Policy 101: Blind siding rarely the way to bring the troops with you

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon in Crikey today:

The budget in May was a stinker. As one senator reportedly told The Australian Financial Review this week, the budget was “in more shit than a Werribee duck”, referencing the coastal town south of Melbourne that hosts a sewage treatment plant. I have big policy problems with the budget, such as the Medicare co-payment and the cuts to auto sector workers, pensioners, social security, higher education, health, schools, foreign aid and renewable energy funding. But I’ve been gobsmacked at the blind-siding of the whole country by this government. When did the government tell the states they were stripping a lazy $80 billion out of their future health and education budgets? When did the government tell the auto sector it would drain a further $600 million out of industry assistance (that makes $1.1 billion cut in total) that could have gone to restructuring ahead of the exit of the car makers? When did the government tell the universities it was going to cut 20% from federal funding for undergraduate courses and deregulate the sector? When did the government tell self-funded retirees it was taking away their modest seniors’ supplement?

Never, that’s when. Until budget night, that was. The subtext is all about mistrust of the electorate. I’m tipping Budget 2.0, sometime soon. And the government won’t get that through unless it restores trust with the voters.

You could add plenty to the Senator's list of Budget blind siders that add to the trust deficit including the announcement of the plan to restructure the access to information system by abolishing the Office of Australian Information Commissioner, all the time pronouncing a commitment to transparency and accountability and claiming the resulting changes will "improve administrative efficiencies and reduce the burden on FOI applicants."