In the second seminar in the UTS Aging Research Collective (UARC) seminar series, Hon. Professor Mike Woods and Policy Advisor, Louise Malady, discussed Policy Impact, with Mike leading the discussion from his experience as a public policy leader followed by Louise sharing her experience as a policy advisor.
Creating policy impact
Louise Malady speaking at the UARC seminar series
Identifying your policy issue
An Hon. Professor at the UTS Business School and a Policy Advisor to UARC, Mike is a member of the Independent Health and Aged Care Pricing Authority's Aged Care Advisory Committee, was a Deputy Chair of the Productivity Commission and has provided policy analysis to Australian and international governments and multilateral agencies.
“Policy reform doesn’t start with a dataset; it starts with an issue,” Mike said. “And in fact, if there aren't any datasets, there's still going to be a decision, irrespective of the quality or even availability of evidence."
Mike advised participants who were wanting to make a policy impact to maintain a strong awareness of emerging issues in their field and keep in contact with the relevant stakeholders and government organisations.
Policy reform doesn’t start with a dataset; it starts with an issue.
“This will be more effective than starting with a dataset and trying to match it with a policy issue,” he said.
Mike noted that governments use discretion when deciding what are the relevant policy issues and said that for policy to really take hold, there has to be a real issue.
“How good is the evidence that this is a real issue? Who's affected by it? How immediate is the need for an answer?” he asked, adding that a range of other questions are also considered.
“What are the social, environmental and economic impacts of the issue? What are the political implications if you want to get it onto the policy agenda? Which level of government does this belong to? Is it a federal, state or local issue?”
Rather than thinking, ‘let's do something’ or ‘government should do something about this’, there's got to be a rationale for why government would want to be involved.
He also highlighted the importance of thinking about why the government should intervene.
“Rather than thinking, ‘let's do something’ or ‘government should do something about this’, there's got to be a rationale for why government would want to be involved,” he said.
“Does it have significant equity consequences? Are there market failures in what's already happening? Is this an opportunity to increase productivity, or the allocative efficiency of resource use? And can policy reform enhance environmental or fiscal sustainability?"
Government intervention and policy processes
Mike explained that independent or expert reviews are one way of ensuring the quality and transparency of policy processes.
“The gold standard is having inquiries by bodies that are legislated to be independent bodies to produce reports,” he said, referring to the Productivity Commission and Royal Commissions as examples.
Mike spoke about various forms of government intervention and how there are limits to what they can do while also having significant impacts.
“They can develop primary legislation and/or regulations, design and redesign programs, pursue direct service delivery or fund others through a purchaser/provider model or directly subsidise those in need.”
Evaluation and implementation of policy
Mike said the first things to do when undertaking a policy review are to establish and define the issue and to develop the underlying objectives – in effect the evaluation criteria.
“What is an intervention meant to do? Without this information, how can you judge that what is happening is valuable?” Mike asked.
“We don't spend enough time in our evaluations working through criteria and asking, for example, what it is that we want to achieve with government intervention in aged care.”
“Sometimes the criteria won't be set out in legislation that has been passed by Parliament. There is also a need to distinguish between what is are the objectives of the government of the day versus what's in the public policy interest. These concerns can be quite different,” Mike said, adding that the Productivity Commission will always revert back to what is in the public interest when setting the criteria it uses in its policy inquiries.
Even when you don’t have the best data, you may still have to produce a policy. In this case Mike said you should do the best you can with the data you have or create new data.
We don't spend enough time in our evaluations working through criteria and asking, for example, what it is that we want to achieve with government intervention in aged care.
When it comes to how reform impacts are distributed and the question of who wins and who loses, Mike said to question whether losers are actually losing or whether they're just getting less privileges than previously. He identified barriers to implementing policy including stakeholder lobbying, media pressure and departmental agendas.
“You have to be able to convince people from cabinet ministers to members of the public why this is an issue and that it can be resolved. What are the options and what are the results of the evaluations? How will the interventions be designed and who will undertake them? What's the implementation pathway?"
"The take-away messages from my presentation are to start with a policy issue rather than a dataset, and to recognise that policy reform is most successful when it is evidence-based and has a compelling narrative," Mike concluded.
Sustainability and research impact
An experienced public policy advisor with Government, academia and to multilateral development agencies and foreign financial regulators, Louise has a focus on driving evidence-based policy changes in aged care, bridging the gap between research, policy and practice.
In her current role, Louise works to ensure that UARC research is purposeful and making meaningful change aligning with its vision to enable socially, economically and environmentally sustainable aged care and support for older people in Australia.
We’re not replicating each other. We're all doing something different, contributing and bringing it together.
“It's amazing to see the government and our stakeholders really wanting to engage with us and wanting to listen to what we have to say because of our deep research and commitment to making sure we achieve impact,” Louise said, reflecting on how members of the UARC community bring something different to the table.
“We’re not replicating each other. We're all doing something different, contributing and bringing it together. We know that these are systems-level problems. There's no silver bullet,” she said.
“I like to think of sustainability as our North Star. That's where we are wanting to head towards. The deep knowledge and research anchored by our understanding of what sustainability means can help us move towards that North Star. However, it’s not a linear path and that’s okay.”
Louise, drawing from the Sustainability of the Aged Care Sector: Discussion Paper, explained that sustainability requires a multi-layered approach:
- Reducing the demand for aged care by investing in wellness
- Improving the effectiveness of services being delivered
- Improving the efficiency of delivered services and
- Establishing more equitable funding for subsidised services.
Louise concluded the seminar by mentioning the release of Australia’s Aged Care Sector: Mid-Year Report 2024-25, a flagship transdisciplinary publication for UARC guided by an editorial board and including external stakeholder input,
“There's always an opportunity for more people to contribute to this report. We welcome deep expertise. This publication has an amazing reputation because of the wealth of information and analysis it provides. It's really well regarded in government and in the broader aged care sector and is a good example of policy impact,” she said.
What’s next?
- Learn more about UARC
- Register for the next session in the UARC Research Seminar Series in RES Hub on 13 August 1pm