Tonight, your comments on the death of an ethical public service and your ideas to repair the damage. I�ll start with a quote from Sir Robert Menzies in 1942, in one of his �Forgotten people� radio talks:
“Do not underrate the civil servant. He is for the most part anonymous and unadvertised, but he is responsible for by far the greater part of the achievements sometimes loudly claimed by others. He provides, as a witty friend of mine once said, ‘a level of competence below which no Government can fall’. He has done a marvellous job in this war. His importance will grow, not diminish, for Government activity is here to stay.”
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Peter Gellatly
Though I have no means to assess the merits of Colonel Collin’s concerns, I must allow that good people do not routinely risk their careers over implausibilities or trivialities. So I am prepared to put Collins on a pedestal with Wilkie and … Whatshisname?
You recall the fellow: the Federal Police Officer let go because he asserted the Federal Police was allowing itself to be politically manipulated regarding East Timor intelligence. At least, so my memory serves: the same memory which, a couple of years after the incident, can’t even recall the Officer’s name!
Which brings me to your solution in Few chances left to restore public service integrity:
“What scares me is that if the crazy brave whistle blowers who keep telling us what�s gone wrong don�t get the public�s attention soon, the destruction of our long tradition of a �frank and fearless� public service will be complete and there�ll be nothing left to save…
“In the end, the people have to insist. We need to honour our whistleblowers, for a start, and look after them when the government goes for their throats.”
All the evidence points to the public having a very short attention span, and, subsequent to a fast but fleeting bout of moral outrage, not really giving a damn. And one wonders at the public-sector whistleblowers’ consequent employment prospects in the private sector.
Industry, after all, cherishes “team players” above all, and could well be averse to hiring a perceived “loose cannon”.
I suggest that it is really this lack of public support, not term contracts and the like, which is responsible for a dearth of overt fearless principle in the public service. Not from the (preselected?) naturally timid, mind you – they wouldn’t speak out under any circumstances. But the putatively courageous might be forgiven for concluding that the public they serve does not value, and is therefore not entitled to expect, the whistleblower’s inevitable personal sacrifice – a sacrifice borne, not just by the individual, but by his/her family as well.
So, Webdiarists, what is the name of that former Federal Police Officer, and does anyone know how he’s making out?
Margo: His name in Wayne Sievers. He stood for the Democrats in Canberra after he left the AFP. I don�t know what he�s doing now. Wayne, can you check in? Here�s an interview he did on Lateline in May 2001 when Captain Andrew Plunkett blew the whistle on East Timor intelligence cover-ups: East Timor massacre cover-up discussed.
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Anon (name supplied)
I’ve just ‘resigned’ from the federal public service (I’ve taken a super option available to me) due to some family heath issues, so it�s not a happy event for me personally. However it does give me an opportunity to join others who are prepared to tell it as it is these days (see Expelling the good, for the good of the government).
I was not at the Senior Executive Service level in Canberra but at the Executive level and State based. I was responsible for a lot of State-Commonwealth implementation of policy and programmes stuff.
The last 2-3 years have been all about ‘scripting’ what we said and what we did. No one – but no one – is allowed to speak any more in meetings – only the person who is ultimately going to have to sign off. So while one was allowed – but also threatened sometimes with not being allowed – to attend meetings, one was expected to sit mute as the script unfolded, even where it was obvious that the Canberra blow-ins did not have all the detail nor necessarily all the facts.
This was due to the ‘position’ that the department had decided it would take, regardless, and of course we all had to toe the line or else.
I’m extremely proud of being a public administrator of 25 years standing, and I’m even prouder that I continued to try and give fearless and without favour advice and information, even if it did make my working life uncomfortable and at times cost me personally.
We need to acknowledge that there are many, many fine public servants who do want to be effective, worthwhile and fearless public administrators.
Maybe if the public stopped the nonsense of saying how meaningless public service work is then more would be proud to wear the badge and tell it as it is. For all Australians’ sake.
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Dr Geoff Robinson, lecturer in Australian studies and politics, Deakin University
Peter Shergold, the current head of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, gave an interesting insight into the contemporary public service in March 2002 as head of the Department of Education, Science and Technology. He declared in an address to staff (my emphasis): “The key question, and it is the one on which I have been reflecting at every meeting I�ve had in the last six weeks, is whether the Department is in a fit shape to contribute as we should to supporting the Government, particularly our Ministers, in pursuit of public policy….
“There were times in the past when public servants did not have to worry too much about such questions. They could look forward to having an effective monopoly on providing advice to the government of the day. As has been emphasised at previous all-staff meetings, this is no longer the case. We need to aspire to being the provider of choice. We need to think constantly of how we can add value to the directions of government.
