What's the difference between middle-class welfare and help for the needy? The best quick answer is that middle-class welfare is these days delivered at Medicare offices or from your local pharmacy, not Centrelink. And not only your Medicare rebates, but your childcare subsidies, baby bonuses and family-assistance payments as well as payments for a host of middle-class rorts that no poor person will ever access: subsidies for roof insulation, diesel and LPG rebates, solar power and photovoltaic cells.
By contrast, actual welfare payments for the unemployed, the poor, aged, sick and disabled come through Centrelink, with only a fraction of the convenience or speed. Centrelink and its management work very hard to make its offices, systems and services pleasant and user-friendly, but there's scarcely a scheme it administers where people can get what they want or need in a fraction of the time that it takes at a friendly neighbourhood pharmacy.
There are, of course, some smarties who do not have to go either to Centrelink or the chemist. They are using the internet, having managed (as I cannot) to penetrate the mysteries of electronic form-filling. The smarties are disproportionately young, but not, alas, disproportionately poor. That is to say, the facilities allowing relatively comfortable middle-class kids to sort out their Higher Education Contribution Scheme arrangements or some other scheme on line are good and efficient things in themselves, but actually accentuate the disadvantages suffered by those who are less adept, that is, those the schemes were primarily designed to help. For starters, the middle class does not like queuing, and tends to have its complaints about slow, inefficient or under-resourced services heard. But when the smarties have an inside track, the quality of the primary service will usually deteriorate for the rest.
Anyone wanting to see an example in practice should go down to Canberra's Motor Traffic Registry in Dickson. The services and the facilities, in a working environment I'm pretty sure has not been refurbished since I first arrived in the ACT, are not the fault of hard-pressed staff, but politicians and managers who have forgotten how the other half lives.
Meanwhile, Terry Moran, head of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and presently conducting a review of how to reform public administration, is pretty keen on the middle-class welfare model of service delivery. That's because - surprise, surprise - it works. That's because the ''clients'' can afford to be noisy and demanding, because the service providers get a generous fee for each transaction, and because both sides are able to regard this interaction with government as simply another one of the many consumer transactions engaged in each day. In a better position, in short, than the little old lady pensioner needing help with her electricity bill.
Moran has made a bit of the achievements in adapting the Medicare repayment system to provide insulation for 2.9million Australian houses.
''If the plan had followed standard government practice, the homeowner would have paid the installer of the insulation then applied to a government department for the rebate,'' he said.''But the rebate would typically have taken up to two months or longer to arrive, thereby putting people out of pocket and discouraging sign-up to the scheme. Instead, the Energy Efficient Homes Package requires installers to pay the cost of installation, but offers them swift reimbursement the benchmark is 48 hours. And they are reimbursed by Medicare.
''Normally, Medicare has nothing to do with installing pink batts in homes, but it was chosen because it knows how to process payments fast. In effect, Medicare is treating insulation installers like doctors who bulk-bill.
''So if you see a queue of blokes in dusty overalls at your local Medicare office, you'll know why.''
And if you see farmers, they'll probably be picking up their diesel fuel rebate; or well-dressed ladies pushing prams, selecting from the suite of family benefits, or child care rebates on offer.
Moran announced on Friday the team who will assist him in his advising reforms. It is a very high-powered and accomplished panel, filled entirely by insiders, with none likely to present him, or the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, with anything unexpected or unacceptable. More likely it will be used to apply the unction to a few ideas already on the agenda.
There's Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor of Melbourne University, organiser of the 2020 conference and close colleague of the Prime Minister from Rudd's Brisbane days, still unwilling to come entirely on to the Commonwealth payroll, but, as ever, finding it hard to resist Rudd's beckonings. There's Ken Henry from Treasury, even if he will have time only to run in and out, given that he is, or ought to be, preoccupied with running an economy, a department and a much bigger inquiry into tax. Carmel McGregor, acting Public Service Commissioner. Nick Warner, formerly Defence Secretary, now head of the Secret Intelligence Service, probably roped in more as a sign of some confidence after a humiliating demotion than for particular insight on meeting the demands of the modern politician.
There's Robyn Kruk, a cluey and political NSW refugee who knew all about meeting the demands of one politician, Morris Iemma, but, on this account alone, was thought unacceptable to his successor, Nathan Rees. Nevertheless, like an array of sharp Labor political operators from the states, she has been rescued by Moran and installed as secretary to Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts. If the insight she brings is nothing more than that the Commonwealth cannot learn anything from the style, the ethics or the leadership of public administration in NSW, her contribution will prove to have have been priceless. There's Ann Sherry, nowadays chief executive of a cruise line, but a former head of the Office of the Status of Women, and, perhaps as significantly from Moran's view, the holder of a number of senior roles in the Victorian public service. Chris Blake, National Australia Bank executive and former PriceWaterhouse Coopers consultant, will no doubt bring in the private-sector view. Professor Pat Weller, avuncular old mate of nearly everyone on the committee, and the prime minister, is no doubt there to put rigour into the analysis. Possibly experience too, given that he has had a grandstand seat watching the higher administration of the Australian Public Service for nearly 40 years.
And Jo Evans, with a McKinseys' background, now at Climate Change after time at PM&C, more junior than the rest, but probably there to do most of the hard work as others flit from place to space. A draft ''blueprint'' for reform is to be in circulation by the end of this month. The committee's considerations will be ''informed by the outcomes of a public consultation process'' whatever that means and an international benchmarking study comparing the performance of the APS with overseas counterparts. Among matters not, apparently, on the agenda, but falling well within the expertise of some of the advisory committee are questions about Council of Australia Government mechanisms, and Commonwealth power, and capacity and will to monitor the performance of state agencies. And, if the Commonwealth, via PM&C as much as Treasury, can congratulate itself over its management of the financial crisis, some might think that now could be a time for a look at whether there was anything learnt about regulatory practices. And then there's a host of continuing systemic problems in Defence, unlikely to be much affected by a mere change of secretary. And the apparent incapacity to design better services for Aborigines, or to deliver to them anything effectively, on time, or at reasonable cost. Alas, we do not have pharmacies, or pharmacists, out where the services are failing, as most of them, particularly the intervention-focused ones, are. No Medicare offices either. Or, I guess, any pink batts.