Andrew Wilkie’s experience is an important comment on the functioning of Western Democracies. Spin Doctors and firewalls around Ministerial responsibility are a corrosive disease on the democratic fabric. It is not only in the most prominent political battlegrounds of the coalition of the willing but throughout democracies at all levels of government that these tactics of political opportunism and survival are undermining the foundations of our democracies.

For many conservative Australians the disturbing aspect of Spin Doctors and firewalls is that many good policies are being undermined by the unnecessary spin used to implement and defend them. Whether policies stand or fall appears to be more reliant on the success or not of the spin than the merits of the policy. Firewalls play a similar role as they abrogate the responsibility of the Minister for the decisions the government makes.

The sovereign power of the people conferred upon politicians require that they be held responsible and accountable for their actions. Jack Robertson described several solutions to enhance the transparency surrounding the Ministers of our government and all have varying degrees of merit. All should be included in an attack on this unelected coterie of advisers, but more importantly Ministers should be held directly accountable for the actions of their advisers.

I do not claim to be all- knowing on this subject, and would be interested to know the answers to the following questions:

Isn’t the higher echelon of the public service supposed to offer advice on the positive and negative implication of policies? If so, then surely the coterie of advisers are only used in a party political sense.

Have Australian politicians always used publicly funded advisers who are not members of the public bureaucracy?

Has there been a significant change in the powers of parliamentary committees to investigate Ministerial conduct? Have they been officially or unofficially detoothed?

I ask these questions because if the parliament is not a proxy for the people then we are not living in a democracy. The ballot box is NOT the ONLY vehicle for the public holding politicians accountable – in fact one of the parliament’s major functions is to represent the public interest between election periods. Politicians have failed to see the trees for the forest – their political opponents represent the collective will of a large proportion of any given electorate and Parliamentary committees have a right to hold Ministers accountable on an ongoing basis.

Whether or not you believe that the War on Iraq was justified, transparency and accountability in our democracy appears to be at a low ebb. John Howard, Bob Carr and all democratic leaders should be held accountable for their actions and the actions of their spin doctors.

Margo: Dan, you’re such a romantic! For the truth about our utterly compromised public service and our politicians’ completely unaccountable political advisers, see former public servant John Nethercote’s analysis of the children overboard inquiry at What servants are for. John wrote:

“For the public service, the affair demonstrates its fragility in the face of both ministers and, more perniciously, ministerial staffers. In the absence of adequate means to bring ex-ministers and ministerial staff to account, it demonstrates the vulnerability of the modern public service.”