Tag: governance failure

If parliament was held to workplace standards

Seen through a corporate leadership lens, the recent analysis by Amplify reads like a board paper titled Why nothing got done.

In a six month period, almost half of parliamentary sitting time was absorbed by point scoring, disruption and theatre, with policy work compressed into what remained. The finding gained public attention through an ABC News report, where the framing was very clear.

“Parliament is wasting our time.”
Georgina Harrison, Amplify CEO, ABC News interview

A board sees executive time diverted from delivery to performance. Behaviour consumes oxygen. Risk and reputation join the discussion. This is the moment directors shift from observation to intervention.

The accountability picture sharpens further when the numbers are spelled out in operational terms.

“In the last six months of parliament, 28 business days were wasted on political point scoring.”
Georgina Harrison, Amplify CEO, ABC News interview

In big business, accountability concentrates at the top. The CEO, the chair and the senior leadership team carry responsibility for how time is used and how people behave in decision making forums. Read through a board lens, this section feels like a leadership issue parked under general business, then left there.

Time spent this way erodes value. Twenty eight business days in six months shows productivity leaking, opportunities missed and direction slipping. In board shorthand, this reads as a performance issue deferred again, while investors circle and analysts mark execution risk.

Governance systems succeed or fail on consequences. Standing rules provide structure, yet boards judge systems by impact. The ABC report captured the long running nature of the issue clearly.

“Decades of criticism about behaviour and limited policy debate have failed to shift the dynamic.”
ABC News, interview summary

A governance committee hears this and recognises a familiar problem. The rules exist. The outcomes drift. That is the trigger for change. Meeting formats reset. Speaking rules sharpen. Incentives move. Performance consequences apply.

Culture sits alongside leadership throughout this analysis. Culture shows how power behaves in daily practice. Persistent dysfunction points to weak authority, incentives pulling sideways and consequence gaps left unattended. On a board paper, this section reads like culture written in the margins of the minutes.

The conclusion arrives without flourish. A corporate organisation facing these signals moves quickly into review mode. Senior leaders face scrutiny. Behaviour links directly to performance. Governance structures undergo redesign with urgency. In business shorthand, this looks like intervention approved, timetable attached.

Politics operates under a different shield. Parliamentary leadership sits apart from the accountability standards applied across big business every day.

To a board audience, the final line reads as risk identified, owner missing.

 

When leadership mistakes discipline for strength

The Liberal National Coalition is back where it started, fractured, performative, and unable to hold itself together when pressure arrives.

Eight months after the post election split and awkward reconciliation, the Coalition is again unravelling, this time in full public view. The immediate trigger is procedural, Nationals frontbenchers quitting the shadow ministry after Sussan Ley insisted three Nationals resign for crossing the floor on the government’s hate crime bill. The response from National’s Leader David Littleproud was escalation, not resolution.

As Michelle Grattan observed, Ley was boxed into a no win position. Shadow cabinet solidarity is not optional theatre, it is the basic mechanism that allows an opposition to function. Ignoring the breach would have weakened the role itself. Enforcing it exposed how little authority the structure now carries.

This is the leadership failure. Not the rule enforcement, but the absence of relational authority that makes rules workable.

True leadership shows itself before a crisis, not during the press conference that follows. It builds shared expectations early, it names boundaries clearly, and it invests in trust so that discipline is not mistaken for punishment when it arrives. When that work is missing, every corrective action looks like aggression and every disagreement turns into a test of dominance.

What we are seeing is a coalition that treats leadership as positional rather than relational. Titles exist, but consent does not. Authority is asserted rather than carried. The result is a constant cycle of brinkmanship where internal players use public exits to gain leverage, knowing the system lacks the cohesion to hold.

The timing makes this worse. With the government under pressure following the Bondi attacks, the opposition had an opportunity to demonstrate resolve, seriousness, and focus. Instead, attention swung inward. The message to the public is confusion, not authority.

The pressure on the Nationals leader is just as telling. David Littleproud abstained rather than lead, then framed the decision as procedural while insisting the Coalition relationship remained intact.

It is the language of someone managing fallout, not setting direction. When a leader cannot carry their party with them on a defining vote, and cannot clearly own the consequence of that choice, authority drains away.

The public sees a leader under constant internal pressure, responding to events rather than shaping them. In moments like this, leadership is revealed not by statements about unity, but by whether anyone is still prepared to follow.

We have explored this in previous posts . Leadership that relies on control rather than legitimacy collapses under stress.

Organisations that confuse unity with silence find themselves brittle when disagreement appears. And when leaders inherit broken structures without repairing how power is exercised inside them, every decision becomes combustible.

The Coalition’s problem is not ideology or personality. It is structural. Until leadership is understood as something built with others rather than imposed on them, these crises will keep repeating. Different actors, same script.

Leadership is not tested by loyalty in easy moments. It is revealed by how disagreement is held without the whole structure tearing itself apart.