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GRAEME HODGE[*]
Accountability is one of the valuable dimensions of democratic societies. It is central to the modern state and helps hold together government, society, and the business and not for profit sectors. Underpinning the governance of civilised communities, public accountability is the lifeblood of the public interest. Governments have the ultimate power in making decisions when balancing the interests of various sectional and business groups, but the price for this through the history of western liberal democracies has been a suitable system of accountability to guard such power.
As the modern state reforms itself through privatisation and contractualisation, how is accountability affected? Countering advocate claims that such reforms have clearly improved accountability, the accusation is often made that as far as citizens are concerned, accountability has decreased rather than improved. Many see public accountability, for instance, as having been progressively reduced as the state has privatised. But are such criticisms valid? This article first articulates the degree to which Australia has transmogrified through reforms such as privatisation. Second, it presents some typical observations and accusations made of accountability changes with the privatisation of the state and discusses their veracity. To assist in interpreting these observations, the public interest is then defined, and some useful models of accountability are presented.
Finally, observations are made about the extent to which the 'guardians of the public interest' may have changed as the state has privatised, along with the possible implications of this.
The article also aims to articulate major areas within the accountability terrain as it relates to the privatised state. Overall, it argues that as the state has privatised, contractualised and managerialised, there has indeed been a 'changing of the guardian' from one where a simple but idealistic accountability regime reigned to a new situation in which a more focused but complex network of guardians now resides. It also argues that these changes have seen new risks to public accountability emerge including the dominance of policy advocacy roles over the traditional role of stewardship for public servants.
Following Margaret Thatcher's lead, privatisation reform policies were adopted with vigour by governments around the world. Indeed, Australia ranked third in the OECD judging on the size of proceeds from sell-offs during the 1990s compared to our gross national product.[1] The wholesale contracting out of government services was a second component,and activities ranging from our federal information technology capacity through to a wide range of state and local government services have been put to tender and exposed to market pressures. The latest chapter in the privatisation story is now public-private partnerships (PPPs), where Third Way governments are increasingly turning to long-term risk sharing deals to provide major pieces of public infrastructure.
Australia's state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector was certainly large but, initiated mainly through past conservative governments and well led, it was also both surprisingly successful compared to much international government enterprise experience. Much of Australia's public enterprise sector was also unacknowledged as innovative and creative throughout the 20th century as it functioned as a major development stimulator.
Nonetheless, the past two decades saw revenues from Australia's sell-offs amounting to some A$96.6 billion, roughly equally spread between federal and state governments.[2] These covered traditional utility services such as electricity and gas, as well as transport, communications and financial services that we might regard these days as also essential. Telstra ($30.33b) and the Commonwealth Bank (at $8.16b) were the two most important sales along with the sale of Victoria's assets in the electricity ($22.55 b) and gas ($6.28b) sectors. A huge range of business types was divested, mostly through trade sales, with various political justifications.[3] Proceeds were mostly used to reduce public sector debt levels.
Concurrently, Australian governments also contracted out services in a wholesale manner. Local government, for instance, saw huge changes in the introduction of competition and contracting with approaches ranging from the aggressive to the passive. At the extreme, Victoria's Kennett Government adopted a compulsory competitive tendering policy with a requirement that 50% of local government turnover be competitively tendered. Other states were more content to take a softer line, encouraging competition in conjunction with internal reforms. Outsourcing at the federal level has also been wholesale in its application, with prominent cases being the government's Whole of Government IT Outsourcing Initiative and the Commercial Support Program initiative of the Department of Defence.
Many of the bolder political promises of major cost savings and improved services from such outsourcing initiatives have not been delivered.[4] As well, we have not always achieved the best balance in this reform wrth social impacts, for instance, largely passing unrecognised. But equally. looking at the most comprehensive research on this question, there have probably been some modest financial cost savings made on average without losses in service quality.[5]
Australian governments are increasingly entering into long-term business relationships with private partners under sophisticated and far-reaching contracts. The latest chapter in privatisation, PPPs promise better efficiency. improved services and strengthened monitoring and accountability, along with stronger business and investor confidence. In Victoria, the 1990s saw a downsized public sector and some $11 billion of services redirected to private contractors for the next two decades,[6] while a further $20 billion of private finance may be channelled into public infrastructure across Australian states in the coming five years.[7] PPPs have become a centrepiece of good public administration.
