Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, as well as Treasury, and Assistant Minister for Employment, Dr Andrew Leigh MP, stated, “I would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal People as traditional custodians of land on which we are gathered today. I would also like to recognize any other people or families connected to the lands of the ACT and the region.”
I want to respect to their Elders, as well as I would like to extend that respect to First Nations people. Additionally, I would like to commit myself to implementing the Uluru Statement from the Heart.
In addition, we like to acknowledge the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation and its role in fostering more robust connections between academic research and public policy. This is a goal that is near and dear to my Heart as an economist, as well as it is also one that epitomizes the unique role that the Australian National University plays. Additionally, it is pretty encouraging to learn that the partnership has been expanded to Charles Darwin University.
In light, we would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Martin Parkinson, who serves as the Chair of the Foundation, as well as the other scholars that work there. As you begin your investigation, I strongly suggest that you take ideas not only from your contemporaries but from those who have gone before you and the legacy that Roland Wilson has left behind.
Roland Wilson was esteemed as an “intellectual force” and was considered to as one of greatest public officials of all time (Sir Roland Wilson Foundation, 2023). He was instrumental in the formation of economic policy over a period of several decades. Not only was Roland Wilson a problem solver when it came to economic policy, but every anecdote I’ve heard about him implies that he was a problem solver overall.
During World War II, when gasoline was in short supply, he famously constructed an electric vehicle for himself out of junkyard components, including a motor salvaged from an old crane and charger bulbs imported from the United States (Simpson 2012). I wrote about it in an editorial column for the Canberra Times titled “Electric Vehicles Make the Weekend More Fun.” The main reason as to encourage the newspaper to publish a photograph of Wilson riding his three-wheeled vehicle in front of Old Parliament House (Leigh 2022).
Wilson personally constructed a swimming pool on his property in the days before we added water to Lake Burley Griffin (Treasury 2001). He did this so that he could cool off during the scorching summers that Canberra is known for. After all of that hard effort, he had to have wanted to relax in the pool.
I’m going to talk about an electrifying tool that can assist the Australian Public Service in making better use of its resources, and I’m going to draw some of my own inspiration from Wilson. It is a tool that gives public servants the ability to delve a little bit further in order to find solutions to policy issues and implement effective initiatives.
Randomized trials are a straightforward yet powerful method for determining what actually works.
In the world of medicine, randomized trials can be traced back to the research conducted by James Lind on scurvy and Ambroise Paré on the treatment of war burns.
The findings of the most recent randomized controlled studies never fail to take me by surprise.
A call to humility is another way to describe what I’m saying here.
When it comes to formulating effective policies, those of us in elected office rely heavily on the sound counsel and comprehensive research provided by bureaucrats, academics, think tanks, peak bodies, and others.
After all of that counsel and research, after all of that debate and conversation, it is simple to be led astray into believing that “this will work.”
