Speech by Senator The Hon John Faulkner
Cabinet Secretary
Special Minister of State
July 16 2008
From Sir Humphrey Appleby to The Hollowmen, public servants and their relationship to government ministers are ripe targets for comedy and caricature.
Sir Humphrey Appleby was determined to see his Department’s agenda prevail against all obstacles – including the wishes of the Minister – while the Hollowmen’s public servants are determined to agree to the wishes of the ministerial office, no matter how much those wishes diverge from their own opinion of good policy.
If Sir Humphrey Appleby is at the extreme end of the ‘frank and fearless’ spectrum, the public servants of The Hollowmen are at the extreme end of ‘responsive’.
Ultimately, neither extreme serves their elected Ministers or the general public well. Neither responsive subservience nor frank and fearless intransigence are appropriate public service postures.
While we can point to caricatures and extremes as cautionary examples, or hold up those who have successfully negotiated their way between the Scylla and Charybdis of the public service as role models, it is much harder to try and define exact guidelines that will infallibly describe what response to which ministerial question or instruction will be perfectly frank and fearlessly responsive.
More than a hundred and fifty years ago, The Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the organization of the Permanent Civil Service declared that “the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the Ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability, and experience to be able to advise, assist, and to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them.” We have still not resolved the tension between ‘due subordination’ and ‘sufficient independence’, between ‘assisting’ and ‘influencing’.
This tension is inherent in the existence of a professional, permanent public service in a democratic society. Ministerial tenures are frequently just blips in the life of departments. Elected politicians depend on the will of the electorate and the partnership of the public service to carry out their policy programs. Our politicians are elected democratically, our public servants never troubled by the need to seek popular approval. The public service abides by principles of merit-based appointment while the political system is sometimes caricatured as a beauty contest, or as ‘Hollywood for ugly people’. Politicians may be expert in politics, but amateurs in administration beside their departmental officers.
While in our democracy ultimately both the government and the public service work, or ought to work, at the behest of and on the behalf of, the people, democracy is inherently fragile. The dilemmas posed by politics and bureaucracy are prominent examples of the internal strains and contradictions in democratic government. For both elected governments and appointed public servants, there is what one writer has described as “the constant temptation of slipping into less regulated ways of wielding power, of becoming less democratic as they go along”.1
The age-old fact that power accretes to the institutions and individuals who exercise it is not unique to democracy, but it is a danger to democracy in a way it is not a danger to other systems of government. In a democracy, power belongs to the people but is exercised on their behalf – by both public servants charged with administration, and by the politicians authorised by electoral success to implement their policies and programs.
Paradoxically, we depend on politicians and public servants, precisely those individuals and institutions who would most benefit from slippage towards the undemocratic exploitation of inherent advantages, to guard against that slippery slope.
When setting foxes to watch the henhouse, leadership is critically important.
Leaders provide vision and strategic direction, they encourage, motivate and inspire others, and vitally, they model their organisation’s values and set the pattern of how things are done. At the crucial interface where the inertial momentum of institutions meets overarching principles, leaders recognise the moment of choice – and choose right.
In the APS, the values we need our leaders to follow and model stem originally from the traditions of Westminster – many from the famous Northcote/Trevelyan report I quoted earlier – but have been shaped by Australian circumstances.
To state the obvious, Australia is a very large country. The challenge of distance and scattered population prompted an early and abiding reliance on government assistance to develop economic, social and physical infrastructure. Ideological convictions were secondary to this pragmatic need.
Politics, policy and administration were not distinct or separate in the colonial state and some of the most expansive and interventionist public sectors in the world developed. This pragmatism and utilitarian administration, sometimes termed socialism sans doctrine, went hand in hand with the belief that the role of the government was to ameliorate unfair social conditions – to civilise capitalism.
Colonial and state governments clung jealously to their prerogatives to direct bureaucratic and administrative actions, including in state-owned or supported enterprises. Historically, this has produced special difficulties for public servants as they resolve the tensions between independence and responsive implementation.
The twentieth century saw important changes to the organization of Australian federalism, often subtle but long-lasting. Minimalist federation gave way to an extension of commonwealth financial and substantive power, while States remained responsible for much service delivery.
Tension grew between States’ rights and a developing drive for national common standards and efficiencies. At the same time, the growth of Commonwealth administrative architecture propelled the expansion of APS departments and agencies with sometimes divergent agendas and, at times, priorities focused at the departmental rather than the governmental level.
Occupying as it does a very special and necessary place between the Government and the people, the public service has negotiated these challenges with, on the whole, dexterity and success.
So for those who ask, why – 150 years after Northcote-Trevelyan – why are so many of the questions of the relationship between government and public service still unanswered, part of the answer is that the ever changing nature of the demands on the public service, the ever-changing aspects of government and policy, and the continuing rapid pace of technological and social change have made for a continually evolving range of problems.
I have no doubt that the century ahead will bring new, unforseen and unforeseeable challenges. The speed of technological and social change is accelerating. Technology makes public administration easier – compare CabNet to the Inca method of administering their empire with a record-keeping system based on knots tied in pieces of string (perhaps a little harder to leak!) – but technology brings new demands and expectations. To be adaptable and responsive in this shifting environment, public administration must be carried out in innovative ways. Public servants must be smart and creative, must negotiate the twin requirements of change and tradition.
Public service leadership is critical in this process. In the years ahead, our public service, and indeed our democracy, will depend increasingly on your ability, as public service leaders, to model the APS values, to inspire others to reach new heights of innovation and creativity, and to walk a very straight and steady line across the tightrope of being both frank and fearless and appropriately responsive.
This remains a tightrope rather than a broad and well-signposted highway, in part, because the ever-changing nature of demands on the public service mean the questions – and thus the answers – continually change.
