(Image: Private Media)

At the heart of the Barilaro scandal is a fundamental democratic issue: should politicians, or “independent” experts, make decisions about public resources?

It drives the whole scandal — the decision to change the trade commissioner role from a public service appointment to a political appointment; Amy Brown’s complaint she was left in a limbo between the two; Stuart Ayres’ insistence the selection of Barilaro was at “arm’s length” from him when he repeatedly intervened, including the elimination of a rival candidate to Barilaro after a 12-minute Zoom meeting with him; Barilaro’s professed belief that the role being a public service appointment was sufficient “cover” (his word) for it to be OK.

What no one will acknowledge is that in modern public services, the idea of independent decision-making is nonsensical. From the moment Barilaro applied, and the moment Stuart Ayres commended Barilaro to Brown, there was never any chance Barilaro wouldn’t succeed. Even if a public service is not as egregiously politicised as, say, the Commonwealth public service under Morrison, or the NSW public service under Labor, “responsive” bureaucrats, especially senior bureaucrats with regular exposure to ministers and their staff, will absorb and implement ministerial desires without thinking.

It’s even possible Ayres genuinely thinks he did nothing wrong, that he was merely doing his job of being kept “informed” of the process, oblivious, or indifferent, to the Heisenbergian fact that any interest a minister displays in such a process will influence the outcome.

Public services are not independent, or not nearly as much as they used to be. Genuinely independent public policy bodies have to be formally and explicitly protected from political interference. The courts. The Reserve Bank. Regulators. The Director of Public Prosecutions. And even then, political appointees can exercise influence.

This underpins Barilaro’s claim that because he was pursuing the job through what he claimed was an ordinary public service appointment process, it was all legit, whereas if it had been a political appointment by the NSW cabinet, the claim of “jobs for the boys” would have been correct. That’s an admission — unsurprising from a man who was proud to be called a pork-barreller — that political decisions come with a fundamental illegitimacy in the eyes of voters.

As Crikey has observed more than once, politicians are now being caught out by a shift in the electorate away from tolerating traditional political behaviour like pork-barrelling and jobs for mates — both of which are all about this tension between political decision-making and decision-making made independently and in accordance with the public interest.

The tension is one of the biggest issues in politics, but receives little attention until it erupts in various individual scandals — a dodgy appointment here, a fake investigation there, some rorted grants over there.

And it plays out in every metropolitan community in the country, where residents object to development proposals, and local councils — made up of elected figures — decide on them. Property developers have long made bribing local councillors and local government officials a key tactic to secure approvals. On the other hand, councillors can also be vehicles for flagrant NIMBYism.

The NSW government’s solution to that — apart from banning donations from property developers — was to strip Sydney councils of their approval powers and hand them to independent planning panels, which assess development applications based on established planning laws. No bribes, no NIMBYism, just — theoretically — the public interest.

Plenty of aggrieved residents, whose objections have been overruled, will say that planning panels don’t take into account local factors, residential amenity, special circumstances, etc — the sort of things a local councillor might see as their job to take into account.

Barilaro, pork-barrelling, development approvals — they’re all variations on the theme of whether politicians can be trusted to make decisions, or whether we’re better off with independent decision-makers with expertise pursuing the public interest.

Experts get it wrong, too. Spectacularly so. Just ask the Reserve Bank.

Politicians insist that in a democracy they must be left to make decisions and be accountable for them, not a “public autocracy” as Scott Morrison called independent experts. And it’s true that politicians are more accountable than, say, the governor of the Reserve Bank.

But they aren’t that much more accountable — they’re elected every three or four years, and voters have to weigh up a whole bunch of factors for that once-in-three-years vote. What if a blatantly corrupt government has an important policy you agree with? What if it’s corrupt in some areas but good in others? Democratic accountability doesn’t cut it for the vast majority of decisions that show up how little politicians can be trusted to always pursue the public interest.

And the answer is not necessarily to kick a government out and replace it with its opponents. Today’s forensic, integrity-obsessed opposition supporter of high standards in public life can be tomorrow’s rorting minister — remember how quickly John Howard ditched his commitment to better standards after he lost a slew of ministers?

Properly independent appointment processes, of the kind advocated by groups like the Grattan Institute, which curb the capacity of politicians to interfere, are the only effective solution. And the same applies across government. But so far the debate is confined to the micro level. It needs to be broadened out to the tension between political decision-makers and people we can actually trust.

Which decisions should be taken out of politicians’ hands, and who should pick up the slack? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.