Soul-crushing red tape binds the nation

Back in January, there were bushfires everywhere, so comedian Celeste Barber set up a fundraiser to raise $30,000 for the NSW Rural Fire Service and Brigades Donations Fund.

Then there were even more fires, so a galvanised public showered the good woman with $51 million, which was 1700 times what she was asking for.

Anybody who has ever passed a hat around the room to pay for a pizza order and ended up $32,478 in surplus will know just how she feels.

Or perhaps not.

If you had leftover money from a pizza order, you'd probably decide to throw in a few bottles of soft drink, or even a celebratory pack of garlic bread or a couple of kebabs.

Once that $51 million is in the hands of the NSW RFS, though, there's no flexibility.

The RFS trust deed prevents donations from being spent on any purposes other than firefighting equipment and NSW facilities - the equivalent of being compelled to buy nothing but pizza every single day for the next four-and-a-half years.

We have, that is, one of those problems that Australia seems to specialise in, where we've ended up in a situation that nobody expected, nobody wants now, and nobody knows how to alter.

And if we do try to fix this problem, we'll do it by looking at the exact circumstances and working out the minimum change possible, which will inevitably mean that the "solution" won't be broad enough to cover the next problem that turns up.

We'll twiddle with the settings on charitable trusts, rather than heaving the law of trusts into the garbage bin of history and writing a law that tries to do what we as a nation want done about reconciling the general good with the wishes of particular donors.

That's the Australian way.

That's the Australian way. We don't see the wood for the trees (and we've got 20% less of both than we had last year).

We don't see the wood for the trees (and we've got 20% less of both than we had last year).

Here at Our Community, for example, we're gung-ho about workplace health and safety, no argument.

Even so, it's hard to see that our office is going to be made safer by having one - and only one - of the many councils we work with demand that we provide them with evidence that our first aid kits are properly maintained.

If we were that slack, wouldn't we also be impatient enough to lie about it anyway?

This devotion to nitpicking prevails at all levels.

I'd be willing to bet, for example, that the government response to the recent train derailment near Melbourne is going to be a lot closer to "fix up that crossing siding" than it is to "spend enough money to have an intercity rail service that works", let alone looking at the 35,000km of high-speed rail that the Chinese have built in the 15 years since the Rudd government declared the Very Fast Train Australia's highest priority infrastructure project.

It's not even as if making little changes from time to time has enabled us to avoid large, disruptive changes.

Our partisan rhetoric inflates every tiny proposal into a vast shadowy bogeyman that takes just as much effort to implement as actually taking on the big issues would require.

We end up with the worst of all worlds - soul-crushing red tape, as bureaucrats attempt to prevent a repeat of any incident that's embarrassed them since 1066; uncharted risk, as people step easily through the gaps in these narrowly drawn prohibitions; and an utter obliviousness to the immense threats (and promises) massing just over the horizon.

Historically, Australia doesn't take threats seriously until they've declared war on England.

Here at Our Community we're also gung-ho about democracy and accountability and governance.

I can't help dreaming, though, of a bipartisan independent No-bullshit Council - made up, say, of Mr Justice Kirby, Susan Pascoe, Tim Costello, Jeff Kennett, Magda Szubanski, Elizabeth Broderick, Adam Goodes, Rosie Batty, and Scott Farqhuar of Atlassian - with the job of receiving complaints from a public hotline, dropping unnecessary regulation down a liftshaft, and editing out pointless legislation across the country.

Perhaps thatcould cut through the red tape and get something done.

Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au.