Has a single campaign against red tape and over-regulation - and I have seen at least 10 over 43 years - actually achieved anything that its owners, from Sir Phillip Lynch, David Block, Gary Banks or now Josh Frydenbergcould prove made any difference to the bottom line, either of the Commonwealth or business?

On Monday, Tony Abbott was further honing an already practised refrain in Parliament. Rejecting assertions that his government was cutting back in indigenous affairs because it had reduced funding for programs over the next few years, he said Labor judged outcomes by the amount of money spent. Or, he might have added, the number of programs being administered. Or the number of public servants in the field. By contrast, he was much less interested in inputs, or, for that matter, outputs. He was interested in outcomes.

He believes he can achieve "more with less" by "rationalising" the number of programs, by plucking "efficiencies" from the tree, and by "reducing fraud, waste and duplication". If he is going for the trifecta, he would say he was going to reduce needless regulation, since it is likewise assumed that fewer controls automatically saves everyone, particularly the "customer". Oh no, hang on, that applies only with the entitlement complex of small and big business. Matters indigenous involve welfare benefits and payouts, so that deregulation is the wrong button: instead there must be closer scrutiny and control, and a good deal more paperwork before anything happens.

Politicians have been complaining about red tape and "unnecessary bureaucracy" since Roman times. By being against it, politicians mark themselves as being of the people - ordinary punters - rather than people captured by the professional administration. Some politicians sincerely believe that if it were not for their relentless crusades against fraud, waste and corruption in the public sector, government would be bankrupt. They hold this view even as opinion poll evidence suggests that public regard for their competence and integrity is plummeting.

But bureaucracy has been reformed, repaired, refocused and reorganised more times than one can count. Politics hasn't. Politicians do not say it would be more efficient to dispense with an opposition, as unnecessary, a duplication and obviously inefficient because it is not "singing from the same hymnsheet" as the government. Politicians might argue, sometimes bitterly, over matters of increasingly small canvas. But those who are democrats believe that democratic process - including triennial performance review by the electorate - is the best way of keeping the ship of state afloat.

Some worry themselves ill that "clients" of the welfare system might be able to "shop around" different agencies until they find either the type of service with which they are most comfortable, or perhaps, the bureaucrat who believes them. Such duplication is assumed to be wasteful and inefficient, and a drag on the system. Yet the very same people will argue the critical need for "choice" by a non-government school sector, and insist, I suspect rightly, that two or three systems sharpen each other up. Likewise, the more doorways, as it were, the more opportunity for citizens to participate, and for programs to be designed for needs. Market acceptance and product flexibility are generally considered virtues.

Other geniuses have discovered that the Commonwealth Department of Education employs thousands, but does not run a single school. And that the Department of Health does not run a single hospital. It follows, it is suggested, that if one simply abolished both departments, and left responsibility for education and health at the state level, one could save Australian taxpayers billions. Perhaps one might (briefly) reduce the bottom line of the federal budget, but it is quite unlikely that it would improve health or education outcomes, the need for which was why the Commonwealth became involved.

Very little of the "thinking" and activity goes on at Commonwealth level involves repetition of the work of state managers and administrators, mere second-guessing of local policies or practices, or adding confusion and a want of lines of accountability to general programs. All of these things can be - often are - problems in any administration, whether in the public or private sector. But they are generally rather more problems of poor leadership and direction than the result of intersections in responsibilities and functions.

Likewise many of those who would like a one-stop-shop (at only one level of government, preferably at state level), are the first to argue for national standards, or to insist that every school have a flagpole, teach foreign languages, or have a lowest-common-denominator history program. Or will be screaming blue murder about the negligence of federal bureaucrats and politicians when a state manifestly fails to do its job.

The weakness of essentially ideological analyses of government activity - including the recent Commission for Audit - is that they simply assume inefficiency if there is any overlap. Most are, in any event, attached to the idea that the Commonwealth should withdraw from functions traditionally (in a long-distant past) in the imagined and intended "sovereign domain" of the states. The question-begging discussion paper on Reform of the Federation, issued a fortnight ago, is a fabulous example.

Overlap occurs when two, sometimes three layers of government are operating in the same general area, perhaps over child care, disability services, the environment or indigenous services. There can even be overlap at a single level of government, when multiple agencies are working in the same general area, if sometimes for different reasons and with different outcomes in mind. Thus, indigenous affairs at Commonwealth level may be primarily directed from within PM&C, but there will be other agencies, including health, education, social security and workplace affairs which will have some fingers in the indigenous pie.

In many cases overlap will also be accompanied by duplication, with essentially similar programs being operated from different places without much reference to each other. Redundancy is where a service or function carried out by one of a number of agencies adds nothing good to outcomes. [Indeed, sometimes, one agency is carrying out a function with aims that are at direct loggerheads with the aim of another program. And, sometimes, as with the contribution of PM&C, the Infrastructure Co-ordinator General and the Department of Finance during the Rudd-era roof insultation affair, the "extra" contribution was value-diminishing.]

Fragmentation is when a field is covered by an array of agencies or programs, perhaps at different levels, but without any coherent or unified theory of the overall outcomes sought or being achieved. Sometimes people fall through the net, unable to get assistance from any scheme, even when their circumstances are similar to those who can.

A cynical working rule is that politicians are opposed to overlap and believe in Soviet-style controls and one-size-fits-all rules, when poor people are involved. It is taken as read that waste, corruption and a lack of efficiency and effectiveness are inevitable outcomes. By contrast, "market solutions," choice and rewards for innovation (with little concern for duplication) are favoured for better-heeled and more responsible constituencies, including business. A nice current example might involve government's lack of concern for efficiency in pharmacies, compared with its insistent belief that the wretched will stop overusing doctors only if forced to a co-payment.