The Hazlehurst Comma

By on Mar 20, 2017 in Language, Public Policy | 0 comments

The good old Oxford Comma. For a tiny minority of people it inspires passion, even inflames it. It turns out that minority includes some of my highly ethical colleagues at The Ethicos Group (Facebook; website), an integrity innovator and promoter of better decision-making in government and business, chaired by none other than renowned historian and author, Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Literature, Dr Cameron Hazlehurst. Cameron is one impassioned, even inflamed by this particular punctuation mark: he’s a great champion for it. It was not surprising he felt vindicated by a recent media report of a multi-million dollar court case turning on comma placement. One media report is here. In sum, the presence or absence of a comma affected whether a dairy company was exempt from overtime payments both to workers who packed perishable dairy goods and...

Plebiscite Follies

By on Jun 28, 2016 in Public Policy | 0 comments

Plebiscite Follies And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge, With Atë by his side come hot from Hell, Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war.                      Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene I Yes No Stay Go Brexit shows just how weak the plebiscite is as a policy making tool. Simple answers don’t work for complex questions. Hot from hell, Atë, the Greek goddess of mischief, delusion, folly and ruin tempts men to folly and hubris, to their destruction. Neither Boris Johnson nor Nigel Farage, having led the “leave” campaign, could say anything sensible about what’s next. A public servant who designed far-reaching constitutional, economic and social policy but never thought about the implications or a workable implementation plan would have failed. Yet Johnson is lining up to snatch leadership (maybe his aim all...

The triumph of means over ends

By on Apr 20, 2016 in Integrity, Public Policy | 0 comments

The ABCC is a tool not a policy Surely no one really expects Malcolm Turnbull to fight the next federal election over re-establishing the Australian Building and Construction Commission. There will be a lot of other issues and lots of other policy announcements from Liberal, Labor and Greens alike. The ABCC will be lost in the big fights over who can manage the economy, health, education, welfare, the environment etcetera. But, the proposed ABCC is an instrument of policy, not a policy objective  despite the language coming out of the mouths of Mr Turnbull and his  ministerial colleagues. The ABCC is a tool not an objective. Policy objectives are implemented with tools, or “policy instruments”. The tools are the means not the ends. It is the ends that matter. So what ends are intended by the ABCC? Depending on your perspective it might be: to end corruption in the building...

Pardon my apostrophe: Why a little grammar is important to policy writing

By on Mar 18, 2016 in Policy writing, Public Policy |

Small errors can lead to big misunderstandings Chris Davis, who was sacked as assistant minister by Campbell Newman for speaking out on doctor’s contracts, political donations and changes to the Crime and Corruption Commission, wrote a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald asking “Can Cardinal Pell be judged by 21st century standards?” He tells a personal story of his education, intended to illustrate the effect of changing times and changing circumstances, autres temps, autres mœurs as he says. He wrote: My boys’ only school was a place of great good, thanks to some exceptional teachers. I stumbled. Who are his boys, and what is it about their school relevant to George Pell’s conduct? I stopped reading. An errant apostrophe had distracted me from Davis’ message. The distracting power of errors This is a good example of how a tiny grammatical error can distract your reader from the...

Mythical beasts and public policy

By on Mar 9, 2016 in Public Policy |

Mythical beasts and public policy Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison recently derided the ALP’s Positive Plan to Help Housing Affordability as “selling a unicorn”. Colourful language, but what is happening in policy terms? Even though unicorns do not exist,[1] tax and housing policies do. And it is legitimate for any political party to propose changes to policy. Indeed, negative gearing has been considered politically untouchable ever since 1987 and the ALP may have done the Government a huge favour by putting this risky proposition into play. 1987, 1999, 2009 and 2015 In 1985, the Hawke Government slashed the tax benefits of negative gearing by limiting the offsets to income derived from the investment property, and not allowing offsets against other income such as wages. The outcry from the vested interests in the housing, real estate and construction sectors, sustained political...