So, there I was, prepar­ing to en­gage in big peo­ple busi­ness this week with a com­men­tary on the pro­cure­ment law fi­as­co. Then came one of the more em­i­nent­ly sen­si­ble pub­lic voic­es, in the form of He­len Dray­ton … right here on this very page last Sun­day. You can skip me and find her col­umn.

What more can I add, I thought. Ms Dray­ton ar­gued in favour of sound, ra­tio­nal law-mak­ing in or­der “to fos­ter good gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, in­tegri­ty, val­ue for mon­ey, ef­fi­cien­cy, fair­ness, eq­ui­ty, and pub­lic con­fi­dence”.

That her per­spec­tives are now be­ing on­ly mar­gin­al­ly not­ed sig­nals a sad ab­sence from the in­de­pen­dent bench­es of our Par­lia­ment, with all due re­spect to the in­cum­bents. Yet, thank­ful­ly, this voice of rea­son pre­vails through the de­vices of a free press. Dit­to the more stri­dent ef­forts of Afra Ray­mond, aligned with the ne­ces­si­ty for greater trans­paren­cy.

But be­fore I get to some of the more sub­stan­tial of­fer­ings of these two cit­i­zens, Ms Dray­ton in par­tic­u­lar, I of­fer a per­spec­tive to con­sid­er. If, as I ar­gued three years ago, leg­is­la­tion to gov­ern state pro­cure­ment is not ac­com­pa­nied by an un­com­pro­mis­ing com­mit­ment—through leg­is­la­tion, con­ven­tion, or reg­u­lat­ed prac­tice—to a high­er lev­el of trans­paren­cy it would amount to noth­ing more than in­con­ve­nient, fan­ci­ful adorn­ments.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, through­out the var­i­ous de­bates and pub­lic dis­cus­sions when the sub­ject be­came fash­ion­able, I was re­mind­ed of a class­room many years ago with Dr Daphne Phillips-Gaskin at the front ex­plain­ing the true mean­ing of au­thor­i­tar­i­an so­ci­eties, in­clud­ing the adop­tion of such mind­sets and prac­tices by hap­less sub­jects.

This makes it easy to un­der­stand why when traf­fic needs to be di­vert­ed, a con­crete cul­vert in­stead of a more for­giv­ing ob­struc­tion is rou­tine­ly con­sid­ered. The words of a late col­league who had just lost a daugh­ter on one of our high­ways linger: “Con­crete? It had to be con­crete? Not a ca­ble, a plas­tic bar­ri­er. Con­crete?”

Why, af­ter all, use plas­tic or ca­ble when a sin­gle slab of con­crete would do?

I kept count­ing oc­ca­sions such as these when en­light­ened, weight­ed, nu­anced so­lu­tions were be­ing thrown in the fire in ex­change for leg­isla­tive con­crete and steel with sharp edges.

So, a pub­lic threat is ob­served. Spurn pre­ci­sion and pro­fes­sion­al judge­ment for a state of pub­lic emer­gency with all at­ten­dant risks as­so­ci­at­ed with sus­pend­ing a wide swathe of hu­man rights. So even as I rant­ed over its un­law­ful ap­pli­ca­tion back in 2011, there was in the back­ground to this out­rage, broad pub­lic ad­vo­ca­cy for steel-re­in­forced con­crete.

More re­cent­ly, peo­ple want­ed pep­per spray. Take pep­per spray. En­ter a regime of re­quire­ments be­fit­ting far more harm­ful in­stru­ments of vi­o­lence. How many pep­per spray per­mits have been grant­ed since then?

Three years ago, I saw it com­ing. Politi­cians in and out of Par­lia­ment, civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions (in­clud­ing well-re­sourced busi­ness cham­bers), and so­cial com­men­ta­tors–all de­sir­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion of a sledge­ham­mer—how­ev­er de­sir­able the ex­pect­ed out­come.

Ms Dray­ton kind­ly ridicules the no­tion of “teething prob­lems” and notes “a fail­ure to un­der­stand the full im­pli­ca­tions of mean­ing­ful pro­cure­ment law and a lack of pre­pared­ness”. In­deed, ful­ly in keep­ing with the “cul­ture” to which I con­stant­ly al­lude, the for­mer sen­a­tor notes “sus­pi­cious pub­lic ‘jam­min’ to pro­claim the law”.

I recog­nised noth­ing “sus­pi­cious” though. On­ly an au­thor­i­tar­i­an cul­ture work­ing its way through the com­plex­i­ties of democ­ra­cy. Ear­ly on, I turned to an in­flu­en­tial busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive and asked whether the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty un­der­stand what it was ask­ing for. This was not meant to be an in­sult, but sim­ply to sound an alert at the ap­proach­ing men­ace of a sight­less, leg­isla­tive sledge­ham­mer.

Now, as usu­al, we have to set about re­pair­ing some dam­age and Ms Dray­ton’s pre­scrip­tions sound ab­solute­ly fit­ting.

They are re­peat­ed here be­cause they will un­fold as crit­i­cal ar­eas for con­sid­er­a­tion in the com­ing days. There has to be a tem­po­rary stay on the re­quire­ments of the Pub­lic De­pos­i­to­ry. Pri­vate sec­tor play­ers ought to have sound­ed much ear­li­er, ur­gent alerts on this, but there we go.

The oth­er point made by Ms Dray­ton re­lates heav­i­ly to my con­stant harp­ing on the im­per­a­tives of re­al, non-cos­met­ic e-gov­er­nance. Why should it be that there is a con­cern about the “ease of nav­i­ga­tion” of the de­pos­i­to­ry web­site? Where are the ex­perts on such mat­ters?

Then there is, and more close­ly aligned to my own in­ex­pert ob­ser­va­tion, the need to im­pose a sen­si­ble “spend­ing thresh­old for pub­lic ser­vice ac­count­ing of­fi­cers and the CEOs of oth­er pub­lic en­ti­ties with­in the law”. Why is it nec­es­sary to say this at this stage?

Fi­nal­ly, Ms Dray­ton pro­pos­es a six-month pe­ri­od “to im­prove the sys­tem” es­pe­cial­ly since there are close to 33,000 “lines of busi­ness pend­ing pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion”. She is a woman of bound­less faith.