“The need to stand in the shoes of others is nowhere more important than in the service that we provide to our Ministers. Let me be quite clear. They are our most important clients. We serve the government of the day through them. Of course they need to receive, and will almost certainly welcome, frank and fearless advice. But robust advice will only be fully effective if a relationship of trust has been established. To do that we have to get the day-to-day responsibilities right.
“And �right� means imagining that we stand in the shoes of a Minister who is participating in rigorous political and public debate, facing hostile Parliamentary questioning, contributing in an informed way to Cabinet deliberations or seeking to respond sympathetically to the interests of constituents and citizens.
“In relationship management there is one abiding truth: from little things big things grow. We need to ensure that the correspondence drafted for Ministers captures the personal concerns that they will want to express for those who write to them. We need to imagine, as we prepare PPQs (possible parliamentary questions) that we would want to use those words if we were on our feet in Parliament.
This seems to me a total misreading of the role of the public service. Only the minister stands in parliament, it is not the role of public servants to pretend they are politicians (although the Canberra press gallery dropped this inhibition a longtime ago, as demonstrated by Paul Kelly’s belief that he is the leader of the ALP).
Margo: Shergold certainly put his ideas into practice � see Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey. And for more words of wisdom from Shergold shortly after becoming head of PM&C, see Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns.
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Simon Jarman in Melbourne
Disclosure: I am a former A.C.T. Branch Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (1997) and a member of the Australian Labor Party.
Since Federation, our �third pillar� of government prided itself in providing frank advice to all governments without fear or favour. It could no longer be accused of doing so, and that is to the detriment of the good governance of this country and the health of our democracy. I believe that the politicisation of Australia�s federal public service over the past decade is one of the saddest things to have happened to our democracy.
A Labor government started us down this road by ending permanently tenured public service heads and moving them to fixed term, performance based contracts. Perhaps one of the rationales for this was that the government wanted the public service to be run more like the private sector. Perhaps the notion of permanency for agency heads was considered antiquated. Whatever the reasons, this change has created a dynamic where senior public servants are now entirely captive to their ministers.
While this may or may not have been the intent of Labor, it is without doubt the outcome under John Howard, who has accelerated the politicisation of the public service to the extent that public service heads are, generally speaking, now little more than political lap dogs.
Under John Howard, we have seen time and again that most advice from the public service is tailored to the prevailing policy, ideology or propaganda of his government. Doubt and dissent from senior public servants is punished rather than encouraged by his government, and those who toe the line get the favours.
John Howard�s record in this area is dismal. The children overboard scandal immediately springs to mind, where senior bureaucrats in the Department of Defence remained silent in the face of overwhelming evidence that this was a lie. The navy officer who spoke out had his career ruined, while Jane Halton, who ran the boat people policy in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, was given a pat on the head and appointed head of the Department of Health and Ageing.
The Mick Keelty affair is still fresh in people�s minds. After senior managers of our intelligence agencies were outed this week for tailoring their intelligence assessments to government policy, Paul Barratt, the ex-Secretary of the Department of Defence, said on ABC radio:
“I�m sure throughout government there are pressures on people to tell the government what it wants to hear. I would be very surprised if there was any strong counsel against the invasion of Iraq.”
Under Howard�s government senior federal bureaucrats operate in an atmosphere dominated by fear of reprisal for telling the truth (if it doesn�t fit the government�s agenda) and the expectation of favour for toeing the Liberal Party line. How is this a good thing for our democracy?
It is time the Labor Party acknowledged that the changes they set in train were detrimental to the good governance and democracy of this country. In short, what Labor broke it needs to fix.
The Labor Party needs to abandon the short-term contracts imposed on agency heads and other senior staff, and their performance bonuses. Public service values are not the values of Collins and Pitt Streets and nor should they ever be.
I don�t pretend to have all the answers, but one to go would be to tenure senior departmental and agency staff for six-year terms, the same as Senators. This would restore some level of independence to our heads of public service, and their ability to provide frank and fearless advice to ministers without fear or favour.
Australia needs men and women of integrity running our public institutions, people captive to good governance in the service of all Australians, not to their performance bonuses and the sound of their master�s voice on the hill. The Australian people deserve to have confidence in the integrity of their public service.
There can only be upside for Labor in addressing this issue before the election. It melds perfectly with the �values� agenda Mark Latham is establishing, and the message is a simple one:
“Only the Labor party will restore integrity to the public service � a public service so thoroughly corrupted by John Howard.”