The purge escalates. The education department burns. Brendan Nelson, education minister, turns his back and pretends it’s nothing to do with him or his desk, where the buck’s supposed to stop.

I detailed the censorship scandal over Australia’s higher education policy and the refusal of the minister to be told that his government’s policy has seen fewer disadvantaged and mature age students able to access our universities in Brendan Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey.

In summary, the allegation is that the then department head Peter Shergold – now head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – ordered that sections of the department’s national report on higher education be cut to delete unpalatable facts. Shergold allegedly did this to assist the ‘presentation’ of Nelson’s new policy – to bump up HECS fees even more, thus locking out even more disadvantaged students, and allowing the rich to jump even more queues by paying more up front.

It appears that Nelson and/or his office was involved, but that’s very murky because Nelson won’t talk about it, choosing to hide behind a letter by new department head Jeff Harmer which begs more questions than it answers. Harmer won’t say what Shergold did. Nelson won’t say either, and Shergold says he can’t recall.

Since Tuesday, when I published all the key documents in the scandal:

* Labor revealed that the author of the report, Dr Tom Karmel, was sacked as head of the department’s research team and research team member Phil Aungles was transferred out of the section. Labor also revealed that since the censorship, the research capacity of the department had been gutted – department now focuses on opinion polling via the Liberal Party’s political pollster Mark Textor. (Expert out after adverse report)

* A department witchhunt has begun into who dared tell the Australian people the truth and all public servants in the know have been instructed by Harmer to shut up or else. The department refuses to say whether it has called in the Australian Federal Police and Nelson continues to avoid responsibility by saying it’s a departmental matter. (Education officials face leak inquiry)

In view of all this, I thought you might be interested in the full text of a recent interview Peter ‘can’t recall’ Shergold – who ran the industrial relations department under Peter Reith during the waterfront dispute – gave on how he saw his job as public service chief. You’ll be relieved to read that according to Shergold the public service is still frank and fearless and not reduced to a mere instrument of government spin and deception. You’ll be particularly reassured by this little Shergold gem:

There is a disease running round Australia at the moment and it’s not SARS, it is conspiratorialism. This view that somehow public servants have become politicised and are brow beaten in not providing advice to ministers or that ministerial advisers are putting up walls to ensure that Prime Ministers and ministers don’t hear that advice. I’ve got to say that its absolute balderdash and poppycock.

***

Interview with the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) and leader of the Australian Public Service Peter Shergold on Canberra ABC Radio, July 30, 2003

Chris Uhlman: You’re someone who’s got an academic background and has spent a lot time thinking about the public service, and of course in your role as head of public service commission you’re largely responsible for changing the public service in many ways. How do you see the job of the head of PM and C? What is the role?

Peter Shergold: Well Chris, I think that probably there are two parts to the role. The first is to ensure that the PM is provided with robust policy advice, preferably policy advice that reflect an approach that runs right across government. In other words my department should be there to ensure that you have the coordination of the robust policy advice going through to the PM. So that’s key role. But it also has this second role, I suppose, of giving some leadership to the public service, and it is one that I take very seriously because frankly, certainly outside Canberra, I don’t think there is great enough recognition of the role public servants play within our democracy.

Chris: You say robust advice – of course that’s one of the criticisms that comes now we’ve seen a lot of changes, a generational change to the public service over the last fifteen or twenty years or so… One of the key criticisms, and it came up I know under the Labor government, has come up under the Coalition government – that there is no longer robust advice. It started I guess with the move to contracts, people started saying, ‘Oh well you’ll never get people giving you frank and fearless advice’.

Shergold: Yes, I just don’t believe it. I mean I tend not to use the term frank and fearless advice, and the reason I don’t is that the words slip off the tongue too easily. And they’ve become a cliche, and because they’ve become a cliche they’ve lost power. This is why I tend to use the words ‘robust policy advice’.

Now I have to say to you I can see no evidence whatever that the advice that goes to ministers, the advice that goes to the Prime Minister, is mitigated or softened in any way for political reasons. I have to say I’ve always been surprised that people think it’s somehow courageous to give strong policy advice when you’re usually doing it within the confines of the minister’s or Prime Minister’s room.

I’ve worked for ministers of very different political persuasions. I’ve yet to work for a Minister who didn’t enjoy the fact that they got strong policy advice from their departments. They may not take it, they may want to argue with it, but they saw that there was a real benefit in getting that advice in terms of thinking through the approach they wish to take.

