Imperious Immediacy of Interest and the Law of Unintended Consequences

West Australian, 21st August 2014

Jeff Kennett, when Premier of Victoria, was the initiator of the state government fetish for forcing bigness on local governments and their communities. Now that he has acknowledged that he was wrong to sell off the TAB in Victoria, can we look forward to his similar honest assessment of the failings of forced amalgamations?

Kennett's volte-face is a recognition of the unforeseen and unintended consequences of selling the TAB, which allowed corporate bookmakers to take over the bookmaking industry without supporting the racing industry to the same extent as state-owned TABs.

There is direct analogy in forced local government amalgamations from which the primary beneficiaries will be corporate developers - although recent announcements from the WA Ministers for Planning and Local Government cast severe doubt on whether those consequences are either unforeseen or unintended.

Of course, the law of unintended consequences will also apply to what Barnett, Simpson and Day are doing to local government (if they are successful, that is). The first unintended consequence is already clear - the galvanising of public opinion and local councils to take legal action to test the validity of the tortuous and devious process by which the WA Government is apparently seeking to further the objectives of the development industry.

Robert Merton (Merton, Robert K. Sociological Ambivalence and Other Essays. New York: Free Press, 1976) identifed a key source of unintended consequences as the “imperious immediacy of interest”, by which he meant that someone wants the intended consequence of an action so much that he purposefully chooses to ignore any unintended effects. 

Does this sound familiar?