IN recent article in these columns I discussed the AWB scandal with reference to such considerations as the integrity of the Commonwealth public service, the importance of record keeping and the application or otherwise of the notion of ministerial responsibility (Howard and Downer must have known). Additional reading and personal contact has brought out some further points and additional reasons for even greater alarm.
First, on the matter of ministerial responsibility, Peter Hartcher — the Political Editor for the Sydney Morning Herald — wrote on Friday 10 February as follows: ‘… According to the text ‘Constitutional and Administrative Law’ by E.C.S. Wade and G. Godfrey Phillips — a book that was on Howard’s undergraduate reading list — ministerial responsibility requires that “for every act or neglect of his department a minister must answer”. So, even if ministers didn’t know about the bribery (AWB in Iraq), they should be held responsible for what happened at what was, at the time, a government board. But Howard has redefined the doctrine. Under his code of ministerial responsibility, “this does not mean that ministers bear individual responsibility for all the actions of their departments. Where they neither knew, nor should have known about matters of departmental administration which come under scrutiny, it is not unreasonable to expect that the secretary or some other senior officer will take the responsibility.” This is a repudiation of ministerial responsibility and, looking at the Government’s front bench, shows that no one is interested in embracing responsibility for the wheat scandal. Which is an amusing juxtaposition with the Government’s position on the abortion drug RU486. Howard has been arguing that the drug should be controlled by the Health Minister (something Tony Abbott underlined in spades last night) because he is an accountable official, while bureaucrats are not. Responsibility is a fickle mistress indeed, it seems.’
Hartcher is entirely correct. Successive governments — but especially the present incumbents — have sought to diminish the traditional interpretation of the important notion of ministerial responsibility and fashion it to their own political ends. Of course, the enthusiasm with which they embrace this practice varies according to whether they are in government or opposition! It is called ‘having a bob each way’. Indeed, the piety with which opposition parties embrace the notion in its classical form, but re-interpret it when they control the Treasury benches, is yet another reason why politicians are increasingly viewed with unconcealed contempt by so many of those whom they would purport to serve.
Amanda Vanstone should have tottered off to the backbench
Perhaps the most recent blatant transgression of the principle of ministerial responsibility was the Cornelia Rau case. Amanda Vanstone should have tottered off to the back bench immediately upon knowing all the facts. But no, the team closed ranks and thumbed their noses at both the principle and the public. As for the departmental hierarchy they got a proper bollicking — but only from the media and the public — which resulted in a change at the top involving, as I best recall, the reassignment of the head of the department to a cushy ambassadorial posting overseas. Hardly rough justice! As I have observed elsewhere in these columns the television programme “Yes Minister” was indeed an understatement of reality!
In a wide-ranging but understandably cautious address to the Senior Executive Service of the Australian Public Service(APS) on 23 April 2004, the then Public Service Commissioner, Andrew Podger, commented as follows: “I do not accept the charge that the APS is greatly politicized, but we would be foolish not to acknowledge that the changes of the last 20 years have added to the risks of compromise. There is also evidence of some compromise, for example in record-keeping, and perceptions among a number of our staff that we are not always upholding the Values properly.”
The three key values of the APS are to be apolitical, performing functions in an impartial and professional manner; to be openly accountable for actions, within the framework of ministerial responsibilities to the Government, the Parliament and the Australian public; and to be responsive to the Government in providing frank, honest, comprehensive, accurate and timely advice and in implementing the Government’s policies and programs.”
Podger lays particular emphasis on the importance of record-keeping. , observing that it is important “… to resist pressure to avoid records, where they would indeed clarify the decision-making process and accountability.”
Play dumb when the issue blows up
I have independent advice on the matter of record-keeping in Canberra. It comes from friends who are long-term residents of that city, former public servants who retain close links with senior levels of the bureaucracy. They have told me that contemporary pressures and the seemingly frequent recurrence of major “incidents” has compelled many senior public servants to by-pass the file note and record nothing at all but, rather, to lie or play dumb when the issue blows up. As my friends say, that is very sad and a trend that will most probably be impossible to reverse.
As for the provision by officials of frank and fearless advice Podger is remarkably frank for one in his position when he observes: “However I look at it now, I do not believe the Children Overboard case was the Service’s finest hour. Whatever the circumstances leading up to the election — and I am still uncomfortable with what happened over that period — the reluctance by officials to face up to the facts over the subsequent months is extremely difficult to defend.”