Chris: So have you found yourself in a position where you’ve said ‘No Minister’ or ‘No Prime Minister, that’s not a good idea’?

Shergold: In fact that’s a daft idea. I probably wouldn’t express it in that way because I’m well trained as a public servant. But look there are many many instances when the advice that I’ve provided to ministers is not necessarily the advice they would have been expecting or the advice that they initially wanted to take. In some instances the advice that I propose is taken, in other instances not. I suppose in most instances it is a matter of discussion about the nature of that policy advice. I have never ever dealt with a minister, and I’m certainly not dealing with a Prime Minister, who says for goodness sake don’t give me that policy advice because I don’t want to hear it. Now of course the policy advice has got to be sensible, I mean the way the Westminster system works is you have a professional apolitical, nonpartisan public service, but that is responsive to the elected government of the day, so the policy advice you provide is couched in that way. But the danger is of course you mustn’t make that advice party political advice.

Chris: Do you think then sometimes (that when) people say they’re not giving frank and fearless policy advice anymore (they) mean that people aren’t seeing policies that they want to see emerging perhaps, that they’re not getting their way?

Shergold: Oh yes, I think that there’s an element of that – if you don’t see the policies coming out of government that you’d hoped for that somehow it’s that the public servants are not doing their jobs in providing that policy advice. I can only tell you from everything I see that the policy advice that goes forward to government is robust, is strong, is well argued, hopefully is timely and accurate and that does continue to have a significant influence on the decisions the government of the day takes.

The environment has changed. I mean the person who held my job a generation ago probably had a greater monopoly of the advice that went to the Prime Minister than I do. The fact is that the policy advice I provide is now contestable. We’ve got the people that work in the Minister’s offices, we’ve had the huge expansion in universities, you’ve got a large number of academic think tanks and research institutions, you’ve got strong advocacy organisations. All of those now vie with me for the ear of the Prime Minster and that’s what makes a thriving democracy.

Chris: You bring up ministerial officers, and of course this has come up a lot quite recently and it came up quite controversially during the children overboard affair. We know that the public servants have to appear before committees, that they are responsive to their ministers, they are in a sense open to public scrutiny. We know that politicians have to go up before elections, but we saw with children overboard (that) it doesn’t seem ministerial officers are accountable. Now are they in a certain sense acting in a way that needs to be reformed in your view?

Shergold: I have to go a little bit careful here, simply because an inquiry is about to take place on the accountability of ministerial officers. I am of course accountable through the minister, or in this case through the Prime Minister, to parliament and that’s the reason I sit before the parliamentary committees. Those who work for ministers or Prime Ministers – the advisers – are responsible to parliament through their minister. It is usually their minister who appears and takes responsibility for the actions of advisers. There is an inquiry to see if those lines of inquiry should be made clearer in some way.

But I think there’s a broader issue, which is a concern somehow that the ministerial advisers who have played an increasing role over the last ten or fifteen years are undermining the Westminster tradition. That somehow it’s politicising the public service. Now I have to say I do not share that view.

I think the ministerial adviser and the public servant have complimentary roles. I find it a great relief that when policy advice goes forward from my department to the Prime Minister – of course it is responsive to political direction, as it should be – but it does not have to think about how is this is going to go down in the party room, how is this going to be dealt with (in) the media. Because I know that complementing my work are people sitting in the Prime Minister’s office who have that job. Now I’m a professional public servant, they are ministerial advisers. The key is is that it is a complementary role, and as long as you understand your respective roles I think it is a very healthy relationship.

Chris: Would it not be made more healthy by having it exposed to a little bit more sunlight, to having ministerial advisers perhaps fronting parliamentary committees?

Shergold: Well that’s something that the inquiry in parliament is obviously going to be looking at. I think it is a relationship that is exposed to a great deal of sunlight. It seems to me that it is those outside the system who sometimes imagine and write that the ministerial advisers and the public servants are in a state of almost warfare in terms of the advice that goes to the ministers or Prime Minister. It has not been my experience. In most instances, day in day out, it is a very strong and effective working relationship between the public servant and the ministerial adviser.

Chris: It can get reasonably robust though, if the way they speak to me on occasions is the way they speak to the department.

