The Orphan Issue

The issue Institutions fail less often on the warnings they suppress than on the issues that belong to no one’s portfolio, which are therefore raised by no one, decided by no one, and revisited by no one. Why it persists Accountability assigned function by function leaves the issues between functions without an owner, and success removes the losses that would otherwise force them into view. What follows One question separates disciplined neglect from orphaning: who set this issue aside, and could they defend having done so? Where no one can answer, the issue was never weighed. It was lost.Victoria spent some $60 million on private security guards to enforce hotel quarantine in 2020, yet no one could tell the inquiry who had committed the state to relying on them. More than seventy thousand documents were produced to the board of inquiry led by Jennifer Coate, and not one showed a contemporaneous rationale for the decision or its approval anywhere in the upper levels of government…