Public policy, Danish-style

Voice: What was your role in Denmark?

Jenny Lewis: In Denmark I had a job as professor of public policy and public administration at Roskilde University, the city university of the old capital of Denmark, where the kings and queens are buried, just outside Copenhagen.

It’s an interesting university with a very strong Marxist foundation, and is famous for teaching students based on group projects. So from first semester in first year students are designing and working on research projects, of which our students here in Australia tend to be very shy.

Danish first-year students are very different from Australian first years, mainly because they are about three years older. Danish schooling is longer and they start school at an older age. And then they all have a year off, so they’re all 21 by the time they start first year. This makes a huge difference to their levels of maturity and particularly impacts their readiness for group work.

The Danish education system is notably different from ours also because there are no out of pocket fees at any level. And because of Denmark’s location in the European Union (EU) and because I was teaching in English, we had students from all across Europe, because they can do a semester of study at any university in the EU.

Voice: What comparisons do you draw between Australian and Danish politics and public policy?

JL: Danish politics is vastly different from ours. They are just used to having multiparty coalition governments made up of several parties of between 5-20 people. These are established through negotiation and consensus, rather than our combative style, and that feeds through into public administration and how policy is made and so there’s a lot more engagement with citizens than we see here. A lot of the policy changes are geared toward including more citizen voices.

The Social Democrats are the main party in power, in coalition with a green group and another very left group. It’s difficult for outsiders to understand Danish political parties: the far right party for instance is called Venstre, which actually is the Danish word for left. In government, Vestra was in coalition with a more One Nation type party. 

The Danes battle with some strong nationalist issues. Immigration, refugee settlement and asylum-seeking is a particular issue that concerns the nation, complicated by the fact that European borders are so open.

It’s difficult for refugees in Denmark because they’re so visible, compared with somewhere like here which is very multicultural. In Denmark, less than 5 per cent of people have been born somewhere else. It’s a much more homogenous population. You really stand out if you’re not blonde. Denmark struggles with it as much as anywhere else. Even though we know it’s a strongly liberal, social democratic society and has good social welfare provisions, it really doesn’t deal as well with immigration issues as you might expect.

Voice: Turning to home, in comparison with Denmark what issues are we not addressing as well as we should be?

JL: It’s very disappointing to see the small gains that have been made in environmental issues. Denmark and the Scandinavians in general are a lot better at that.

In Denmark, they’re terribly disappointed that only 30 per cent of energy is renewable, because they set a target of 50 per cent! Denmark is a big maker of wind turbines, and as a society they’re very switched on to the need for sustainable energy in a way that we’re not.

A major attribute of Danish society is their willingness to use taxes to address social and policy issues. Cars for instance are not expensive but the tax you pay almost doubles the price of owning a car. They’re much more interventionist in getting people to use public transport.

I think overall that’s the biggest difference between Australia and Denmark: it all revolves around the way that they’re prepared to use tax. Taxes are much higher than we pay, and yet nobody complains, because they see the benefits. All your education is provided, your healthcare and transport. It’s an interesting cultural difference.

Denmark is a small country, which makes it easier to be cohesive, and because it hasn’t had the sort of immigration we’ve had (which actually makes Australia an exciting and interesting place) it’s easier for them to feel ‘we’re all in this together’, and we’re connected, we’re all like each other and we trust each other. It’s something to do with the size and less diversity, which has its own problems, but it does make it easier. Everyone trusts each other, and the tax authority, and they don’t have the kind of issues about confidentiality that concern Australians. Here we don’t want anyone to have our health records for instance, and in Denmark no-one would even question that.

There’s a way to go in Australia in building trust between citizens and authorities because we’re so big, and so diverse.