Leadership brave and true The following speech was delivered to the IPAA Vic/Tas Executive Forum in Hobart on Friday 26 February by TasCOSS CEO Kym Goodes The relationship between citizens and their governments is changing but we don’t know what it looks like yet. We are in a period of transition. The ground we’re on is uncertain, change so rapid that it’s hard to imagine what the next decade looks like. Like many of the institutions we thought unshakeable, the way we do government, -- our representative democracy, is up for grabs. All over the world citizen-led movements are popping up, in response to their governments’ handling of a range of areas such as the global financial crisis, the refugee crisis, climate change. Last year a social activist became the Mayor of Barcelona. Ada Colau had led an organisation that responded to the increase in people getting evicted because of abusive mortgage clauses and the collapse of the Spanish property market after the GFC. She has talked about a more feminised democracy which accepts that “cooperation is more effective and enjoyable than competitiveness.” She says it is an awareness of a kidnapped democracy which has given rise to grassroots movements - people have a sense that the real decisions aren’t made in parliament. As the internet becomes part of our day to day lives, people are exchanging ideas, connecting with others who share their values and building relationships. The World Economic Forum’s Outlook on the Global Agenda in 2015 shows voter turnout for parliamentary elections is in serious decline – from around 85% in 1970 to 60% in 2014. Jorge Soto, a Member of the Global Agenda Council on the Future of Government – says governments are “19th century institutions with 20th century mindsets attempting to communicate with 21st century citizens.” There is a disconnect between where our governments are at and where our people are at. I’d be afraid of this change if I wasn’t so excited by the opportunity it presents. I think we are ready for shared, collaborative leadership approaches between government and its citizens.
There is no better time to be bold and shape a new contract between government and community. A contract where leadership is brave and that puts the heart back into decision-making … A contract that respects what community members bring and changes the conversation to what is possible. So what is Government with heart – what does that look like? In Tasmania it is easy to become hardened and tuned out to statistics – many of them are not great. The youth unemployment rate is 15.4% - we are desensitised to hearing that. Or this…. There are 44,828 people who left school at year nine and haven’t returned to study, only 47% of students complete year 12 and suicide continues to be the leading cause of death for Tasmanians between the ages of 15-45. They’re just numbers right? And making decisions in government is a numbers game – balancing budgets, balancing priorities, balancing the needs of our political masters and the expectations of the community, juggled and played out by avoiding or grabbing a front page – depending on the spin….. What if we imagined them as people like this: The equivalent of twice the population of Devonport does not have an education beyond Year 9. What if, instead of 15.4% youth unemployment in Tasmania, I said there are 10 428 young women and men looking for work, let me say that again 10,428 young people are unemployed in Tasmania. But we all know we do not have 10,428 jobs for currently vacant in Tasmania – so why do we label young people as not wanting to work? The number of adults unemployed? More than the average crowd at Bellerive during AFL season. Or look at the class photos of your child and imagine that every second child in that photo will not finishing year 12. As leaders, do you think we would make leadership decisions if we humanise the data? Over the many years that I’ve worked in government, business and the community sector I’ve seen a disconnection at best, heartlessness at worst emerge in how our leaders approach these important fundamental human rights issues. The culture of our welfare system and our jobnetwork system for example is based on an assumption that the people filling out the forms aren’t telling the truth or are not genuine in their desire to work.
This is actually the exception and we have more tax cheats in Australia than welfare cheats, but that is not representative in how we set these systems up. Leaders in government – who use labels like ‘leaners and lifters’ - drive that culture and make it difficult for the dedicated public servants to do anything but make those judgments themselves. Rather than judge and label and make assumptions we need our decision-makers to ‘never forget to remember’. That is – never forget to remember that - every time they make a decision – it will have an impact on someone’s life. This might sound weird but making decisions in government could be seen as acts of love. Head of ACOSS Cassandra Goldie said last week that tax is one of the greatest acts of love – and she is right, we apply a tax system and we pay tax because we want people to have access to things we can’t get another way. Everyone here today gives to someone else some of their income to ensure we have good access to health, to education and other essential services. It takes Brave leadership to stand up and make this change – the change we know citizens are crying out to see. It shouldn’t, but it does, take brave leadership to make decisions based on love within a culture of fear. When confronted by challenging situations we have choices. We can turn back to old behaviours like Assad did in Syria – with violence. We can muddle through with more of the same – a business as usual mentality which involves more committees, more words, more meetings – being busy but changing nothing really. Or we can respond with humanity. Like the Mayor of Munich did when he said as Syrian refugees were flooding into his country… “Every day I am asking myself how we can accommodate these people, how can we give them a feeling that they are safe here. I am not really thinking about how many people can we afford and can we take. That is not the question.” Tragically it has to take the power of single images, a baby on a beach, or a baby in a hospital in Brisbane for us to discover that our politicians can decide make decisions with heart. But citizens, communities, we want them to be like that all the time. But the culture of fear in our politics shrinks the courage of those who represent us.
