No news is bad news for democracy
Posted on 15 Jan 2025
Not-for-profit journalism has a crucial role to play in the battle against misinformation and…
Posted on 21 Aug 2024
By David Crosbie
If we want politics to be more than the art of messaging, we need to play our role in holding governments to account.
This is especially true in the post-truth era where any fact can be questioned, and people tend to believe what they need to believe to justify their own ideas about politics and life.
The danger with the messaging and attention-grabbing view of politics is that at its extreme there are no real measures of success, and there is very limited accountability. A politician can claim anything and then challenge any assertion that they are wrong or haven’t delivered what they claim – often by personally attacking anyone who criticises their policy.
In most of the public discourse about governments and policy, there is very little, if any, attempt to answer serious questions about policy outcomes and evidence of change. Factual policy analysis doesn’t fit into a media model dominated by superficial hyper-partisan debates focused on political point-scoring and short-term attention grabs. How outrageous.
Policies for charities and not-for-profits might be less controversial, but in some ways that makes it even more important that we do ask the policy outcome questions. What is the evidence that policies can deliver or have delivered real change for our sector? Do the words and policy intent of politicians and government officials match what is being delivered?
At the Community Council for Australia (CCA), we know it’s important to hold every government to account for delivering real outcomes for our sector. We need to see evidence of change beyond the encouraging words and offers of support.
There’s no doubt that in some areas the Albanese government and the Assistant Minister for Charities, Dr Andrew Leigh, have delivered positive changes for our sector over the last term of government.
We want all political parties to know that if they make a policy commitment to our sector, we will be watching and monitoring the implementation. If we aren’t prepared to hold governments and political parties to account, we can’t expect our sector will be prioritised or taken seriously.
There is also no doubt that some of what the incoming Albanese government said it would do for charities and community organisations has not been delivered, or has only partly been followed through.
Over the next couple of weeks CCA will seek informed views from across our sector about what areas of charities and community organisations policy have been advanced, and what have languished.
Our starting point in this endeavour is to seek your views about the implementation of the ALP’s pre-election platform for charities and community organisations.
This is what was promised:
The supporting ALP pre-election media release also talked about establishing a “‘Building Community – Building Capacity’ Working Group to bring new resources to the problem, publicise successful programs and demonstrate the social and economic value of better-connected communities.”
Tempted as I am to make my own observations about how the government has performed in implementing these policies, it will be much more useful, powerful and informative to have people from across our sector anonymously express their own views about the government’s performance measured against its pre-election commitments.
We want all political parties to know that if they make a policy commitment to our sector, we will be watching and monitoring the implementation. If we aren’t prepared to hold governments and political parties to account, we can’t expect our sector will be prioritised or taken seriously.
We hope you will join us in this endeavour by participating in a survey of sector leaders and experts to evaluate government progress on reform for our sector.
To participate, please email Deborah Smith, partnerships manager at the Community Council for Australia, at [email protected] and mention the survey.
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