In Search of Good Government by Laura Tingle

Author:Laura Tingle
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Nero

But the era when executive government and the bureaucracy still worked cooperatively – often with creative tension – to get policy outcomes that were both politically and practically successful ended in 1996, when John Howard won government and sacked a raft of department heads in what became known as his “Night of the Long Knives.” This sent a shockwave through the public service and, in combination with a series of radical reforms to the public sector, accelerated a decline in its ability to make policy.

Ironically, perhaps, John Howard’s most successful years coincided with the times when a former public servant, Arthur Sinodinos, was running his office. There were still bureaucrats seconded to, and even running, the offices of many of his senior ministers. But over Howard’s time in office, there was an inexorable shift towards policy being developed and made in ministerial offices, not the public service. “We’ll do the thinking, you just implement it,” was how one senior bureaucrat described the Howard government’s attitude in its later stages.

Public service sackings, the tendency to run policy from ministerial offices and just get departments to implement it, and an increased willingness to make public servants the subject of “show trials” in parliamentary committee hearings, gradually cowed much of the public service and helped build a toadying culture.

Tony Abbott’s sacking in 2013 of more public servants, including the head of Treasury, because of their association with policies on climate change and asylum seekers, to which the Coalition was hostile, raised even more questions. One senior bureaucrat said after the sackings that he found himself at a loss to know how to respond to more junior officers when they observed that the clear message was that you shouldn’t stick your head up for any policy assignments that might later become contentious. Instead of being a place to make your name, new policy papers and areas were now a killing zone, it seemed.

Yet the role of the public service in government has not changed just because of the way ministers and public servants relate to each other. What has complicated and changed the relationship over time are the structural and managerial shifts. Departmental secretary was once a permanent appointment, but in the 1980s this started to change. Instead of staying on as the head of a department, moving about was preferred. Instead of holding your job until you retired, you took a fixed-term appointment. There was a lot to be said for the changes, but there were also risks. Governments now had the ability to appoint the best person for the job, but they also had the ability to sack people if they didn’t think they fitted a particular political mould, or even because of personality differences. Significantly, senior public servants were not necessarily appointed because of their policy expertise in a particular area. They might have absolutely no knowledge of the history of a policy and how it operated.

Private-sector management techniques also arrived in the public sector: all the jargon about organisational goals, KPIs, performance reviews and a focus on outputs.

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