Fuelwatch fiasco: is Rudd's style to blame

Dennis Shannahan in the Australian today argues that the fuelwatch debacle is a symptom of a broader malaise in the Rudd Government:

For six months, Kevin Rudd has ruled his Government from his central office.

Every decision has been put before him and he has demanded oversight of the entire Government's media relations and public image.

In a style reminiscent of an autocratic state, Rudd has tried to make and shape every decision in Canberra, causing inordinate delays, frustration and policy confusion - from the most mundane decisions to the most important.

Now Rudd has lost control of his cabinet process or his senior public service or both, and deadly factional accusations and threats of payback are already being raised within Labor ranks.

There are also dark grumblings in Canberra about Rudd's ludicrous work demands placed on the public service (as well as his private office and other Ministerial offices) and his tendency towards hypocrisy (see also larvatus prodeo on the related issue of Rudd's micro-management).

Back in February, I wrote about the dangers of government by the self-described 'best and brightest':

One of the 'best and brightest' recruited by Kennedy was Robert McNamara, a brilliant young manager from the Ford motor company. He was so good that he became the first President of the company from outside the Ford family. He was skilled at systems analysis and championed an approach to government policy which placed analysis and rationality above other considerations, like political ideals.

Halberstam’s description of McNamara seems almost to fit our new Prime Minister: 'He was a man of force, moving, pushing, getting things done, Bob got things done, the can-do man in the can-do society, in the can-do era... He pushed everyone, particularly himself, to new limits, long hours, working breakfasts...'

Despite their individual and collective brilliance, Kennedy’s best and brightest made some remarkable mistakes.

McNamara, for instance, recommended the Bay of Pigs invasion, one of the most farcical foreign policy initiatives in US history and he was also an important architect of the Vietnam War. In politics, just being bright is not enough.

The fuelwatch leaks however have probably been motivated (in part at least) by a desire to expose the Rudd Government's hypocrisy. The Government's great claim is that it is a better economic manager than Howard and Costello and yet fuelwatch is so clearly motivated by politics and was taken in defiance of the best economic advice available.

Rudd has changed his view, or at least his rhetoric, on economic policy in recent times as Gerard Henderson pointed out in the SMH this week:

Well, Rudd's analysis in 2006 and 2007 may be accurate. Or his position today might be right. It's just that both positions cannot be correct. Howard and Costello cannot have been both Hayek-driven advocates of market fundamentalism and do-nothing types who squandered an opportunity to do anything - including, presumably, the things that mattered to those who wanted to establish a brutopia on Australian soil.

Indeed, Wayne Swan's too-easy dismissal of the advice of the best economic policy makers in Canberra is a worrying sign:

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan, dismissed the departmental advice as "bureaucratic" and "academic". He said cabinet chose instead to listen to "our own common sense" and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which found FuelWatch had cut petrol by about two cents a litre in Western Australia.

Anyway, hypocrisy is the best target for any leaker because the provision of confidential documents allows a contrast to be drawn between what the Government says publicly and the truth. In this case, the evidence in favour of fuelwatch is very slight indeed.

Hypocrisy is easy to expose but the question is why did someone do it?

This question takes us closer to the heart of the problem - Rudd's style. In just six months the resentments in Canberra have been growing and perhaps they were always going to blow up. This is just earlier and more spectacularly than anyone could have anticipated.

Rudd can't run Canberra like a Robert McNamara would, he has to learn to be inclusive and to delegate...and fast.

UPDATE: At his media conference this afternoon, Rudd warned public servants that the workloads would increase not decrease.