Scott Morrison
Former prime minister Scott Morrison (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

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After a fallow period, the royal commission is back.

At the federal level, there have been at least one royal commission announced every year since 2013, with a break in 2015. That compares with just six from 2000-13, a number that includes the Rudd government’s judicial inquiry into the Howard government’s persecution of Mohamed Haneef, which wasn’t a royal commission per se. And between 1983 and 2000, there were only 12, all under Labor, as part of a general postwar decline in the use of them compared with prewar decades when there were dozens of the things.

As the Australian Law Reform Commission explained in its (unimplemented) 2009 report on public inquiries, royal commissions can generally be divided into either policy or investigative inquiries which have quite distinctive paths and requirements, although investigative royal commissions — say, HIH, Northern Territory juvenile justice or state-level disaster inquiries like the Black Saturday bushfires inquiry in Victoria — tend to end up dealing with complex policy issues as well.

But as the commission discusses, and students of royal commissions have written, commissions also have, in the words of legal academic George Gilligan, a “broader political, or ideological, function as a management strategy, in particular that of crisis management”. And a key reason for their proliferation over the past decade at the federal level has been this use as a political management strategy by Coalition governments.

This is nothing new. What became the royal commission into wiretapping in the first year of the Hawke government began life as an inquiry into Labor lobbyist David Combe’s alleged Soviet links; Paul Keating was forced to call a royal commission into the ALP Centenary House-auditor-general deal; John Howard was forced to call the Cole inquiry under pressure over the extraordinary misconduct of the Australian Wheat Board.

Political management royal commissions should be distinguished from partisan royal commissions, of which there are several examples — Howard’s second inquiry into the Centenary House deal, and Tony Abbott’s pink batts and trade union royal commissions, were all aimed at Labor (and all unsuccessful). Partisan royal commissions can also be valid inquiries: the judicial inquiry into the Howard government and the AFP’s mistreatment of Haneef, and the robodebt royal commission, both addressed real scandals while also being aimed at the Coalition. But with the long-delayed arrival of the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC), partisan royal commissions are likely to become less common.

But the Coalition’s six royal commissions from 2016 were all political management devices, reflecting the need for a government to be seen to respond to major policy problems or investigate significant instances of misconduct that had, with one exception, been the government’s fault. The exception was the royal commission into the Northern Territory juvenile justice system initiated by Malcolm Turnbull within 12 hours in response to horrific revelations by the ABC’s Four Corners.

But consider the rest: Turnbull and then-treasurer Scott Morrison were forced by political pressure, including a looming backbench revolt, to call a banking royal commission, reflecting the spectacular failure of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which the Abbott government had neutered and gutted. Morrison called the aged care royal commission almost as soon as he became prime minister, in an effort to look decisive and change the conversation from Liberal disunity. He was pressured into calling an inquiry into the abuse of disabled Australians by strong lobbying, led by Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John.

The commission into natural disaster arrangements was an effort to respond to the savage and well-warranted criticism of Morrison’s failures in relation to the Black Summer bushfires. And the royal commission into veteran and ADF member suicide was bitterly resisted by Morrison until Labor’s incessant campaigning on the issue and intense pressure from veterans’ families forced his hand.

Calling a royal commission provides temporary relief from a political crisis and offers a reset for a damaging media narrative. For competent political managers, however, they should be an option of last resort. The lack of royal commissions under Howard reflected a government skilled at manipulating the press gallery to evade even major problems, and; significantly, the oil-for-food inquiry was the result of Kevin Rudd successfully using News Corp to inflict damage on Howard and Alexander Downer (who The Australian called on to resign) over the issue, depriving Howard of one of his key media allies.

Morrison, however, came to rely much more heavily on royal commissions and other inquiries as a political management tool. In doing so, he left himself exposed to the downside of royal commissions — in the event the government is still in office when the commission reports, it demands a response.

For a government forced to call a royal commission into an area it would prefer left unexamined, a royal commission merely delays the problem. The final report doesn’t just return to sender the initial challenge, it also focuses media and public attention on what the government will actually do which, necessarily, it wasn’t willing or able to do before — to remedy a failed financial regulator, a broken aged care system, a Defence Department that fails its members or a system that enables the abuse of people with disabilities.

That’s unless you can short-circuit that outcome and politically manage the final report as well.

Tomorrow: the depowering of royal commissions.