patronage system allowed a member of parliament to offer individualized
benefits to constituents and others, which was a feasible political arrangement
when constituencies had relatively few, mostly immigrant, voters. As the
population grew, and with the beneficial effects of the 1866 Public Schools
Act in NSW and the 1872 Education Act in Victoria, the patronage system
started to become a net burden on members of parliament, and was a source of
damaging scandals:‘It was by voicing thecollectivedemands of local pressure
groups for railways, schools and other facilities, rather than supplyingindivid-
ualswith government billets, that the urban politician increasingly won
support’(Serle 1971, p. 117). Also relevant were the 1883 reforms, somewhat
along Northcote–Trevelyan lines, with an independent Public Service Board
and a new system of classification. Closely associated was the notion of
placing public decisions and public administration more generally on a‘sci-
entific’basis—from eugenics to town and country planning—through their
delegation to‘independent’experts and by successive refinement of the
administrative machinery.
9.2.8Rule by Experts
The commission system seems to exemplify a persistent strand of Australian
exceptionalism: the heavy reliance on public guardians, purportedly disinter-
ested and expert individuals; or, more commonly, commissions and commit-
tees of great number and variety, into whose hands the various parliaments
have placed significant non-judicial power.
Whatever its weaknesses, the commission model reduced the pressure to
seek efficiencies through the installation of private management, and the
model, once well established, provided a template for structuring the provi-
sion of a wider range of services, from sewerage to electricity to a shipping line.
In that sense, the Australian story seems consistent with the notion of‘path
dependence’or self-reinforcing processes: organizations achieving early suc-
cess (by accident or design) secure internal and external economies that make
their eventual displacement costly.
What of the counterfactual, private railways? The broad structure of the
system in each colony was relatively easy to determine. However, the exact
location of lines and their extensions were more contested, and would have
been under private ownership; and there would always have been political
struggles over fare levels and structures. If, as in other countries, the private
lines had been provided guarantees, then most likely (in the counterfactual)
the Australian colonies and states would have felt a heavyfiscal burden,
especially in economic downturns, and been subject to political pressures.
The chief railway commissioner in Victoria from 1883 to 1898 was Richard
Speight, previously assistant general manager of the Midlands Railway (UK).
Jonathan Pincus