Are the promises of PPPs being met? Internationally. there is some evidence that this is so, with Hall and Pollitt for instance coming to this conclusion after balanced reviews of available evidence on financial performance.[8] However; given the time length of such contracts, the jury is still out, and often it seems sensitive trade-offs have been made, with contracts of up to 54 years, revenue guarantees and compensation for future policy changes by governments. Importantly, neither the risk that governments may have reduced the capacity of the crown to make future decisions in the public interest nor the advantages and disadvantages of such mechanisms have seen any serious independent analysis to date. As well, many of the issues that have plagued the public-private debate for decades recur unabated with PPPs.
Accompanying these privatisation activities has been a broader platform of 'new public management' reforms. These have been underpinned by a new set of values emphasising managerial, commercial and corporate practices to deliver ministerial policies over traditional values of neutral administration as a servant of the public. Was accountability itself privatised here? No. But many observations and accusations as to the impacts of reforms on accountability have been made.
The most frequent comment has been simply to assert that privatisation improves accountability. Bishop et al, for example, argue that accountability is clearly increased through a sale and that whereas public sector enterprises were previously 'submerged in the depths of government ministries and accountability for performance was almost impossible to establish', privatisation 'made the behaviour and performance of privatized companies more transparent ... with clearly defined lines of responsibility'.[9] To the extent that privatisation separates out performance of particular areas of a larger public organisation and creates clearer lines of service or financial responsibility. better accountability mechanisms may have been established-in the narrow managerialist sense. As an example, the very financial reporting requirements of newly privatised firms using disciplined financial techniques such as accrual accounting promotes accountability compared to the slow moving and impenetrable bureaucracies that may have existed previously, with ambiguous cash-based accounting systems and lack of proper financial controls. Looking at the empirical findings on accountability in a broader sense, my review of electricity privaisation in Victoria concluded that some dimensions of accountability have been improved. [10]
Other authors such as Mulgan, Donahue, Ernst, and Saunders and Harris caution against simplistic assumptions, arguing that there is no reason to believe that private organisations will always, or usually improve accountability. In practice, many such authors say, privatisation has resulted in reduced accountability.[11] One central dimension of accountability has been the question of openness and the extent to which disclosure of information is affected. In the first instance, the actual sale of the enterprise needs to be 'open'. A major concern around the world, international literature has revealed many examples of lack of transparency in the privatisation transactions of the United Kingdom, Australia, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan to name a few. [12] In the second instance, the subsequent operation of the privatised enterprise needs to be open to scrutiny, to meet ot1zen expectations. The empirical international experience has again not been flattering, with authors such as Thomson and Heald finding a general loss of information in the UK.[13] In New Zealand, both Taggert and Kelsey were scathing of assertions that accountability had improved with privatisation.[14] To Taggert, the legal process of privatisation stripped away most of the broader accountability mechanisms operating in the public sector - ombudsman review, freedom of information, scrutiny by the auditor general, and ministerial responsibility, producing 'an accountability vacuum which the courts may be drawn into'. Kelsey, likewise, saw closed decision-making practices and contempt for proper parliamentary procedures in New Zealand as antidemocratic, and transferring power from the sovereign state to the international marketplace.[15] Added to this have been observations including the blurring of accountability under contracted-out services,[16] the reducing role of administrative law,[17] and the protection of information rights. [18] What is certain is that judgments on the effects of privatisation bring into focus the sharp differences between the traditional values expected of the two sectors.
How might we better understand these diverse judgments on the accountability evidence? To move the debate forward, I will also next discuss how the 'public interest' is articulated, and present useful models of accountability-particularly those reflecting public accountability concerns.