Shergold: Well it can get robust in terms of the discussions I have with my colleagues or between departments, of course it can. Public policy is serious. These are very profound issues that we’re dealing with, whether it’s security of Australia or violence in indigenous communities. These are issues on which we should argue, we should argue across government, within government, and of course there should be arguments that take place between public servants, ministerial advisers and ministers. That is how the Westminster tradition works.

Chris: We saw recently a lot written about the rebranding exercise, with the Australian government replacing the plethora of logos that we’ve seen spring up over the last ten or fifteen years or so. What’s behind that?

Shergold: Well this is a government decision. It has been based on policy advice in part that been provided by my department in discussions with the Prime Minster’s office. You’ve got a policy decision and now of course it is one that I’m actively seeking to implement.

Because the public service has to do two things. It has to seek to influence the policy decisions, and when those policy decisions are taken it has to get out there and implement those decisions with conviction. Now the thinking behind this is (that) increasingly Australian citizens are not easily able to recognise who is delivering the services they receive or where to find the agency that is delivering the service.

The devolution of responsibility in the public service to agencies has been a very good thing. The fact that departmental secretaries and agencies head now have to take responsibility for financial management or now have to take responsibility for workplace relations or personnel is a good thing. But what has happened, both in the nomenclature of agencies and in the logos they use, is that citizens don’t understand what is being provided by the Australian government anymore. My guess is if you did a call, at least outside Canberra, about Environment Australia many people would think it was a non-government organisation rather than a department of state.

Chris: Is is deeper than that though? Does it go the other way? Do sometimes secretaries or perhaps heads of statutory authorities forget who they’re working for?

Shergold: The fact is in a way we work for two institutions. All of us work for a particular department or agency, (and) we can lose sight of the fact that we also work for the Australian government and are part of a wider entity, the Australian Public Service. The sum of our parts is greater than the individual components. And I do think it is important that we run our departments as productively and effectively as we can. We also recognise that there is a wider interest and that’s why I’m putting such an emphasis on having a whole of government approach to issues and why I am emphasising so much the importance of collegiality across the public service.

Chris: I am wondering whether we are seeing a little bit though of the pendulum swinging back. Are we entering the post corporate age of the public service that we saw so much of in the 90s? The neon signs coming down and the coat of arms going up?

Shergold: Well perhaps we are. I think the key here is to have a single identifiable brand in which is the Australian coat of arms, and for people to be able to understand what it is that the Australian government is providing. And to be able to distinguish that, for example, from state and local governments.

Chris: The opposition (suggests) we may see a loss of the intellectual property there. Is that a concern?

Shergold: I really don’t have concerns in that regard. The intellectual copyright in terms of those logos that have been designed very much rests with the departments and agencies. We’ve made it very clear that this is to be an evolutionary process. We’re not just saying that on 1 September all the old logos have got to be removed and all the stationary burnt. We’re making it clear that we want to do this in the most cost effective manner to bring about this transition. But the intellectual copyright of these designs sits with the agencies who use them. I have to say that most of the response I’ve got has been very positive, both within and outside the public service. If there’s any criticism, it is how did we get into this situation over the last decade.

Chris: Back in 1997 I spoke to Peter Reith about coming into government and I asked … whether or not there was a deep suspicion in the Coalition of the bureaucracy and whether or not they came to government feeling that the bureaucracy just wasn’t on their side. His answer to that question was, ‘Well, Canberra did vote Labor’. Do you think there has been in the past a suspicion by the Coalition of the bureaucracy, and has that changed?

Shergold: I think that there is always a healthy suspicion by politicians of public servants, and if I may say so by public servants of politicians. We do understand that we have different roles within the democratic organisation of Australia. I would hope it would be seen that my appointment to this position, for example, is that of a career public servant who brings a strong public service ethos to the job. Everything that I have seen, both in terms of working for this government and for previous governments, is that ministers and Prime Ministers have a great respect for the policy advice that is provided to them from their bureaucracies. They don’t want to absolutely accept it, they don’t want to feel that the public service has a monopoly of that advice – they are quite right to have that view. The policy advice that I provide needs to be tested in the marketplace of ideas.

Chris: Do you have a concern though that you have to be an advocate for government policy, you’re an instrument by which government policy is implemented, that even if you say ‘I’m acting as an impartial public servant’, (you’re) doing everything (you) can to serve the government of the day? …. And they’ll say ‘Well if there’s a Labor government in a years time then Dr Shergold won’t have a job’?

