duncan Lewis), set about drafting the country’s first national security statement, launched a National Security College to sharpen the national security skills of officials across government, and formed new cabinet committees and bodies to coordinate intelligence-gathering and emergency and counterterrorism responses. The new structure was a promising start, but in time it fell victim to Rudd’s personal style of leadership. The national security adviser was staffed lightly and tasked widely—covering everything from bushfires to war.

We should revisit the idea of a National Security Council. There are two pressing needs it would resolve. The first is to strengthen institutional coordination and cohesion on national security. DFAT has traditionally led inter-departmental coordination on issues of international policy, but committees and task groups have been formed reactively, episodically, and with limitations imposed by the department’s anemic levels of staffing.

The Department of Defence takes a lead role in crafting national security, but national security and national strategy for that matter must be about more than just the use of the military. And Defence shouldn’t be left to craft its own strategic direction, as it does now all too often. Some of the day-to-day coordination of national security departments and agencies occurs within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, but it’s largely focused on the here and now.

Which leads to the second reason Australia needs to develop a National Security Council. At the moment, it isn’t clear which part of government is formulating the long-term strategy necessary for a world in which strategic competition between our friends, allies and others is the new normal. How is the deep thinking about Australia’s economic and security futures being conjoined? And with how much institutional rigour and continuity are strategies being developed for the Prime Minister to navigate the uncertainties and complexities being charted by the Office of National Assessments?

The United Kingdom formed a National Security Secretariat in 2010 with a staff of 180, many brigaded from existing functions spread throughout government, and led by a National Security Adviser supported by three deputies covering foreign policy, defence and intelligence. Though this model wouldn’t be directly transferable to Australia, it is instructive, particularly with regard to the NSA’s role within a Westminster system and his or her relationship with the parliament. Carl Ungerer has outlined other options for an Australian-type system.

Of course, building such an institution and its culture is a complex task. Finding the right national security adviser can also be difficult. Too strong, and they hamper the ability of the prime minister and cabinet to exercise their democratic mandate, or else sideline defence chiefs. Too weak and they don’t provide enough contestability to balance the advice provided by the military in particular. The United States has been grappling with this issue for nearly 70 years, and tried a number of iterations of national security staffing structures.

But a bigger and more powerful defence force, more expansive national interests, and a more complex and interconnected strategic environment all demand a reconsideration of how we manage national security, and the decision to go to war. Or more importantly, the decision not to.

Confronting the global threat to democracy

Across the world, populists are attracting votes with their promises to protect ordinary people from the harsh realities of globalisation. The democratic establishment, they assert, cannot be trusted to fulfill this purpose, as it is too busy protecting the wealthy—a habit that globalisation has only intensified.

For decades, globalisation promised to bring benefits to all. On an international scale, it facilitated the rise of the Asian tigers and the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), produced rapid growth across Africa, and facilitated the boom in developed countries through 2007. It also created new opportunities and augmented growth within countries. But since the 2008 crash, many rich countries have been locked into austerity; the Asian economies have been slowing; the BRICS’ progress has been stalling; and many African countries have fallen back into debt.

All of this has contributed to rising inequality, which is now fueling discontent. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman calculate that in the United States, the wealth gap is already wider than at any time since the Great Depression, with the richest 1% of households now holding almost half the country’s wealth.

In the United Kingdom, the Office for National Statistics reports that in the period from 2012 to 2014, the wealthiest 10% of households owned 45% of total aggregate household wealth. Since July 2010, the top decile’s wealth has increased three times faster than that of the bottom 50% of the population.

In Nigeria, astonishing economic growth, averaging 7% per year since 2000, may well have reduced poverty in the southwest of the country; but in the northeast (where the extremist group Boko Haram is most active), shocking levels of wealth inequality and poverty have emerged. Similar trends are apparent from China to Egypt to Greece.

Alongside inequality, declining public trust fuels the revolt against globalisation and democracy. Across the developed and developing worlds, many suspect that the rich are getting richer because they are not held to the same rules as everyone else.

It’s not hard to see why. As the global economy slows, breaches of trust by those at the top become more apparent. In the United Kingdom, Amazon, Starbucks, and Google attracted public outrage in 2013 for using loopholes to pay almost no tax, prompting the UK government to lead a G8 tax announcement aimed at reducing tax evasion and avoidance. In 2015, an audit of the state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation revealed that about $20 billion in revenue was never remitted to the authorities under the previous administration.

