Reforms only on paper are courting failure

Posted on 11 Nov 2026

By Denis Moriarty, founder and group managing director, Our Community

Weathered Reform Site Sign on Brick Wall — We need to stop inquiries becoming the finished outcome, says Denis Moriarty. Pic: AI

On everything from gambling to climate, charities to disability reform, Australian federal and state governments are fantastic at consultation, reports, submissions, and everything except actually making reform genuinely happen, writes Our Community's founder and leader, Denis Moriarty.

Australia has become exceptionally good at producing reform, albeit on paper.

We commission inquiries. We consult deeply. We gather evidence. We produce thoughtful reports filled with practical recommendations. Ministers thank commissioners for their work. Departments issue solemn statements about “careful consideration”. And then, too often, almost nothing happens.

The United Nations' criticism of Australia's treatment of Indigenous children and communities has continued throughout 2026. In May, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination condemned delays in implementing youth justice reforms. In July, the Productivity Commission reported that Australia was making no progress towards its national target for reducing Indigenous youth detention.

Now, the Queensland and Northern Territory governments have refused to allow a UN expert to inspect youth detention facilities. The pattern is depressingly familiar: scrutiny, recommendations, delay and resistance.

Increasingly, that institutional inertia feels like a defining characteristic not only of governments at all levels, but of the broader machinery of Australian public administration. Because while ministers ultimately make decisions, modern reform does not happen without public servants willing to drive it, argue for it and persist with it.

That raises an uncomfortable question for Canberra. Where is the reformist public service?

The Albanese government came to office promising serious policy renewal, and its May budget, with its changes to capital gains tax, negative gearing and family trusts, was a genuine attempt at increasing fairness, even if the effects won’t be felt for some years. In many areas, the government inherited complex and difficult problems. But 18 months on from Labor’s landslide re-election, a pattern is becoming clear across multiple portfolios: major reviews are commissioned, substantial evidence is gathered, recommendations are made and implementation slows to a crawl.

The late Peta Murphy’s landmark inquiry into online gambling is a case study, and a shameful one. After extensive hearings and a strong cross-party process, the inquiry produced clear recommendations aimed at reducing gambling harm, including a phased ban on advertising. The evidence was overwhelming. Public support was strong. The harms were well documented: the committee was scientific in its analysis. Yet the government's response fell well short of the inquiry's recommendations. Legislation passed in August introduced restrictions on gambling advertising, including during live sport, but stopped short of the comprehensive advertising ban recommended by the committee. In the end, the gambling companies and their hired apparatchiks succeeded in resisting the most far-reaching reform.

Likewise, many recommendations from the Productivity Commission’s work on the charity and not-for-profit sector were tossed in a filing cabinet somewhere in Canberra a decade ago and haven’t been seen since. This was work that sat close to my heart, reforms that could have improved efficiency for Australia’s vast not-for-profit sector, reduced duplication and strengthened civil society. And the commission's 2024 inquiry into philanthropy, Future Foundations for Giving, has prompted further questions about the pace of the government's response.

“The danger is that inquiries themselves become substitutes for action. The process becomes the achievement. Consultation becomes the outcome.”

Denis Moriarty

Indigenous incarceration. Gambling harm. Charity regulation. Aged care quality. Disability reform. Climate adaptation. Across federal, state and territory governments, Australia is not short of analysis, but it is short of implementation.

Some of this is plainly political. Governments fear backlash from organised interests. They prioritise short-term electoral success over long-term reform. Ministers become cautious, Cabinets defer decisions.

And public servants cannot entirely retreat behind the explanation that “government decides”. The Westminster tradition has never meant the Australian Public Service (APS) exists merely to administer political caution. At its best, the APS has historically been a source of intellectual leadership, reform momentum and institutional courage.

That tradition feels much weaker today. The culture of the APS now prizes procedural competence, stakeholder management and communications discipline above sustained advocacy for difficult reform once a report lands on a minister’s desk.

The danger is that inquiries themselves become substitutes for action. The process becomes the achievement. Consultation becomes the outcome. The report becomes proof the system “takes the issue seriously”, even when implementation barely advances.

Every delayed recommendation erodes public trust a little further. Communities are asked repeatedly to participate in consultations, hearings and reviews in good faith. Victims tell painful stories. Experts contribute years of research. Public servants produce detailed policy work. Then the machinery slows. Eventually, citizens conclude that the system is better at studying problems than solving them.

Yet Australia’s biggest challenges require a capable and activist state in which the public service is willing to push beyond administrative maintenance – not reckless bureaucracy, but a confident APS willing to tell ministers uncomfortable truths, maintain pressure for implementation, and treat reform as part of its core mission. There are still many outstanding public servants doing exactly that, but institutionally, the culture feels increasingly defensive and process-oriented.

An audit earlier this year by the Australian National Audit Office found that 79 per cent of freedom of information (FOI) requests across Commonwealth agencies in 2024–25 were blocked in full or in part. The audit also identified serious shortcomings in the administration of FOI by three major departments, including Prime Minister and Cabinet. Whether every refusal was justified is almost beside the point. The broader perception is of a system becoming more closed, more cautious and more controlled. That instinct towards secrecy often travels alongside institutional timidity. The risk for the APS is not simply criticism that reforms are delayed. It is the growing perception that the APS no longer believes implementation is truly its responsibility.

Australia does not lack ideas for reform. It has shelves full of them. What it increasingly lacks is an institutional culture, political and bureaucratic, prepared to carry reform from recommendation to reality.

Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.