Is the public sector ‘fit for purpose’?

A few years ago, the Australian Labor Party was led by a young man called Mark Latham.  His accession to the Labor leadership was somewhat unexpected but fuelled by a reputation for original policy thinking and an eclectic curiosity (one of his political opponents was once unkind enough to label his approach "policy by Google"). 

Mark's leadership crashed badly in the 2004 election following which he abruptly left politics altogether.  An iconoclastic writer and diarist, he's back in the mainstream Australian press with renewed vigour and, in my view, great insight.  This is from his most recent piece in the Australian Financial Review (1 May) in which he opines the emptiness of the social democrat ideas cupboard.  These few extracts from his article will give you a sense of his thesis.  It's confronting stuff.  I predict Mark will start to assume a kind of Cassandra-like status as a voice whose compelling insights will be undermined by people who will dismiss him for his previous political clumsiness.

    The problem with the public sector, he writes, is its limited capacity for reform.  "It only has two tools available to it: legal coercion and financial entitlement.  Yet these are poorly suited to dealing with the social crisis of our times: the breakdown of relations between people."

He goes on to note that governments work on a top-down basis in an orderly, predictable and legally-sanctioned way.  Civil society, by contrast, couldn't be more different, "with its diffuse and disorderly approach to relationships.  The square peg of the state does not fit into the round hole of community life."

His example is from the recent Australia 2020 Summit, where the idea was floated that students could pay off some of their higher education fees debts by volunteering in community organisations.  For Mark, this is nothing less than transforming service into toil, swapping generosity and sacrifice for the ethic of a mercenary (sure I'll volunteer, so long as you pay me). 

He might be right. Before he became Labor leader, Mark was building a reputation as a powerful advocate of some new thinking about public policy and public management.  His instinct to reach for civil society might be seen by some as a little romantic, perhaps even romantic.  It seems he's returning to his theme as he emerges from his self-imposed exile followng his political failure.  Some might say it was a shame that he seemed to lose sight of his real agenda when he had the chance to do something about it.