The 'public interest' phrase is often cited, but its precise definition is illusive. The idea is simple enough-it represents the common good, the collective good, the public benefit or the national benefit.[19] Examples might be straight forward and tangible such as public roads, defence, or clean air, or they may be less tangible such as a livable community environment, support for one's cultural history, or the free exercise of citizen power as part of democratic processes. But in all cases of the public interest, benefits are offered to everyone that are quite distinct from more personal individual or sectional benefits.
But what policy options or decisions best represent moves towards the common good, and how might the collective benefit be best judged? The optimum balance between individual interest at one end of the continuum, through to sectional interests and common community interests at the other end is indefineable and best made through explicit political processes. As Mulgan puts it, 'judgements [regarding the public interest] are inherently complex and contestable ... policy choices in the public interest cannot be reduced to objective, technical calculations ... and assessments of the public interest are thus always political assessments, whether taken by politicians, public servants, courts, advisory councils or any other citizens'.[20] Likewise, boundaries between individual interests, sectional interests and the broader notion of the 'public interest' are unclear, and quite fuzzy. They are also contestable. So, is the public interest everything political? No, although Shafritz and Russell[21] remind us that the public interest can be viewed cynically as 'the universal label in which political actors wrap the policies and programs that they advocate' and that no legislator or public official would ever wish to be seen proposing anything that was not in the public interest. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that it is central to the job of our elected representatives, or as Mulgan states,'our system of government gives elected ministers the right to determine the public interest, subject always to parliamentary and electoral accountability'.[22]
The public interest is certainly complex Margaret Thatcher became famous for her dismissive remark,'there is no such thing as society, only individuals' and this was subsequently matched by an economic ethos proclaiming that there was no such thing as the public interest, only private interests. Public choice economics underpins much of the movement towards privatisation and market mechanisms and is based on the assumption of 'homo-economicus'-the 'self interested man'. It has been surprisingly selective, though, choosing to emphasise the positive elements of self interest (ie the efficient use of capital, and exercising choice in markets) rather than emphasising the negative side of self interest (in terms of corruption, conflicts of interest and fraudulent behaviour by those in power: see Hodge, above n 4,36-B).The recent rise of there-regulated state is a belated recognition of this 'downside'. There have been notable attempts at reducing the public interest down to more measurable and perhaps more politically controllable terms. Terms such as. community service obligations, universal service obligation and safety net services have all been useful to a degree, but are all also over-simplifications.
It certainly is a pervasive influence within the public sector, and for public servants serves as 'part of their corporate mission, in the same way as employees in a private firm may be exorted to pursue the firm's interests', as Mulgan puts it.[23] However, this does not give public servants, any special claim to guardianship of the public interest. Mulgan goes on to say, 'Public servants should never forget that their primary duty is to serve the government of the day. If they have a role in relation to the public interest, it is defending due process.'
There is little doubt that the public interest exists, and that it is an important part of modem political and administrative life. There is also little doubt that after it has been politically articulated, one of the central pillars in guarding the public interest is accountability systems inherent within political and administrative processes. It is to this, and other matters in better defining accountability that I now tum.
At its simplest, accountability is answering for one's actions.[24] In other words, when we are requested by others to achieve something, we report back to them on how we have performed.[25] Such answering for one's actions is undertaken to a higher authority, either legal or organisational, and this may be within the context of society at large or else within one's particular organisation.[26] Accountability is also more than this.
One simple and long-lived concept of accountability for essential services has been the notion of 'ministerial accountability' namely that ministers are accountable for all activities within their portfolio. Ministers develop policy that is implemented on their behalf in an efficient and effective manner by the public service administration. Ministers can then be logically held accountable for the results of these policies. Under this simple idea the line of accountability begins with public servants, who are accountable to their hierarchical superiors, and through ministers extends ultimately to the parliament. The parliament's elected members are also assumed to act on behalf of the citizenry.
