Social media is like a daily populist election. Yesterday’s stories about Medicare rorting, for example. It…

Social media is like a daily populist election. Yesterday’s stories about Medicare rorting, for example. It quickly became a slugfest. But for all public programs, there has to be governance and accountability. You know, the stuff the unelected officials do. /1 https://t.co/pssMaiV3OR

Yesterday’s discussion (actually at least 6 months’ old, but social attention waxes and wanes - it ‘trends’) was mostly about the top 5% of the Department of Health’s own Medicare pyramid of compliance. All public programs have this sort of compliance mechanism built in. /2 https://t.co/cNfIJSsI9o

Or at least the ones populist politicians aren’t allowed near, do. (Populist politicians sometimes try to turn the compliance into ‘robo’-driven public administration.) Why I’m so tired of populist politics, the steps to address compliance issues are already in the work…/3 https://t.co/tW0QnRKPd7

…public officials do, the second pyramid. Whether they’re supported or resourced in that work is another question, and in populist politics, the answer is nearly always no. Somebody has stolen the money for a novelty vote-buying cheque, somewhere. Because all of public life…/4 https://t.co/Pv1lmRdB22

…is now infected by populism, this issue yesterday quickly became the usual team sports, with people lining up behind their chosen team, and none of the specifics of the actual issue much discussed at all. For example, the response ‘the overwhelming majority of doctors do…/5

…the right thing’ is not only irrelevant to basic public sector compliance, it’s a carbon copy of saying ‘the overwhelming majority of people have mild cases of Covid, so it isn’t a problem’. We re-use all the same tired populist cliches with every issue. The issue isn’t…/6

…really about good or bad doctors, though there will be those, as there are good and bad (and fraudulent) in any field. It was about the basic public administration of a core public service. Are these existing controls being applied? Are they resourced? If there’s about a 5%…/7

…non-compliance rate, as most experts seem to agree, remember this is 5% of tens of BILLIONS of dollars. It bloody matters. Just as a small percentage of severely ill Covid patients is hospital and death overload, if there are millions of infected people. /8 https://t.co/9ldm3PMkrn

We need an issues/problem-based politics, free of populism trying to weaponise the issues and problems for political gain. We have thousands of brilliant public servants who can be the foundation of that shift. Let’s use them. (And replace elections with sortition.) /end