Shergold: I understand that is the perception, and it is a tricky issue because I want to see a public service that is as much respected for its ability to deliver public policy as to be able to contribute to the making of that public policy. The two go hand in hand.

Now if I go out to ensure that public policy is being implemented there is always the danger that I am being seen as an advocate for a particular political position. Whereas what I see myself doing is making sure that the political decisions that have been taken by the government of the day are being implemented in a committed way. Yes, you do have to walk a borderline, and it is almost inevitable that at some time you will come under criticism for doing that.

The other thing is that I tend to speak with a certain amount of passion on issues. I am engaged by them – they interest me – and the passion that I bring is often interpreted as being political. In fact what I’m speaking with passion about is the nature of public service and how important it is to our democratic institutions. If you look around the world – if you look around our region – you can see so many countries where they have elections every few years, (yet) if you visit those countries you and I would not see them as democracies. And one of the key indicators is that the public service who serve the government and serve the citizens are corrupt or nepotistic and can’t be trusted, and of course what that does is to undermine democracy. Now we don’t have that in this country, I think because of the way the public service has served Australia since federation.

Chris: Since S11 people keep saying the world has changed. One thing we can be sure of is that people keep talking about security and people keep talking about intelligence. Now in the absence of a department of homeland security – which is the track that they’ve gone down in the US – how do you ensure that all of the advice gets to government? That seems to be a bit of a problem in the last month or so… How do you coordinate that?

Shergold: Well first of all I think you’ve got to avoid, as a bureaucrat, thinking the answer lies in bureaucratic structures – it rarely does. In other words if you just slice and dice the public service into different chunks, if you set up something called the Department of Homeland security or an agency for fighting terrorism and you bring together people from transport and the intelligence agencies and Attorney-Generals and put them together in this new box and give it a new label, that is not going to solve your problem, because all you’ll find is that whatever the big issues are … it won’t neatly fit in a bureaucratic box. The answer lies in efficient workplace systems and a cooperative workplace culture.

So what we have to do to get a whole government approach, (to ensure) people are working together and make sure, for example, that the information that comes from the intelligence agencies is then analysed and becomes part of the policy advice going to government.

Let me just – one quick little thing you slipped in there was the notion that somehow the government hasn’t been getting the policy advice in recent months. I think probably you’re talking about the issue of WMD. Now I see this written about in a newspaper on a weekly basis and I can only tell you that it has no resemblance to fact.

The fact is that the Prime Minister and ministers and the National Security Committee were getting detailed information, often on a daily basis, from our intelligence agencies in a coordinated manner. With my dept and DFAT and Defence there was very strong flow of information going through to government which they were using.

There is a disease running round Australia at the moment and it’s not SARS, it is conspiratorialism. This view that somehow public servants have become politicised and are brow beaten in not providing advice to ministers or that ministerial advisers are putting up walls to ensure that Prime Ministers and ministers don’t hear that advice. I’ve got to say that it’s absolute balderdash and poppycock. It is not the reality.

The major speech that the Prime Minister gave in parliament was not something that was simply drafted in the confines of his Prime Ministerial office… There was to-ing and fro-ing, he asked for more information, more information was put in the speech, the speech was then checked by the Office of National Assessments. The process was absolutely correct. There was this very strong flow of information, and yet the media have been writing as if that is not the case. As if what you see is a cowed public service not being able to get its advice across.

Chris: How is it then that the particular issue that we’re talking about (the false claim that Iraq tried to buy Uranium from Niger, a claim known to be false by the US intelligence services and communicated by them to Australia) – do you think that that advice is still correct or was there a mistake there or what?

Shergold: I’m not going to comment on whether the advice was correct. Intelligence I’ve discovered in my time in this department, is a remarkably difficult area. It is every bit as much art as science. You have huge amounts of intelligence coming in, some of which turns out to be accurate, some which is inaccurate, some of which is qualified over time, and then of course the job with this huge amount of intelligence coming from many different sources is to analyse that in the best way possible and that’s why we have the Office of National Assessments. It has that key job in analysing the advice and then of course my department and other departments of state will comment on that advice. But let us not kid ourselves, intelligence is never ever going to get everything right.