Despite its simple appeal, the Westminster model of ministerial accountability has failed to live up to its promise. 'No matter how plausible this seemed in theory, in practice it was a failure' Hughes notes.[27]
Furthermore, the reality was that this system aimed at accountability for errors rather than accountability for achieving results, and with excessive caution, secrecy, and decisions being passed up higher than wanranted, the result was excessive inefficiency.[28] Moreover, ministers rarely resign in the face of criticism for performance these days -even in the face of major performance failures.
The traditional model has nonetheless been refined by Corbett, who reminded us that as well as upwards accountability to the minister, parliament and the people, public servants also had accountabilities inwards -to a personal or moral public code, and outwards -to the community.[29] Another simple model of accountability might be found through the managerialist view that accountability is essentially about set objectives being met, and outputs such as specific services being delivered to defined quality levels.
More complex models recognise the need to disperse power within a democratic system. As power is dispersed, so is accountability spread between multiple actors and institutions. Stone provides a framework for considering accountability in this context. He sees administrative accountability in terms of five dimensions.
1. accountability as parliamentary control: with administrators and agencies being responsive to the concerns of members of Parliament
2. the managenalist conception of accountability: with strategic control, agency self-evaluation and periodic external evaluation against specified performance measures being emphasized
3 accountability as judicial and quasi-judicial review: with an emphasis on the application of strict formal decision making standards such as administrative or statutory rules preventing conflicts of interest and legal processes to test the degree of accountability through the courts or administrative appeals tribunals
4. accountability as constituency relations: where individual concerns may be represented through governing boards, annual meetings of constituents, public hearings, advisory bodies, regulatory agencies, consumer councils or ombudsman
5.market accountability: where service providers are responsive to consumers, and a choice of supplier, quality and quantity of service are available.[30]
Of course, the relationship between government and citizens is a fundamental thread throughout all accountability systems. Whether people relate to government as citizens, users, clients subject to regulation, participants or litigants, they expect a strong accountability framework to exist.
Another model of accountability is that of Coghill who observes that, in reality, accountability operates through a complex accountability network.[31] This includes institutions such as parliament, its committees of inquiry, the executive, political parties, appeals tribunals, the ombudsman, the auditor general, industry regulators, other governments along with the media, for instance. Accountability under this view, then, is a complex web of relationships between a network of individuals and institutions.
A further useful framework has also been that of Romzek and Dubnick who saw accountability in terms of four dimensions-hierarchical, legal, professional and political accountability.[32]
What might we conclude from these accountability models? It is clear that the traditional doctrine of ministerial accountability no longer reflects reality, and that our accountability expectations are more complex. Multiple accountability expectations are relevant in a pluralist democracy. Perhaps trade-offs have implicitly been made as we have privatised?[33]
So, how have accountability arrangements changed in the privatised state and who are now the primary guardians of the public interest?
The guardians in the accountability network have changed as the state has privatised. The international experience suggests that managerial accountability has increased through privatisation. The cost of this, though, appears to have been decreases in broader public accountability mechanisms such as parliamentary control accountability (which, by definition, is dramatically changed following privatisation), quasijudicial accountability (such as through administrative law remedies) and access to information (through freedom of information provisions). Accountability through the constituency relations dimension has also been altered with mechanisms such as political intervention to redress grievances, the use of public hearings and advisory bodies all being curtailed, but being replaced, at least potentially with regulatory agencies, consumer councils or ombudsman roles. Likewise, there has been greater trust placed in 'market accountability' whether through competitive tendering systems or new market structures. Any claim as to whether there has been an overall net gain or loss in accountability depends on the performance of each of these guardians as well as the degree to which these are additive. And such assessments may be case dependent.
