The selection of Elon Musk as a government efficiency bureaucrat (in DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency) is heralded as an innovative disruption to improve public service.
But it is not really new.
In Australia, the 2013 incoming Abbott government established the National Commission of Audit (NCA), headed by business man Tony Shepherd, to advise on cuts to the national budget. The report influenced Joe Hockey’s budget of 2014, broadly acknowledged as a disaster, particularly for Tony Abbott. His own party conspired against him and Malcolm Turnbull soon replaced him as leader.
Shepherd liked to build gas pipelines, tunnels and toll roads, so a man for the times. No surprise that the NCA led to severe cuts to climate science. Musk likes to build electric cars, spread disinformation, and has visions of Mars colonisation with his big rockets. Neither men are really wise. Musk’s tunnels for Teslas are a joke mass transportation solution. Shepherd has questions about his executive roles on Snowy 2.0 and as Chair of Greater Western Sydney.
Tony Shepherd was head of the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and a known climate skeptic. Much of the NCA was aligned with the Institutes of Public Affairs’ (IPA) right-wing agenda, publicly endorsed by Tony Abbott and Rupert Murdoch. Project 2025 is a similar right-wing think tank, setting an agenda for the United States in the name of God (not an acronym).
Both NCA and DOGE attempt to define government efficiency as a simple engineering or business optimisation problem, particularly when defined by single-minded infrastructure or manufacturing experts. We should all know that every complex problem has a simple solution, which is wrong. Decades of neoliberal privatisation, weak government investment and outsourcing is testament to this.
Government is a complex process and must deal with anticipating and managing unintended consequences and economic externalities in an uncertain world. The DOGE philosophy is age old: we will only have intended consequences and will have no unintended ones, or we will only select to do successful projects and require no oversight.
Deregulation on a massive scale. What could go wrong?
For ordinary people, gutting the public sector is a peril, endangering public health and safety, the environment, future innovation, education of our children, well being and freedom. Think tanks and billionaires are not interested in public benefits, but primarily their own interests.
History always repeats itself, once as tragedy, then as a farce. Some say when it happens a third time, you know you’re living in Australia.
Michael Stewart Borgas
Dr Michael Borgas, Yanakie Research Institute.CSIRO Atmospheric Scientist, 30 years; President CSIRO Staff Association, 15 years; Physics and Mathematics education, Cambridge University, Trinity College; Adelaide University. Avid volunteer Mongolia, Air Pollution. Grew up in Port Augusta.
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