Former Treasury secretary Ken Henry says most parliamentarians are ill-equipped to understand their role in a capitalist democracy in scathing comments about climate change inaction.
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Shareholder environmental activism was forcing carbon-emitting businesses to act rather than elected officials, who were instead swayed by "short-term political opportunism" and ignorant voters calling the shots at the ballot box, he said.
"In the capitalist system, it is the role of democratically elected government to address the market failures ... but our democratic institutions have not been up to the job," he said, citing climate change, the escalating intensity and frequency of environmental disasters and habitat loss and species extinction.
Fellow former top public servant Frances Adamson has, for the first time, also criticised Australia's "decades of inaction" after previously praising emission policies of governments she served as head of the Foreign Affairs and Trade department.
The pair received honorary doctorates from ANU last week where the remarks were made to graduating students.
Dr Henry, who had already earned his PhD in economics and given two earlier honorary doctorates, told the students their studies offered them an understanding of how to make a capitalist democracy work and the role of government to address market failure risks.
But few parliamentarians had the same understanding, he said, and collectively they had failed to address those risks with action before probable social and environmental harm as was their responsibility.
"Yet 'the rest of us', who make up the electorate, suffer from well documented biases and other cognitive limitations that pretty much ensure that short-term political opportunism is going to have the inside running at the ballot box," he said.
"The political economy of the capitalist system is a bit mad when you think about it."
Today's dysfunction of inaction was unrecognisable from the intervention limitations economics pushed the government to adopt in ambitious economic reforms four decade ago, he said.
"We reformers should have put more effort into ensuring that governments would do the things they had not been doing," he said.
Even the "responsible governments" were incapable of passing a new tax in the long-term interests of the country, he said. While at Treasury, Dr Henry proposed the doomed Resource Super Profits Tax on mining companies during the Rudd Labor government.
"Think about the failure of Australian governments to legislate a tax system that ensures that Australians are the principal beneficiaries of the plunder of their non-renewable mineral and energy resources," he said.
"And ask yourself how confident you can be that governments will ensure that the prospects of future generations will not be diminished by the present."
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Ms Adamson said recent global shifts made it a consequential time for public policy leaders to engage and take action.
"After decades of inaction, action to slow the rate of dangerous climate change has become an imperative," she said.
Ms Adamson, who now serves as governor of South Australia, was given her honorary doctorate for contributions to Australian diplomacy at DFAT.
Dr Henry was given the new honorary doctorate for his contributions to Australian public policy at Treasury and as chair of ANU's Sir Roland Wilson Foundation.
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