Labor Pains: implementing the Australian Labor Party's policy of ‘district provision and school reorganisation’ in Victoria, 1989‐92

Abstract

Abstract Consent engineering is a consultative approach frequently resorted to by public policy‐makers to secure the legitimacy of proposed policy changes. This process usually entails the involvement of representative interest groups in the definition and implementation of policy. Using the example of the reorganisation of post‐compulsory schooling in Victoria, Australia, this article outlines the circumstances under which consent engineering goes awry at the point of service delivery. This is shown to occur when schools see an otherwise benign discourse of consensus being relied upon to drive centrally imposed policy changes they deem to be counter‐productive or threatening to their vital interests. An official discourse of bureaucracy is shown to invoke a range of political symbols to legitimate policy whereas schools, on the other hand, respond with a counter‐discourse of their own designed to invalidate and circumvent the new initiative. But however well intentioned, such unofficial discourse is show...