Dr Ken Henry, a former Treasury secretary, says he can't recall a time when the debate about public policies has been poorer. I can't either, and I guess the dreaded MSM - mainstream media - is part of the problem.
But if the challenge of digital disruption has tempted the mainstream to devote more time to political colour and movement and less to debating government policies, there's one respect in which the internet has made things better.
The advent of blogging has given anyone who wants to the ability to air their thoughts to the world. A lot of blogs come under the heading of you're-entitled-to-your-opinion, but sometimes they're written by people who know a lot more about the topic than most of us and have a valuable contribution to make.
That's particularly true when academics take to blogging. One of the earliest bloggers about economic policy was Professor John Quiggin, of Queensland University. Other high quality Australian blogsites are Club Troppo, Core Economics and, for the more libertarian, Catallaxy Files. (There was a blog called Ross Gittins, Corrected but they seem to have given up.)
The best academic blogsite is undoubtedly the uni-sponsored The Conversation. To have all those academics writing short, timely, readable pieces in their area of specialty is an invaluable contribution to the policy debate.
And then there's the blog of the former bureaucrat John Menadue, called Pearls and Irritations. Menadue brings in other contributors, and his blog is the place to go to see ex-bureaucrats casting a critical eye over present government policy.
These guys know where the bodies are buried, and no one sees through the political smoke and mirrors more easily than they do.
Earlier this year Menadue teamed up with the former econocrat Dr Mike Keating to instigate a special series on the many challenges facing the government today, called Fairness, Opportunity and Security, with a wide range of contributions from ex-bureaucrats (including Stephen Fitzgerald, David Charles, Andrew Podger and Jon Stanford), academics (including Michael Wesley, Ian Marsh, Ian McAuley and Julianne Schultz) and academics who've spent time in government (including Ross Garnaut, Glenn Withers and Stuart Harris).
Now Menadue and Keating have turned the series into a book of the same name, published by AFT Press, which they asked me to launch last week. It covers 13 topics ranging from the role of government to the economy, foreign policy, health, the environment and Indigenous affairs.
In his discussion of the way vested interests seem to have excessive influence over policymaking, Menadue notes the remarkable rise of the lobbying industry, estimating there are now more than 1000 lobbyists operating in Canberra.
"The health 'debate' is really between the minister and the Australian Medical Association, the Australian Pharmacy Guild, Medicines Australia and the private health insurance companies," he writes.
"The debate is not with the public about health policy and strategy; it is about how the minister and the department manage the vested interests."
Menadue says much of the policy skills in Canberra departments have been downgraded and policy work is contracted out to accounting and consultancy firms. Policy work within the government is now undertaken more in specialist organisation such as the Productivity Commission.
"Departmental policy capability has been seriously eroded. That is the real story behind the problems of the pink batts scheme."
As for the "inexperienced and young ministerial staffers", they're "much more likely to listen to vested interests".
On foreign affairs and internal security, the blog collection says we've become overdependent on the United States at the expense of our relations in our region. As Paul Keating once said, we should be "finding our security in, not from, Asia".
In dealing with the threat from terrorism, "a balance needs to be struck between national security and the freedoms essential for a civil society, including the humane treatment of refugees. The politicisation of security has arguably made us less safe."
On Medicare we're told it "has stood the test of time but it now represents the single biggest budgetary challenge and it is over 30 years since it has been seriously reviewed and reformed".
On superannuation, Andrew Podger, former head of various government departments and now a professor at the Australian National University's Crawford School of Public Policy, makes a plea for considered and balanced reform rather than piecemeal tinkering.
You'll go a long way before you find someone providing a more authoritative, independent and sensible commentary on budget repair and other fiscal matters than Mike Keating, former head of the Finance department and Prime Minister's and Cabinet.
In this book he has hardheaded things to say about the dream of lower taxation, which "has been embraced by all political parties without any evidence that, given our already low starting point, less taxation will in fact lead to higher economic growth, let alone pay for itself".
He quotes John Howard saying that tax cuts should be considered only "after you have met all the necessary and socially desirable expenditures".
All the evidence is that these spending demands, even if efficiently funded, are most unlikely to be fiscally sustainable without a modest increase in taxation relative to gross domestic product.
"Indeed, Australia already has lower taxation than almost any other advanced nation, but we aim to provide the same level of public services and welfare as the others," he writes.
"Thus the biggest challenge facing modern governments is the gap between expectations on them and their capacity to deliver.
"In these circumstances, encouraging unrealistic expectations of tax cuts is only making government more difficult."
Reading this collection of blogs leaves you with the impression the good bureaucratic advice our successive governments have needed to do a better job of running the country now resides outside the public service, in the minds of the retired bureaucrats who're from the days when they were expected to know about policy.
