Jumat, 01 Oktober 2010

Deciding Public Interest

In many democratic countries, the issues of public interest are becoming more relevance related to the debate on agreement and disagreement that has political, economic and social implication. The debate is commonly happened in parliament as the ultimate decision maker on policy related to public interest and unavoidably transmitted through mass media to become public concern. To make a policy decision-making, politician and government official should do a concept elaboration and judgment in terms of public interest however in some cases they indicated involve their individual or sectional interest into the debate.


It is important to clearly distinguish between public interest and individual/sectional interest in relation to privatization of state own enterprises, clean air or water, public broadcast, taxation policy, public infrastructure, and other recent issues. Academically, Mulgan (2000, pp. 3-4) explained that public interest has similar concept with “the common good” or “the public benefit”, while the public in this context refers to inclusively all members of a community constraint by territorial boundaries and constitution or common system of government. Indeed, conceptually the public interest must cover all members of political community without exception.

In economic discourse, public interest could be identified as all taxpayers, consumers or the broadest constituent, while the producer, retailer or business entities could be identified as sectional interest. The government as part of public sector-civil society-private sector triangle has to concern with the broadest interest which is the public, for instance trough laws and regulations. However, in some cases the government can accommodate sectional interest equally with public interest, such as in the case of providing facilities for disable people in public sphere in Germany to give the equal treatment for its citizen.

In many political circumstances, the ruling government is rejects to accept public interest as the only consideration of a decision making. This happened, especially in many sensitive issues, because the government avoids losing its seat/power. In Australia the issue of “super tax” for mining companies is politically “explosive ammunition” for the opposition party, whoever the ruling party is. In the previous Australian government, reaction from opposition related to “super tax” for mining companies could diminish popularity of Labour Party and finally “toppled” Kevin Rudd from its power. The debate is related to the effectiveness of imposing “super tax” and who is the public in this context. While, almost all of issues in public policy have political nuances, some issues have strong political and economic implication and become a very sensitive issue. Even though ethically the government should divide between political and technical terms, the political facts could prevent the government to make the right decision.

From the theoretical point of view it is clear that the public is the broadest part of society, that are all citizens benefiting from “super tax” such as through social benefit and public infrastructure funded by the tax. However, opposition party, the Liberal Party, argued that imposing “super tax” will reduce competitiveness of Australian mining companies, giving disincentives for investment in the industry and badly impacting huge number of direct employees and many other related business in many region. Even though it is clearly as sectional interest, the ruling government considers it as political fact that cannot be neglected in decision making process, since the public interest is political in its nature.

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