And the problem appears to be systemic. This year, the Panama Papers exposed how the global rich create secretive offshore companies, permitting them to avoid financial scrutiny and taxation. And the world’s largest banks have faced unprecedented fines in recent years for brazen violations of the law.

But, despite the negative publicity generated by such cases, the public has seen virtually no one held to account. Almost a decade after the global financial crisis of 2008, only one bank executive has gone to prison. Many bankers instead followed a path similar to Fred Goodwin, the head of Britain’s Royal Bank of Scotland, who racked up £24.1 billion ($34.2 billion) in losses, then resigned with a huge pension. Ordinary people—like the father of three who was imprisoned in the UK in September 2015 for accumulating £500,000 in gambling debts—do not enjoy such impunity.

All of this helps explain why anti-establishment movements are gaining momentum around the world. These movements share a sense of disenfranchisement—a sense that the “establishment” is failing to give ordinary citizens a “fair shake.” They point to election results “bought” by special interests, and to arcane legal and regulatory frameworks that seem rigged to benefit the rich, such as banking regulations that only large institutions can navigate and investment treaties negotiated in secret.

Governments have permitted globalisation—and peripatetic wealth-holders—to outpace them. Globalisation requires regulation and management. It requires responsible business leaders. And it requires deep and effective global cooperation. When governments failed to cooperate in the 1930s, globalisation came to a crashing halt.

It took a series of careful, highly managed efforts after World War II to open up the world economy and permit globalisation to take off again. Still, while many countries liberalized trade, capital controls ensured that “hot money” could not race in and out of their economies. Meanwhile, governments invested the returns on growth in high-quality education, health care, and welfare systems that benefited the many. As the business of government grew, so did the resources put into it.

By the 1970s, wealthy countries’ leaders in both government and business had become complacent. They took on faith the promise of self-equilibrating, self-restraining markets that would deliver continued growth. By the time this new orthodoxy spread to the leveraged financial sector, the world was on a crash course. Unfortunately, many governments had already lost the capacity to manage the forces they had unleashed, and business leaders had lost their sense of responsibility for the welfare of the societies within which they were flourishing.

In 2016, we are re-learning that, politically, globalisation needs to be managed not just to permit the winners to win, but also to ensure that they do not cheat or neglect their responsibilities to their societies. There is no place for corrupt politicians pandering to corrupt business leaders.

Restoring confidence will be difficult. Business leaders will need to secure a “license to operate” from society at large, and contribute visibly to sustaining the conditions that support their prosperity. They can start by paying their taxes.

Governments will need to distance themselves from the companies that fail to do their part. Moreover, they must overhaul their own operations, to prove their impartiality. Robust regulation will require significant investment in government capacity and the legal services that support it.

Finally, global cooperation will be crucial. Globalisation cannot be undone. But with a strong, shared commitment, it can be managed.

Support advisers to support policy

Policy reform in Australia has slowed so much that institutional causes should be considered. The effectiveness of the political adviser needs some thought because they touch most of the messages, reactions, decisions, budgets, policies and strategies coming from both government and opposition. To some extent, the organisational preparedness and performance of advisers are part of the reason our governments are struggling to deliver constructive policy.

The cost of all staff members of federal parliamentarians in 2012­–13 was $230 million, which paid for about 450 senior advisers, media advisers, advisers and assistant advisers. By contrast, the UK Government has about 100 special advisers. Add our state governments, with their oppositions and minor party benches, and Australia’s politic­–policy layer is over 1,000 strong.

Despite significant budgets and functions, human resource management in Australian politics is underdone, with abnormal turnover and demands spun as positives. Because work practices are difficult to sustain in general, there’s a rolling loss of corporate, policy and political memory. So recruitment practices serve turnover realities more than quality needs, such as diversity and gender balance.

Where advisers are seconded or former department officials, professional expertise exists but political nous and awareness are usually weak. Similarly, where advisers have primarily political associative backgrounds, their public service skills and subject matter expertise are usually weak. These limitations are amplified by the relative inexperience of staff amenable to frenetic work conditions.