Not surprisingly, Podger’s address is a measured and understandably cautious review of key aspects of the national bureaucracy. Even so, as indicated above, there is sufficient bureaucratic code in it to infer that all is not well in the cluster of buildings at the foot of Capital Hill. Indeed, having followed the current AWB saga and readily recalling some of the imbroglios of the past few years, one can reasonably conclude that the Australian Public Service is not what it once was. From and including the Whitlam years, there seems to have been a progressive erosion of not only the principle of ministerial responsibility but also of the integrity of the public service that served it so well for the first three quarters of the last century.
So, why has this happened and where to from here?
As for why it happened, we need to remind ourselves how wide-ranging the changes have been over the past three decades. Prior to Whitlam in the early seventies the pace and nature of parliamentary and governmental activity was diverted by two world wars and the Great Depression and in between those momentous events it was more nineteenth century than it was twentieth, in both style and substance. From Whitlam onwards the difference from what went before has been enormous — dramatic changes in communications: greater expectations and demands of parliaments and governments, especially in the health, welfare, education, infrastructure and economic policy areas; massive changes in the media; the emergence of a new and vibrant Asia along with important adjustments to our international alliances; the explosion of the tourism industry, inbound and outbound; technological change of a nature and pace we never previously had dreamed of; the emergence of terrorism and security as priority issues and much else besides. It was a new and ever-changing world which led to massive and entirely legitimate demands on successive governments.
Economically illiterate and unable to put his massive ego in his pocket
This led to an accelerating demand for new people, new expertise and new technology to keep up with community demands and the changes taking place here and elsewhere in the world. Whitlam initiated the lateral recruitment of heads of agencies, the appointment of “minders”, a concern to handle media matters in a more professional and contemporary manner and various other necessary refinements. In one form or another all these changes worked but only after Whitlam had moved on because the agent of change was, himself, seriously deficient as a manager, economically illiterate and unable to put his massive ego in his pocket.
From Whitlam onwards the political ethic became — partly by accident but increasingly by design — a dominant dimension of government activity. Where once government was a measured and gentlemanly activity now the political imperative is fundamental to the business of government. Every piece of market research, every speech, every parliamentary question and answer, every press release out of every parliament by every politician in the land every day is directed ultimately to a political end. And underlying all the words, written and spoken, from all the politicians is the harsh and simplistic notion that “… if we don’t keep shafting the bastards they’ll shaft us.” A comment, in those words or similar, that I have heard on numerous occasions.
As to where to from here for the bureaucracy, it would be folly to suggest that the ever-increasing dominance of the political ethic is of no relevance to what happens in the bureaucracy. There must be an impact and there is an impact. I do not believe that politicians seek overtly to influence public servants but, given that so much of what they do, say or write is politically oriented, public servants can not help being immersed to some extent in the shallow end of the political pool. Indeed, given the extent to which public servants in the middle and senior levels of the public service are exposed to politicians and politics it is inevitable that the argot of politics, the attitudes and, to some, the engaging mystique of politics will capture their interest. The corridors of power can be very seductive.
In this context, however, Podger is right to endorse, in his paper, the view of his colleague Roger Beale “… that the biggest risk to the provision of straightforward advice has always arisen not from fear but from the desire to be liked by our political masters, loved by an external constituency or to push a personally preferred policy line.” I most strongly endorse that view. Politics is about power and it is no place for the overly impressionable young or the overly ambitious ladder-climber.
As for where to from here, the only thing certain is that there will be no regression to classical Westminster. The politicians will not change, they will be no less “political”, no less venal in some cases, no less dominated by the political ethic. They will seek to win at all costs, mostly legitimately but no one should be so naïve as to expect gentlemen’s rules all the time from all the politicians. The extent of future erosion of the independence and professionalism of the public service in Canberra — and in the states — will thus depend almost solely on the bureaucrats themselves, especially those at the top end of the system. Their professionalism, their integrity, is really all that stands between a genuinely independent public service as against accelerated decline to some version of the American option where battalions of the upper echelon bureaucrats move in and out depending on which party is in power.
I have to concede that I see only minimal grounds for optimism.
