THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1986. The quango-killer

Press, 14 May 1986, Page 16

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 1986. The quango-killer

With all the fanfare appropriate to his obvious pride of achievement, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Palmer, has announced that he will kill off 56 quangos, or quasiautonomous non-governmental organisations. He should not be surprised if his derring-do fails to draw the applause he seems to think it deserves. Three months ago Mr Palmer launched his quango hunt to eliminate waste and save money. Of the more than 800 quangos he identified — not counting school committees — his first hit list of 56 is intended to save the taxpayers $1 million. This saving, should it eventuate, is neither here nor there in the scheme of the Government’s spending. The Government will spend about twice that sum this year on advertising connected with the introduction of the goods and services tax. Since a great deal of the work now done by the 56 quangos under the threat of Mr Palmer’s axe will be transferred to one or other of the Government’s Ministeries or departments, at least some of the saving claimed for the demise of the quangos is illusory. The work still will have to be paid for, out of another of the taxpayer’s pockets, although some savings probably will be made by doing away with the duplication of secretarial services, some travel expenses, and so on. In a few instances the winding up of a quango is little more than a formality. Mr Palmer has located a handful of organisations that have existed in no more than name for some years; they have not met and have served no purpose for that time. Putting an end to them is no loss, but it is no great gain either, because they have incurred no expense. The only real purpose in resurrecting the corpse to pronounce it well and truly dead seems to be to bring more respectability to the hunter’s tally. Certainly there are important questions to be asked about quangos if their continued existence is to be justified. Often these bodies were established years ago and their performance has not been examined properly since. Any examination of their worth today, however, must include a reassessment of the

reasons they were set up in the first place. High among these reasons were that a quango avoids political control and helps to diffuse concentrations of power. A quango also brings in people from outside Government departments for advice and allows them to participate in the decisionmaking, usually in the form of representation of special interest groups in the administration of an activity that directly concerns them.

A direct result of killing off the quangos and vesting their powers and duties in Government departments will be a reduction of direct public involvement in these affairs and more direct Ministerial control. Often, a quango has a membership drawn in more or less equal parts from a Government department or departments, and from the producer or consumer body the quango regulates. When the time comes for Parliament to consider the legislation that will be needed to do away with many of these quangos — their existence and composition having been enshrined in law — great care will have to be taken to ensure that the result is not an aggregation of power to the State at the expense of public participation in government.

On Mr Palmer’s evidence he has laboured mightily and produced — a list. On the question of cost alone, the effort is hardly worth it. In a handful of instances Mr Palmer seems to have acted too hastily; the fate of the Communications Advisory Council he wishes to kill off is, in reality, bound up with the report of the Royal Commission on Broadcasting which has still to be completed. In others he seems to have acted outside his competency; one fertiliser research committee he has on his hit list is a university committee and not a quango at all. In many of the other examples no harm will be done whether the quango continues or disappears; but at least a few of the targets on Mr Palmer’s list exist mainly to ensure that the people’s voice is not only heard, but acted on. Killing the quango would muffle that voice.