And that challenges the ability of our public servants to take leadership and provide frank and fearless advice. It is also challenging when there is distrust between Ministers and public servants. Of course public servants want to produce sound public policy and good governance. But that’s difficult when oftentimes, public policy is – for example - being developed by an ex-journalists employed in Ministers’ offices. When there is an issue that needs to be fixed we run to the comfort of rules rather than examining the culture. When the Speaker Bronwyn Bishop got caught out taking a helicopter ride on the taxpayer, the response was to conduct a review into the parliamentary entitlements system. It came out with recommendations on ‘how to reduce ambiguity and how to better deal with alleged misuse of entitlements’. Imagine if the question examined was this - what sort of a culture makes behaviour like this ok? Let’s have a conversation about the culture of privilege in our political class. The idea that the notion of leadership is owned by political leaders or public service leaders, business or community leaders is a flawed one. We must strive to make sure every member of our community can feel empowered to make the decisions that affect their lives, and to make their world a better place. To paraphrase Lao Tsu – ‘when the job is done the people will say, we did it ourselves’. At TasCOSS we are trying to do exactly this. We have recently developed a model of community participation called Emerging Voices. Through it we are teaching community organisations how to make real, lasting change for their communities. We are challenging them to go deeper, to look under the surface to find out what is going on. We teach them awareness – self-awareness, awareness in their relationships with others, awareness of the culture in which they operate. We teach them collective action – collective impact – how they can come together to be powerful, to influence decision-makers and then to become the decision makers.
We are balancing the ledger. In a society where those who yell the loudest get the most attention, we are handing the tools of power to those with the quiet voices. Underpinning the model is our belief that when you can help people see their own power then anything is possible. People in communities, especially disadvantaged communities are tired of government telling them what’s important to them. They know their communities best and they deserve respect for what they bring to the task of change. Often however, when government and community gets together there’s a disconnect. Government language is not the language of the community or the community sector, or business for that matter. The culture of working is also very different across these sectors. It is this language and culture that is preventing meaningful collaboration and shared leadership between government and communities. Community members often feel disenfranchised and disengaged because they’re expected to fit with governments’ way of working. But it doesn’t fit. It would work much better if people, human rights, and community driven priorities and outcomes were at the centre of the way governments work. Of course I accept there are requirements that have to be met - legislative, political, good governance, reporting, regulation. But too often we have removed the humanity from the process. We have over-complicated things that should be quite simple. If we go back to agreeing what it is we want to see, we start from a different point in the conversation. If we start with ‘how do we meet the statutory requirement?’ we won’t get an outcome that makes a difference. It is the tail wagging the dog – we get so caught up in political risk, regulatory framework and legislative requirements that eventually we can forget why we are even there. When we start having conversations at that more human, deeper level we will stop creating outcomes that nobody wants or providing solutions to problems that only government thought we had. Then we will have brave leadership.
In the next 10 years I see the role of government as one of facilitator. Governments, holding the space for people to come together to make change happen. Tasmanians who know their communities best, are listened to and respected, and are funded to set their own priorities and innovate. The conversations will have changed – away from what the rules and regulations that stop us from asking what is possible and cause us to focus on what we can’t do rather than on what we can. Imagine if in 10 years’ time we can fill football stadiums not with Tasmanians who are out of work, but with Tasmanians who have completed year twelve and are now moving into meaningful employment and living fulfilling lives as members of empowered communities. Our next Leaders. Thank you.