Governments should be held to the highest standards. But so, too, should the private sector. We are a mixed economy. And these days infrastructure developments and service delivery are often a close collaboration between the two.
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At the national and the territory level, governments are frequently accused of mismanagement, cost overruns, delays and general muddling through in delivering on infrastructure and services. Whether it is the school building program, the home insulation scheme, the installation of the national broadband network, the new Cotter Dam or building new roads, the constant cry is that the government has either done it badly or too expensively and should be held to account.
However, it isn't easy for citizens to judge what is reasonable in government performance in this regard. All that they often have to fall back on is their own personal experience of both public and private sector service delivery.
I suggest that they utilise that experience and inject some realism into their expectations of government. My own experience is that the performance of the private sector is no better, and sometimes worse, than public sector performance.
I'm writing this in frustration while stuck in the middle of yet another potentially disappointing experience (saved in the end by the goodwill of the contractor responsible). In this case, a minor home renovation job which the major supplier promised would take just one day actually took two. The left hand, the person who was actually doing the job, was let down by the right hand, a colleague who was incompetent or unrealistic in specifying the task. The initial danger was that because the contractor had no flexibility in a busy schedule the job might be left half-done for a period of some weeks while the tradesmen went off to another job.
This is a familiar tale. I doubt that my experience is unusual. Everyone is very pleasant, of course, but the contracting company was just incompetent.
For me and my family, this is not a one-off experience. Satisfaction and disappointment come in equal dollops. Dealing with the private sector can be a lucky dip. It has involved a shambles of a bathroom refit, a long delay on completion of the major renovations to a close relative's house, and a horrendous battle with a developer on the NSW south coast over poor workmanship on behalf of a group of owners in a body corporate. This has led to an equally long-running battle to hold a large insurance company to account for their contractual responsibility for the said developer's failings.
Perhaps my experience is uncommon, but I suspect it is not. In fact, there are probably many people in the community who have suffered much greater disasters through building companies going bust in the middle of jobs and leaving their houses unfinished and uninhabitable.
My purpose is not to be unduly critical of the private sector. Rather it is to make the point that we should keep the merits and failures of governments and the private sector in perspective. They are both composed of humans and consequently they both have their fair share of failures. Mostly the failures come about through human error; sometimes it may be negligence but mostly it is just mistakes in judgment or a lack of expertise.
The community as a whole is divided, sometimes on the basis of our own employment, about the relative merits of the public and private sector. We are inclined to stick up for one or the other. Some of us are predisposed to see greater flaws in government or the market. Our different instincts then lead on to different ideological frameworks about the role of government and these ultimately shape our different voting preferences.
What I observe more often than not are similarities rather than differences between the two sectors. I judge them on how they impact on me in my own backyard. In my experience I can't rate the ability of the private sector to deliver me services competently above that of the public sector. Both need to be held to account where possible, but uneven performance is widespread.
As a consequence, I'm not horrified or even surprised by news that some government projects are not completed on time and/or on budget. I'm not surprised because that is what I experience on a regular basis in my own smaller dealings. It is also what I read about happening on the bigger stage. If big government projects are just a much larger example of smaller private sector projects then results are bound to be uneven and sometimes disappointing. Usually big government projects are contracted and subcontracted to the private sector. Government's own weaknesses are then compounded by the weaknesses of that private sector.
All this should be a warning to both sides of politics that whoever wins government at the coming federal election should not over-promise about the delivery on time and on budget of new infrastructure and services. If they do they will undoubtedly be let down, and the community in turn will be let down, because implementation is in the hands of fallible human beings in both the private and public sectors. Voters are complicit in creating this problem. We really have no excuse because we should know better. We should reflect on our own everyday lived experience before imposing unrealistic demands on governments. Multiply that experience on smaller projects in order to develop realistic expectations of larger ones. Certainly don't blame the public sector more than the private sector. They are often one and the same.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
