Henry Ergas, Piers Akerman, sound principles, clear goals, carefully considered options, and never mind any evidence

It seems Henry Ergas hasn't caught up with Piers Akerman's demand that the national broadband network be put underground for reasons of aesthetics, urban harmony, a clear sky, and a sheltering away from the ravages of storms, floods, fire and perhaps even famine (not to mention the blight of ugly rotting wooden poles). (Powerful arguments for Rudd to go underground).

Ergas still thinks the whole thing is a waste of money, as outlined in Proof needed for policy.

Consider infrastructure policy, where more than $60 billion in taxpayers' funds has been committed in the space of 12 months. Yet staggeringly large decisions, such as the decision to build a national broadband network, have been made without any cost-benefit analysis at all. What is the objective the NBN intended to achieve? It is the objective of having an NBN. Why? As Kylie Mole said: "Cos."

Oh dear. I do wish he'd apply a cost benefit analysis to Akker Dakker's proposal to shift the NBN underground. But would that constitute evidence based policy making?

And wait, how would Akker Dakker cope, since Ergas is a long time hero, whom he's ever so fond of quoting?

Never mind. It seems as if Ergas has suddenly turned socialist:

As for indigenous Australians, welfare recipients and the mentally ill, they are among the weakest constituencies in the country. Could it be that we are willing to carefully analyse our policies for the weak but would rather buy silence, cut deals, trade favours with the strong? A policy of being strong with the weak and weak with the strong is a recipe for inefficiency and inequity.

Inequity? What on earth do the markets have to do with inequity?

Even more peculiar, in his rage against evidence-based policy, Ergas spends a lot of time critiquing the White Australia policy, and its use of evidence, data, statistics, and so forth and etcetera in support of it. Including of all things league tables:

As the 20th century dawned, Australia's elites were seized by the fear that a process of "racial suicide" was under way. The 1904 royal commission and subsequent reviews focused on three issues that needed careful assessment and a well-informed policy response: the risk of progressive degeneracy of the white urban child, as the "physically unfit and feeble-minded" (who, it was thought, would have died off in the harsher British climes) continued to breed; the capacity of the "white race" to adapt to the tropics; and the effects of miscegenation on the offspring's intelligence and ability to withstand heat and humidity.

From these came a mighty evidentiary effort, shaping our statistical system. As one distinguished historian has written, "measurement of the growth, development and intelligence quotient of schoolchildren became national obsessions", with league table comparisons featuring frequently in the press, often in lurid terms.

Is this a side-swipe at the current Liberal fetish for league tables? In cahoots with the socialists currently in power? Who knows.

Ergas also notes the attention paid in early federation days to moulding whites so that they could live in Queensland:

No less obsessive were efforts to monitor every aspect of the development of the white population, particularly in northern Australia.

The objective, in the words of the president of the Royal Society of Queensland, was to determine the conditions favourable to "the formation of a type of (white) human beings specially adapted to live in tropical Queensland. The type would be based on British blood and be so sustained and nourished, and be British in sentiment, but would be amended by the sun and the soil in appearance, physique, speech and temperament."

Hmm, clearly that policy, at least on an evidence based assessment, failed dismally, since Queenslanders living in the far north generally show signs of having been driven mad by the noon day sun, usually no later than the age of twenty five.

But it is fun to watch a conservative berate past conservative thinking - and it is important to remember that when Ergas sets about the elites of that time, he's actually talking about a muddle of rulers and popular racial thinking which ran through every level of society.

And continued right up to the time when John Howard called in 1988 for the slow down of Asian immigration, without any evidence based analysis apart from thinking that, if people in the community thought it was an immediate issue for social cohesion, then indeed it was an issue.

But then Ergas somehow thinks that fuzzy thinking is its own reward:

... history teaches us that you cannot keep a bad idea down. So I want to start by disposing of the myth that evidence-based policy is good policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The value of public policy does not depend on whether it rests on evidence but on whether it seeks goals that are worth pursuing.

Well how's that for a subjective out clause? Let's ignore the evidence, if there is any, because long ago, lots of people had silly ideas about race (and lots of people still do), and let's just decide on goals that are worth pursuing.

Great, then I really don't care about the economic merits of the NBN, I just want a faster connection, and the sooner the better. Make it so. And Piers Akerman wants it put underground, so it won't contribute to urban blight. Make it so. And I'd like it with pretty bells and ribbons on, so make it so.

By golly, applied to the world at large, ignoring any evidence sounds pretty fine to me, provided that is I get to decide the goals that are worth pursuing. And if you don't like them, well you can always bugger off to where you came from.

But soft, let's not get agitated, let's get moral:

Ultimately, hypocrisy is the highest homage that virtue can be paid by vice. Statements of devotion to evidence are no substitute for policy based on sound principle, clear goals and careful consideration of options, and that is not merely open to independent scrutiny but genuinely invites it, especially for decisions where powerful interests are at stake. That is hardly the easy or always popular road; but as all the evidence shows, the alternative brings only ultimate failure, with much needless pain along the way.

Sound principle, clear goals and careful consideration of options? Well of course all this begs the question of whose principles, whose goals and whose options?

But by then Ergas is deep in confusion, because he constantly berates the government for making decisions without considering cost-benefit analysis. You know evidence based assessments with data and projections and costings and benefits analysis, preferably prepared by consultants at lavish expense.

So it would seem evidence based analysis might have a role to play after all:

Of course, analysis of evidence has not completely disappeared. The tax review is, by all reports, doing an excellent job. In social policy, too, there is increased interest in careful analysis of data and in experimentation.

Give that man a raw pretzel. Anyone who can deliver a speech bemoaning and berating evidence based policy, then note with gratitude that analysis of evidence hasn't completely disappeared has managed a remarkable intellectual leap.

Just as anyone who can insists it all depends on sound principle and clear goals, yet demand a careful consideration of options (presumably on the basis of evidence and cost benefit analysis) is as large as Walt Whitman in his ability to embrace contradiction.

Which is why I look forward to his assessment of the sound principles and clear goals underlying Piers Akerman calling for the NBN to go underground, while at the same time carefully considering the evidence Akerman offers up.

Ah the problematic NBN and the petrol head, or should that be geek head desire for speed at any price, performance at any cost. What a disaster, when slow and certain was always good enough for the tortoise (and you know what happened to the hare).

It's not just the White Australia policy that reverberates with the squawking of loons.

A bit like the Liberal party turning itself in to a bastion of conservatism when if you read the dictionary definition liberal, the party (and its adherents) might like to turn a hand these days to proposals for reform, being open to new ideas for progress, and being broad-minded and tolerant.

I look forward to this freedom from bigotry, authoritarian attitudes and dogmas being distributed at super fast speed over the new NBN ... if it ever amounts to more than a metro line on the road to Rozelle and nowhere ...

Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.

Walt Whitman

Kate
The internet is really really great
Trekkie Monster
For porn
Kate
Ive got a fast connection so I dont have to wait
Trekkie
For porn
Kate
Huh?
There's always some new site,
Trekkie
For porn!

Kate
I browse all day and night
Trekkie
For porn!
Kate
It's like I'm surfing at the speed of light
Trekkie
For porn!
Kate
Trekkie!

Trekkie
The internet is for porn
Kate
Trekkie!
Trekkie
The internet is for porn,
Kate
What are you doing!?
Trekkie
Why you think the net was born?
Porn porn porn

Oh yes high minded goals, but would Mr. Ergas approve as Avenue Q finally lands in Sydney?