The general concern of reduced public accountability and political accountability deserves serious reflection, particularly given that one reason for privatising in the first instance was to remove public services from the 'undue influence of politics'. Perhaps this concern simply reflects the strong desire of citizens for governments to remain politically accountable for their decisions? There is little doubt from the international evidence that governments have been forced belatedly to accept and recognise political accountability for essential service privatisation. While some of the detailed consumer service issues become the responsibility of the new owners, many other matters do not. These include the public policy decision to privatise itself, the veracity of the ownership change transaction and implicit changes to service parameters, standards, prices or quality. Indeed, accountability for the system-wide provision of essential services has, as far as the public is concerned, remained with elected representatives. The more important point here is that whilst political processes and political accountabilities have in the past been central to protecting the public interest, this role has in many privatised essential services sectors been taken up through the fabric of the 're-regulated state'.[34] Thus new, strong, independent accountability guardians such as the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the Essential Services Commission as hard regulation, as well as a range of soft, self-regulatory and voluntary practices such as industry codes of practice and charters have become prominent. In other privatised essential services such as the banking sector; the re-regulated state has been less evident and we have relied on the presumption of market accountability. In any event, citizens will continue to expect that essential services will meet their needs, irrespective of whether the legal owners are public or private.[35]
The Victorian Electricity Sector
If we take the empirical example of the privatisation of Victoria's electricity sector; changes in both the values underpinning the traditional accountability guardians as well as the guardians themselves are evident. The Kennett Government was criticised for its disdain for accountability through obsessive secrecy, the removal of traditional safeguards, centralised power and an impotent parliament.[36] But these characteristics were
simply the unadvertised flip side of new managerialist values focusing on delivering policy outcomes in terms of a restructured sophisticated private market in the electricity sector. The impressive empirical observation was that compared to much of the other international experience, the Victorian sell-offs were both relatively successful and clean. Concerns about the loss of the simpler ethos of ministerial accountability through parliament also contrast the empirical reality. On this point, the new independent regulators in the Victorian privati sed state, the Essential Services Commission, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and a range of new national electricity market not-for-profit organisations such as the National Electricity Market Management Company (NEMMCO) and the National
Electricity Code Administrator (NECA) have, among other things, pursued the protection of consumers' interests, albeit within a much more complex electricity sector. I have concluded that:
Accountability in the privatised electricity system has been a paradox, with accountability throughout the sell-off transactions at an all-time low in democratic terms, but with high accountability in managerial terms. Under privatised operations, the same paradox continued, with low m1n1sterial accountability. but high accountability through an independent regulator.[37]
Hence, while ministerial accountability for operational aspects of electricity supply characteristics has reduced, there have been new levels of competitive accountability initiated at the generation and retail levels, with strong regulation put in place ensuring both that consumer interests are protected and a viable sector is maintained overall. As well, new performance monitoring of the electricity companies and information access requirements through electricity licences have been initiated. So, in this case, traditional parliamentary accountability guardians lost their primacy, while the managerial, market and regulatory accountability guardians rose to prominence. In terms of underlying values, the cultural assumptions central to managerial ism, markets and the re-regulated state have dominated traditional public accountability mechanisms through parliament.
Viewed in this light, the question whether accountability improved or was worsened is academic. The guardians changed. And our assessment would need to be informed by the empirical measurements of the traditional bureaucratic systems rather than the mythology The historical reality is probably that the old guardians were essentially State Electricity Commission of Victoria engineering executives dominating elected ministers, many of whom struggled to control the electricity bureaucracy.[38] Little wonder I concluded that what replaced the previous accountability arrangements was, in reality, better:
... the previous s1mple but soft mechanism of ministerial accountability was replaced with a more complex but stronger accountability system through an independent regulator [39]
Did a change in the culture of accountability also occur with privatisation? Yes. But as I have argued above, this shift was part of a subtle, broader shift to 'new public management' over the past three decades. A few recommendations follow in terms of the optimal characteristics sought for new networks of accountability guardians.
First, there is no doubt that a change from public to private ethos has occurred. The arithmetic of self-interest, explaining as it often does the average behaviour of much of the population, has come to dominate public administration culture. The term 'the public interest' no longer seems to even appear in the lexicon of the public servant.[40] This is a loss to the public domain and needs revival.
