The more our ever-more "professional" politicians put political tactics ahead of economic strategy – put staying in government ahead of governing well – the more pressure they come under to cede more of their power to independent authorities.
The obvious instance is our move in the mid-1990s to transfer control over interest rates ("monetary policy") from the elected government to the independent central bank.
Shifting interest rates away from those tempted to move rates down before elections and up after them has proved far better for the stability of the economy.
Another issue on which voters don't trust politicians to make good decisions – mainly because of the risk of collusion between them – is their own remuneration.
So, first, responsibility for setting politicians' salaries, and now, their expenses, has been handed over to independent bodies.
Then there was the Gonski report's proposal that responsibility for determining the size of grants to public, Catholic and independent schools be taken away from deal-doing pollies and given to a properly constituted authority, following consistent and transparent criteria.
The idea was rejected by Julia Gillard but, particularly now the amazing variance in the deals Labor did with different school systems has been revealed under the Coalition's version of Gonski, there's still hope we'll end up with an independent, rules-based grants authority.
Some years ago, the Business Council took up a proposal by Dr Nicholas Gruen for the example set by monetary policy to be spread to fiscal (budget) policy. An independent body would set the budget's key parameters – for spending, revenue and budget balance – leaving the government to decide the specific measures to take within those parameters.
The idea didn't gain traction, but it may have boosted the push for independent evaluation of infrastructure projects.
You can see an admission that "something needs to be done" in the establishment of Infrastructure Australia by the Rudd government, and its rejig by the Abbott government, as a supposedly "independent statutory body providing independent research and advice to all levels of government".
Trouble is, the authority has little authority. Its role is to create the illusion of independent evaluation and reformed behaviour, while the reality continues unchanged.
There's no obligation for even the federal government to have all major projects evaluated, for them to be evaluated before a government commits to them and begins work, nor for those evaluations to be made public as soon as they're completed, so voters can debate the merits of particular projects with hard evidence.
Promises to build particular projects in a state, or even an electorate, are a key device all parties use to buy votes in election campaigns.
As Marion Terrill, of the Grattan Institute, has demonstrated, few of the projects promised by the government, opposition and Greens at last year's election had been ticked by Infrastructure Australia, and many of those it had ticked weren't on anyone's list of promises.
Terrill's research has revealed the huge proportion of government spending on capital works that's unlikely to yield much economic or social return to taxpayers.
For some years the Reserve Bank, backed by the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, has argued that fiscal policy should be doing more to help monetary policy get our economy back to trend growth by spending more on worthwhile infrastructure projects. These would add to demand in the short run, and to supply capacity in the medium run by improving private sector productivity.
This changed approach would involve shifting the focus of fiscal policy from the overall budget deficit (including capital works spending) to the more meaningful recurrent or operating deficit.
This year's budget seemingly accepted this proposal, promising to give greater prominence to the NOB – net operating balance – and announcing two huge new infrastructure projects: the second Sydney airport and the Melbourne to Brisbane inland freight railway.
See the problem? Government infrastructure spending does wonders for the economy only if the money's spent on much-needed projects. As a proper evaluation would show, the inland railway is a waste of money (the product of a deal with the Nationals).
So it's little wonder that cities and infrastructure are the third big item, after healthcare and education, on the Productivity Commission's new agenda for micro-economic reform.
It's first recommendation? "It is essential that governments ensure that proposed projects are subject to benefit-cost evaluations and that these, as well as evaluations of alternative proposals for meeting objectives, are available for public scrutiny before decisions are made."
This is something the professed believers in Smaller Government, and those professing to be terribly worried about lifting our productivity, should be making much more noise about.
