In case you’re a local just emerged from under your favourite rock, Australia has just had an election. There’s much that has been written about it and still more to go. But I will confine myself to a few observations and ideas – some of which may not have received much media coverage.

The change of government will most certainly mean some significant changes after nine years of a coalition government. How they will play out and what roles the “minor” parties and independents will play is also an unknown.

On a personal level, for the very first time I found myself in a”swing” electorate. I’m over it now. If the visual pollution didn’t get you then the unrelenting paper war taking place in my letter box was wearing.

I will make one overtly political comment and then move on. Both major parties are seeing a now undeniable shift in the way Australians vote having both seen their first preference shares fall to roughly one third each. Both will require – and I am sure receive – detailed scrutiny of the reasons behind this and suggestions about why and what can they do differently. From what has been reported in the media, some are still fully in denial that any problems exist or if they do then, wait for it, it’s our (the citizenry) who are to blame. For example, apparently women didn’t listen to the coalition’s campaign. Really? So please spare us this type of tripe and just get on with your post mortems quietly.

So there’s lots of differences we can expect with this government and from the parliament in general.

While the Labor party has actually some semblance of a climate policy it will face some opposition from the Greens and independents that it is not ambitious enough. One can only hope that sense prevails and and an agreement can be reached and we don’t suffer what occurred a decade ago when ideology and perfection won out over practicality. Look where that landed us.

But by the same token, I expect all parties to government to think carefully about proposals for ensuring the carbon reduction ambition, whatever that may be, are the best they can be. We don’t need knee jerk, flavour-of-the-moment proposals. We need cool-headed, serious and well documented consideration of all costs and benefits, both short and long term. We’ve heard a number of local governments wanting to ban gas connections in any new developments. In Victoria it is not within the authority of local government to rescind the current requirement for the obligation on developers to connect their projects to the gas network where this is available – it is the state government with this authority. It may be that this is an excellent idea. But we don’t know. It should be put to the test if it is a serious suggestion. But what comes next and what’s the end game? Weaning consumers off gas in the home and workplace will be a vexed undertaking. It will doubtless be expensive and consumers likely to bear the brunt of costs. It will have different impacts on different sectors of the economy and households. Over the longer term it would lead to many stranded assets and how to deal with the last 20, or 50, percent of connections would pose equally baffling conundrums. Which is not to say don’t do it. But just think about the whole picture. Is the payoff good? Might it happen organically? What other carbon reduction options should we be considering? How does this stack up against them? What proposals should be our first priority? have we thought through all th eoptions and will this one give us the best (or nearly) in the long term?

The electorate has shown itself concerned about the integrity of governments in this election. But while corruption is one way our taxes get spent in ways which give us a poor return, failure to properly assess proposals and rank competing options also results in less than optimal outcomes.

This PM fully understands why this is important as it was under his watch as Transport Minister, that Infrastructure Australia was founded with the express purpose of providing an independent, reliable and sound examination of infrastructure projects. It’s not a perfect model as lots of infrastructure proposals do not get examined by Infrastructure Australia. But an independent body to ssess climate change proposals based on bodies like Infrastructure Australia and the Productivity Commission, with expertise in project evaluation but, like these two bodies, no regulatory or policy remit. It’s purpose would be just to develop and provide good solid advice based on evidence and sound analysis. This would be an excellent place to start. We have limited funds and an urgent need to act. This should make it doubly imperative to make decisions based on such work. And maybe it should also be required to publish all its work so that informed debate and further refinement can be added by interested parties.

I think even a not so modest budget of say $100m would stack up and propbably be paid bnack (and then some) in the first study they undertook to improve the choices governments make.

What do you think?

Post Scrpit – This is not soley my idea. Credit also lies with my spouse. And yes, we have thrilling conversations over our morning coffees – isn’t this what all long time couples (40 years in August) talk about?