Abbott's Right by Damien Freeman

Author:Damien Freeman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780522871890
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Published: 2017-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Abbott: A Burkean policymaker

Whether Abbott is a conservative policymaker or a liberal policymaker is not really to the point. What matters are his credentials as a Burkean policymaker. If Abbott is indeed a Burkean, then it should be possible to detect a Burkean cast of mind underpinning his approach to public policy. It is not possible within the constraints of this book to assess all the policies that he has implemented when part of the ministry, let alone all those that he has proposed when in opposition or from the backbenches. What follows is a selection of policy positions that Abbott has advocated, which are intended to be representative of his general approach. They provide a context in which to assess Abbott as a Burkean policymaker.

Reforming unemployment and healthcare services

As Minister for Employment Services, Abbott oversaw a major reform of the way in which services were delivered to unemployed people. He introduced the principle of ‘mutual obligation’ for people who claimed unemployment benefits, and a structural reform that saw the old CES (Commonwealth Employment Service) abolished and its function assumed by non-government agencies through the Job Network. It was not just a matter of cost cutting or efficiency. It involved affirming the values that motivate public policy in this area. Much of Burke’s thinking about the importance of institutions in society, the distinction between liberty and licence, and his conception of how people find meaning through living in society lies at the core of Abbott’s reforms.

What is particularly notable about Abbott’s overhaul of the delivery of unemployment services was the considerable effort he put into explaining the principles that underpinned his approach to unemployment as a social phenomenon. Of course, there is an economic dimension to addressing unemployment: the economy needs to expand to create jobs for these people, and the government needs to find the funds to pay them benefits while they are unemployed. But central to Abbott’s approach was his conception of the ‘individual-in-community’. As he explains, ‘By and large, modern society has not failed to provide its citizens with material goods and a chance to better themselves.’ He believes that its failure, as witnessed by ‘the youth suicide rate, drug epidemic, and semi-permanent welfare subculture’, has been the failure to give everyone ‘a sense of involvement and belonging, that set of personal values necessary to navigate all the inevitable difficulties of life’. Abbott knows that governments cannot create shared values and attitudes, even though they cannot function in the absence of them. So he says the government ‘has a vital interest in these values, but it must leave them to others to build and foster. Government cannot create civil society but its actions can help or hinder the development of the institutions that sustain it.’

His solution is to say that the government should aim ‘to support individuals-in-community’. The correct focus, he believes, ‘is neither on the individual nor the collective, but on the relationships between people and institutions, which are the making of both’. So he suggests

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