Second, as the values of the state's public servants have been progressively managerialised, many of the traditional guardians of the public interest, both public servants generally and central institutions such as Treasury departments, have shifted ground. There has been a subtle shift away from the dominant traditional, conservative, neutral stewardship and administration role towards a more dominant policy advocacy and implementation function. Executive employment contracts tied to implementation performance measures, for instance, have no doubt produced greater compliance and a more effective managerial machine for the implementation of political ideals. But advocacy compromises stewardship. Such shifts require the introduction of strengthened independent accountability mechanisms in order to guarantee the continued integrity of stewardship through future audits and evaluations of public benefit.
Third, there will in future be a need for the ground on which all independent guardians of the public interest are founded to be protected and strengthened. Each of the characteristics of independence, including employment conditions, available financial resources and hiring and firing constraints will need vigorous protection if our public interest guardian networks are to be effective.
As the state has privati sed, contractualised and managerialised, there has been a 'changing of the guardian' from one where a simple but idealistic accountability regime reigned to a new situation in which a more focused but complex network of guardians now resides. These changes have seen new risks to public accountability emerge including the dominance of policy advocacy roles over the traditional role of stewardship for public servants.
[*] GRAEME HODGE is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Privatisation and Public Accountability in the Faculty of Law, Monash University. graeme.hodge@law.monash.edu.au
©2004 Graeme Hodge
[1] Using the same economic yardstick (enterprise sales proceeds as a proportion of gross regional economic product), Victoria ranked number one as the world's most ardent privatiser through the 1990s
[2] For details of these transactions, see G A Hodge, 'Pnvat1sat1on The Australian Expenence', 1n Dav1d Parker and Dav1d Saal (eds), Handbook on Privatisation (2003)
[3] Of course, large slices of SOE sectors such as transport and electrically prov1s1on still nonetheless remain in public hands 1n most Australian states
[4] G A Hodge, Privatisation An International Review of Performance (2000) 280, B Walker and B C Walker. Privatisation Sell Off or Sell Out? TheAustrai1an Experience (2000), Rouse and Corbitt, Revisiting IT Outsourcing Risks Re-analysis of a Recent Survey, (Working
Paper No 2002/43, School of Information Systems, Deakin University, 2002);Australian National Audit Office, Department of Defence, Commercial Support Program, Audit Report Number 2 (1988)
[5] Industry Commission, Competitive Tendering and Contracting By Publ1c Sector Agencies, Report No 48 (1996), Hodge, above 4.
[6] W Russell, E Waterman and N Seddon, Aud1t Review of Government Contracts Contracting, Privatisation, Probity and Disclosure 1n Victona 1992-1999 (2000).
[7] J Gray, 'Going Private· A Twenty Bn Shake Up', Australian Financial Review, 11 February 2002, 1, 52-3
[8] J Hall, 'Private Opportunity, Public Benefit ?' ( 1998) 19(20) Fiscal Studies 121-40, M G Pollitt, ,The Declining Role of the State In Infrastructure Investment 1n the UK', 1n S Berg, M Pollitt and MTsuji (eds) 'Private Initiatives in Infrastructure Priorities, Incentives and Performance’ (2002) 67-100
[9] M Bishop, J Kay and C Mayer. Pnvat1sat10n and Economic Performance ( 1994)
[10] G A Hodge, 'Pnvat1sat1on and Accountab1l ', 1n Graeme Hodge, Valane Sands, David Hayward and David Scott (eds) Power Progress An Audit of Australia's Electricity Reform Experiment (forthcoming)
[11] R Mulgan, 'Contracting-Out and Accountability' (1997) 56(1) Australian journal of Public Administration 106- I 6, J D Donahue, The Privatisation Decision Public Ends, Pnvate Means ( 1989), J Harper Ernst. Whose Utility? The Social Impact of Public Utility Pnvat1sat1on and Regulation in Britain(1994), P Saunders and C Hams, Privatisation and Popular Capitalism ( 1994)
[12] For examples, see K Wilkshire, 'The Paradox of Privatization', ( 1990) 49(2) Australian journal of Public Administration 195-9 and Hodge, above n 4.