The cost of this arrangement in terms of policy delivery is hard to quantify but policy stagnation is in part an executive problem in which hundreds of advisers play key roles. On a sustainable basis, staff capacities struggle to match office functions, which themselves aren’t always clearly understood. For example. Section 57 of the Public Service Act (Cth) 1999 specifies that the Department Secretary is the principal official policy adviser to the Minister.

The lack of professional support that’s commonly provided in public services and in the private sector has been long recognised—submissions to the 2003 Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee inquiry into Staff employed under the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act 1984 conveyed the systemic shortcomings of the ad hoc adviser body.

Over the last decade and over many state and federal changes of government, business practices have changed little, besides the codification of steps to improve ministerial accountability. While intelligent, highly dedicated and hardworking staff are normally employed, their relative inexperience and lack of support are functional impediments. As a result, the over 1,000 Australian advisers provide our democracy with less service than they could do within a more considered system. It’s the capacity of our institutions that matters because policy reform, in any direction, is a medium to long-term undertaking.

All these executive shortcomings are a drag on policy advancement. If in doubt, due to lack of experience or support, it isn’t unreasonable for advisers to hedge against immediate risks and discount future benefits. With due respect to loosely defined duties, a risk adverse culture is fostered. In a complex system, risk aversion inhibits professional cooperation so curbing policy discourse even within parties, across parliamentary wings and between the state and federal levels.

Staff energies are instead focused on short-term issues where relativist judgments can quickly address media and administrative issues. Work is typically triaged in terms of relative crisis or media pertinence, rather than policy, strategy or whole-of-government relevance: it’s politics over policy. In turn, inaction stalls policy development, which is ultimately politically fatal.

Politics is a most competitive profession, so it’s argued that office staffing is rightly and simply a reflection of the office holder. That’s fair enough as far as ballot box feedback goes but the fact is that the adviser body provides a key service to all nine of the country’s parliaments; which aren’t meant to fail. The problem is while devil-take-the-hindmost is a constructive force in a dynamic market, the adviser body is a universal, taxpayer-funded system. It’s a service that, for want of modern management practices, isn’t as effective at serving politicians, and thus advancing public policy, as it could be.

Public services have public sector commissions, politicians have their electorates and the media has their charters, owners and readers. Tellingly, no person or organisation stands to directly benefit from asking or answering questions about adviser body fitness.

A minor but important step towards improved policymaking in Australia would be measures to ensure advisers are a more constructive part of whole-of-government (and opposition) efforts. Undoubtedly, responsibility for managing staff should stay with the political executive but setting and enforcing better standards would ease that burden and enhance policy productivity.

Our politicians need better support to deliver policy than our advisers are currently set up to provide. If we’re serious about fixing Australian politics, we need to strengthen the relevant institutions. We should take a serious, substantive look at improving the policy delivery value of the adviser body.

Thailand: a new constitution for a new kind of democracy?

Bangkok shut down

For many years Thailand was admired for its rapid economic growth. It was a good security partner for the US and Australia, and many foreigners liked visiting the country. The zigzag course of its political development, alternating between democratically-elected governments and military regimes, has prompted frowns at the appropriate times from Western governments, but the widespread assumption was that there was an underlying upwards trajectory. The election of Thaksin Shinawatra—a wealthy communications tycoon—as Prime Minister in 2001, held out the prospect of a more contemporary and business-oriented style of government.

This new era didn’t last long. A military coup in September 2006 brought Thaksin’s rule to an abrupt halt and he fled the country. Disenchantment with the government imposed by the generals led to street protests and a brutal crackdown by the authorities, resulting in new elections in May 2011. Those were won convincingly by a Thaksinite party headed by his younger sister Yingluck Shinawatra, who formed a new government with the support of minor parties. More conflict between pro- and anti-Thaksin forces, and conviction of Prime Minister Yingluck in the constitutional court on charges of abusing power, led to yet another military coup in May 2014.

The leader of the military junta and new Prime Minister, Prayuth Chan-Ocha, operating under martial law and an interim constitution, promised a new constitution and elections (now forecast for early 2016). On 1 April this year, martial law was replaced with legislation under Article 44 of the interim constitution, ushering in what was described as a ‘new security order’. However the move has been strongly criticised by the regime’s opponents and others as a cynical manoeuvre which accords the Prime Minister even more powers than he exercised under martial law.

