Most people only think about “governance” when the government really messes things up and people can see it affecting them – like the botched hotel quarantining that caused the second wave in Victoria which resulted in hundreds of deaths and huge social and economic cost. Some might argue that everyone can make a mistake and no government is perfect but the State government had the opportunity to do much better.
The Victorian second wave of the corona virus was not a result of one thing – it was the failure of the system as a whole with many contributing factors. It is a reminder that the activities and processes governments carry out which we call “governance” are critically important.
There is growing concern that governance standards in this country are declining. We have seen this now in government’s response to the second wave of this pandemic but the problem appears at times in all levels of government today. Often the symptoms and impacts are difficult to see. We have seen this in transport : failure to adhere to accepted/proper standards and procedures including too close a relationship between public officials and private corporations, too much unaddressed conflict of interest, too little transparency, lazy analysis of problems – grasping at instant solutions imbued with ‘optimism bias’, manipulated supporting data, enfeebled public scrutiny, and even egregious examples of outright corruption both at political level and within what used to be trusted departments of the public service. This ‘institutional decay’ was evident in the abortive East-West Link motorway project, the West Gate Tunnel project and the North East Link. More details are provided by William McDougall on his blog https://www.wmcdougall.com.
Whilst poor governance is the main reason we have consistently achieved poor transport outcomes in Melbourne and Victoria generally, the greatest governance failure is reflected in government policy and responses (at all levels) to the climate emergency. Transport for Melbourne does not believe there are easy solutions to this problem but governance needs to be addressed because the quality of our democratic institutions and how they ‘govern” on our behalf will ultimately define who we are as a society and our future.