[13] L Thomson, 'Reporting Changes 1n The Electricity Supply Industry' ( 1993) 9(2) F1nanctal Accountability and Management
131-5, D Heald, A Financial Autopsy on the CEGB, (1989) 17(4) Energy Policy 337-50.
[14] M Taggart, 'The Impact of Corporatisatlon and Privatization on Administrative Law' (1992) 51 (3) Australian Journal ofPubltcAdmtmstrauon 368-73,] Kelsey. Rolling Back the State Privatization of Power m Aotearoa/New Zealand, ( 1993).
[15] The example of the 1nfluenctal NZ Bus1ness Roundtable-a group of 43 chief executives from the country's
largest companies, was symbolic to Kelsey, particularly when the community learned that the government had accepted large pol111cal donations, mainly from roundtable members
[16] M Neave, Presentation at launch of ARC report no 42, 'The Contracting Out of Government Serv1ces', Canberra, 27
November 1998
[17] R Creyke, 'Sunset for the Administrative Law Industry?' ( 1998) 87 Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 39-57
[18] STongue.'Protect1on of Information R1ghts' ( 1998) 87 Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 66-77
[19] R Mulgan.'Perspect1ves on the Public Interest' (2000) 97 Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 6-12.
[20] Ibid 7.
[21] J M Shafritz and E W Russell, Introducing Public Administration (2nd ed, 2001)
[22] R Mulgan 'Public Servants and the Public Interest', (2000) 97 Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 1-4.
[23] Mulgan, above n 22
[24] S J Ott and E W Russell, Leadership and Accountability, in Introduction To Public Administration A Book of Readings (200I) 355.
[25] 0 Hughes, Public Management and Administration An Introduction , (1994) 237.
[26] J M Shafritz and E W Russell, above n 21,352
[27] Hughes, above n 25
[28] W Funnel and K Cooper. Publ1c Sector Accounting and Accountability in Australia(1998), 46, Official advice was nevertheless still being given that the traditional model was still in operation as late as 1993 at the Commonwealth level
[29] D C Corbett, Australian Public Management (1992).
[30] B Stone, 'Administrative Accountability in the Westminster Democracies Towards a New Conceptual Framework', (1995) 8
Governance 8
[31] K Coghill, 'Best Pract1ce 1n Accountability', (Paper presented at Pnvansat1on and Good Governance Conference, Parliament House, Melbourne. 8 September 2000)
[32] B 5 Romzek and M J Dubnick, 'Accountability', in Jay M. Shafritz (Editor In Chief), The International Encyclopaedia of Public Pol1cy and Administration ( 1998) 6-11 Their analysis of the space shuttle Challenger d1saster 1n 1986 suggested that th1s had been due to accountability systems shifting away from a professional orientation to a politically responsive, more hierarchical agency
[33] lbid. Romzek and Dubn1ck observed that those favouring hierarchical accountability values ask for priority to be given to
supervision arrangements and performance reviews, whilst those favouring legal accountability ask for priority to be given to const1tut1onal pnnoples, laws or contractual obl1gat1ons.Those favouring political accountability ask for priority to be given to responsiveness - external groups/markets/ voters, and those favouring professional accountability ask for priority to be given to
best professional practices as occurs when engineers design a bridge
[34] See D Parke 'International Experience in Restructuring Electricity' in Graeme Hodge, et al (eds),above n 10
[35] We might also note that the rising expectations of citizens for improved service standards, quality and price complicates any assessment as to the effectiveness of privatisation and accountability arrangements.
[36] EW Russell, ‘Rebuilding Victoria After Kennett' (2000) D1ssent 54-7, D Hayward, 'How Mr Kennett Lost and how the
Coalition Let Him Do It', (2000) Dissent 58-64.
[37] Hodge, above n I 0.
[38] Personal communication with David White, former Minister for Minerals and Energy, Melbourne, 2000.
[39] Hodge, above n I 0.
[40] One exception to this is the recent invention of a 'public interest test' as part of assessment procedures for public-private partnerships in Victoria.
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