A new draft constitution, prepared by a Constitution Drafting Committee appointed by the government, has recently been distributed to political parties for their feedback—though with a caveat that the parties aren’t permitted to hold meetings to discuss the text. Apparently the draft provides for a proportional representation electoral system, a Senate with two-thirds of its members appointed by the government and—most controversially—the possibility of an unelected PM. Initial reactions have been hostile. Abhisit Vejjajiva, the leader of the Democrat Party, Thailand’s oldest, was reported as saying that it would lead to a ‘parliamentary dictatorship’, and that if it weren’t amended and there was no referendum on the matter, the new charter would be a ‘time-bomb that will create conflicts no less severe than previous ones’.

The prospects for the draft of this latest constitution, which would be Thailand’s 20th since the overthrow of the absolute monarchy in 1932, are not good. As previous coup leaders have found, leaping onto the tiger is easier than getting safely off. More broadly, the prospects for restoring a consensus-based political system aren’t promising either.

The reality is that the Thai polity has become deeply and bitterly divided. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that the populous northeast of the country—known as Isaan and long looked down on by the Bangkok elite—has developed a new sense of its distinctiveness and political weight in a democratic system. This region, along with Thaksin’s home base in the north, has become a bastion of support for him, including among the many northeasterners toiling in Bangkok. A generous and expensive scheme to prop up the price of rice paid to farmers helped sustain support for Thaksin and Yingluck.

Thaksin rose from outside the traditional aristocratic, bureaucratic and military elite clustered around the Royal Palace, but with the legitimacy conferred by electoral victory—notwithstanding the taint of money politics. Fundamental to explaining the divisions in Thai politics today is that there’s a clash of legitimacies. (One Thai friend acknowledged this point to me but commented that surely democracy should trump any other legitimacy.)

All this is being played out against the background of the last phase of His Majesty King Bhumipol’s reign, and, inevitably, the question of royal succession. Some observers see political players as positioning themselves for this eventuality and interpret their actions from this perspective.

Social media has also played a role in exacerbating political tensions. The regime has clamped down on the mainstream media, namely the press and television, but the new media have proved harder to control. News, views and opinions, and even guidance on where to gather for protests, are readily shared online. The government has introduced various rules and measures to try to discipline the new media, but it’s not an animal that is easy to tame.

Thailand’s political turmoil over recent years has had an economic impact. Growth has slumped; foreign investors are more cautious about the country’s prospects.

Thailand’s foreign relations have also been affected, as the United States and other Western nations wait for a return to democratic government before resuming close ties. In the meantime, Russia and China are seizing the opportunity to cultivate the regime; Medvedev visited recently. In the ASEAN context though, Malaysia is also slipping backwards, so for Australia and others the search for respectable friends has become harder. Indonesia, anyone?

Security and liberty: a schematic

In recent weeks, three of my colleagues have written about the appropriate balance that we should attempt to strike between national security and civil liberties. Toby Feakin began the series with a post which argued that positioning security and liberty as opposite ends of a single spectrum, and then trying to find an appropriate balance point, was an inadequate way of thinking about the topic. Anthony Bergin replied that striking some sort of balance between security and liberty was a practical necessity. And Andrew Davies argued that having appropriate oversight mechanisms in place is a necessary condition for allowing secret state powers within a liberal democracy.

In this post, I want to explore the relationship between security and liberty. Stating the argument at its bluntest, I don’t find it helpful to think about security and liberty as the end points of a single spectrum. That’s because security and liberty aren’t polar opposites of each other. The opposite of security is insecurity. And the opposite of liberty is control. So if we want to explore the relationship between them, we should have a schematic that looks something like this:

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Thailand: democracy in the balance

Red Shirts Rally at Rajprasong

Ten days after street protests in Bangkok escalated into violence that killed five people and injured many, Thailand’s democracy hangs in the balance. Facing revived mass demonstrations by ‘yellow-shirt’ opponents in Bangkok following a brief truce, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government has responded by dissolving parliament and calling a general election, scheduled for 2 February. However, the demagogic protest leader, former deputy prime minister, Suthep Thaugsuban, has called for an unelected People’s Council to take the place of Yingluck’s caretaker government, for Yingluck’s arrest, and for the army to guard public buildings.

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