Douglas Carswell's Blog

Nudge the Aussies? We should try learning from them instead

The UK government's Behavioural Insights Team - or "Nudge Unit" - has apparently been asked to advise the New South Wales government.

The "Nudge Unit" is all about behavioural psychology.  Many of its ideas and assumptions are currently fashionable amongst the governing classes in Britain.

Rather than lecturing Australia on how to run a country by nudging people, perhaps our Cabinet Office team could use their trip to learn some things about good governance instead?

I've prepared a few questions for our Cabinet Office gurus to ponder on the flight over:

• How come you have so many healthy banks here in Australia? We nudged our UK banks with over 6,000 pages of FSA regulations, but still they went belly up?
• How come Australia has such a clear, no nonsense immigration system? In the UK our immigration system is one endless balls up?
• How come your economy is growing? We try to nudge ours along by printing lots of money and giving it to banks.  Somehow it has not made us rich.
• How come your public finances are in such good shape? Ours are a complete mess. Despite a 50% increase in government speeches using the word "austerity", we're piling up over £100 billion of public debt each year?

Once the Whitehall elite have sorted out the basics about how to run a country, then they can worry about encouraging folk to pay their road tax on time.

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