Designing Public Policy

06 May Designing Public Policy

Dear Here to Help,

I am finding governments’ covid-19 directions really hard to understand. Why can’t they just tell us what everyone can and can’t do?

Great question!

First things first. When designing public policy, government decides how it wants to deal with a certain situation. In the current environment, government has been taking staged steps to shut down “risky” activities.

The law that resulted from those policy decisions lists what is not allowed. This is a simpler solution than making lists of what is and isn’t allowed and in which circumstance. Simply put, there are so many activities, and so many variations of each activity, that it would be extremely difficult to list everything. And that would make for a lot of pages of law.

Obviously, there are activities similar to those found in the prohibited activities list. So, people and professions have been asking government to clarify if their profession or activity can continue.

In response, over time, governments have changed the laws around Australia to make exceptions to the list of what is not allowed. This results in rather complicated law, where you can’t do something on the list, unless you fall within a specific exemption. Again, there are activities and professions similar to those in the exemptions. As the list of exemptions grows, the law becomes more complex, and more uncertain.

Another key factor in law-making is discretion. No law-maker can envisage every possible situation the law will apply to now and into the future. So, law works best when authorities have discretion to apply the law in a way that works best in particular circumstances.

One example of this is beach closures. Surfing and fishing were generally allowed to continue, because they are a form of exercise (an exception to the rules). But swimming was not, even though it is also an exercise. Newcastle has spacious ocean baths, where it is possible to exercise and observe social distancing. And so, after a few days of closing the baths and beaches to swimmers, Newcastle City Council made the practical decision to allow swimming for exercise purposes. This aligns how ocean water-based sports are treated in Newcastle under the current rules.

In summary, although the law may not be 100% clear about how your particular situation is treated, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

This article comes from my column entitled “Here to Help” in Hunter Local, May 2020. If you have an everyday problem just begging for a simple, real world solution, send it to us and let’s see what we can achieve.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Elaine Abery has a closet full of great ideas and empowering solutions. She’s also the Director of Unravelling Red Tape, a company dedicated to helping everyday people, not-for-profits and companies change the world through improved decision-making and legislation.