But it is also possible that there is no simple and true answer to the questions of the relationship between elected government and employed public service. The search for answers may be the answer itself: the continual tension between politics and administration may be, in fact, a productive tension, and the process of negotiating this may be an end in itself.
This process becomes more fraught with a change of government.
A change of government poses a particular challenge for public service leaders in maintaining a long-term focus – always a struggle in the light of short parliamentary terms and shorter media cycles. The public service must be responsive to a new government’s new priorities without losing sight of their unique responsibility to provide continuity. Adherence to APS values must remain a constant while the public service adapts to comprehensive change.
New governments have new policy agendas, that impact immediately and intimately on the way in which public servants do their jobs.
Settled routines suddenly disappear; well-established relationships are gone; unspoken expectations are no longer valid; seemingly permanent solutions are revealed to be transitory. New ministers, and new ministerial staff, finding their own feet in government, have new – perhaps unusual or difficult – requirements for the public service. The transition between governments brings both an increased urgency and an increased volume to the demands on the public service.
I acknowledge and appreciate how hard the APS has worked since the change of Government last year. The Government has a full and energetic agenda – to say the least – and I recognise the burden this imposes on you, charged with implementing our policies and programs and with providing us with comprehensive, accurate and timely advice. Over the past seven months I have seen, first-hand, the extraordinary and sustained commitment and dedication of many of you. I can assure you it is sincerely appreciated.
Ladies and Gentlemen, changes of government also bring about structural changes for public servants: changes occur in the structures of departments, in the responsibilities of the job, in the priorities and scope for policy. Some changes can be even more fundamental to the way the public service works.
The Rudd Government’s accountability and integrity agenda is one such policy agenda. Our reforms place new requirements and offer new guidance for public servants working at the ever-evolving interface where independence and responsiveness meet.
An overarching change is that in the new Federal Government, for the first time, many integrity and governance functions are brought together under a single Minister – FOI, public service administration, privacy, codes of conduct, the register for lobbyists, transparency, accountability, electoral law, the guidelines and administration of tax-payer funded entitlements, government advertising and the National archives.
Since the nineteenth century, a key to the integrity of public administration is the question of who appoints whom – and on what basis. While the APS has a strong tradition of merit based employment, that question becomes more complex when dealing with the range of statutory and other senior appointees who are not APS employees, yet still play a key part in public administration.
The Government moved in February to introduce transparent and merit-based assessment in the selection of most APS agency heads. This process will require incumbents to be notified of re-appointment or of the intention to open the position to advertising and assessment four months before the expiry of their term. Any selection process must be supervised by the portfolio secretary and the Public Service Commissioner. If the Minister doesn’t accept the recommended appointee, he or she will have to provide reasons to the Prime Minister.
But there is more to be done. There has already been some extension of these principles on an administrative basis to organisations unrelated to the APS. Of course, we have not even begun to grapple with the question of how to deal with the hundreds of part-time positions on boards and committees. “Independence” is critically important in some cases while in others “representativeness” must be a consideration.
Another Government reform which I believe will strengthen our democracy is the release of our new advertising guidelines to govern the content of Commonwealth Government campaign advertising. Every advertising campaign will now be certified against the new guidelines by the chief executive of the commissioning department or agency, and major campaigns will be reviewed by the Auditor-General before they can go ahead. These new procedures will now give the public confidence that campaigns are legitimately authorised, properly targeted and non-political. Gone is the Ministerial Council on Government Communications, which put politics into government advertising. Our new process restores responsibility for advertising to the public service. It relies heavily on the judgement and integrity of agency heads who are required to sign off that the content of advertising meets strict new guidelines.
FOI is another area in which the government plans to make significant reforms which will both affect you, and depend on you, as senior public servants.
Labor put it on record during the election campaign that we would have a more open approach in government, including a greater willingness to share information with the public through FOI.
One of our promises was to abolish conclusive certificates – the trump card removing the power of the AAT and the courts to decide how the FOI laws apply to particular documents, distorting what should be an independent and transparent review process.
We also promised to establish a new statutory position of an FOI Commissioner, who would introduce a whole of government approach to FOI, and provide guidance and the opportunity to monitor and review FOI decision-making across government.
We are continuing to work towards those goals, along with other reforms to improve FOI processes.
Less straightforward but nevertheless critically important is the task of changing the culture for decision makers charged with the responsibility of determining what documents should be released and what documents should not.
I recognise that beyond the straightforward release of personal information, FOI presents a challenge for decision makers. If the material is at all sensitive, it will always be easier to say no and withhold documents than to say yes and release them. The challenge is to get the balance right.
Yes, FOI is burdensome and comes at considerable cost. It involves agency time. But for this government it remains a key part of our commitment to more public processes.
Achieving such changes in perspective and culture will require your assistance as senior public servants. As we proceed with our reforms in this area, we will be calling on you again to show leadership, and commitment, to our objectives of greater transparency and openness.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as I’m sure you can all agree, the evolving role of ministerial staff has considerably affected the relationship between ministers and public servants. While the number and function of ministerial staff has greatly increased since the early seventies, there has until recently been little thought given to the need to formalise their role and responsibilities. Yet undeniably, ministerial staff can directly affect the ways in which public servants work. Ministerial advisers can obstruct advice perceived as overly frank; they can impose expectations of unquestioning compliance rather than discerning responsiveness.
From 1 July, a new Code of Conduct for Ministerial Staff has been in effect. Much of it is consistent with what you will be familiar with from your own code in the Public Service Act, including the exhortation that staff “Treat with respect and courtesy all those with whom they have contact in the course of their employment”. Of particular significance are the requirements to:
Ministers and the PMO will be making sure staff are aware of and comply with the code.
The increasing number and expanding roles of Ministerial Staff has been propelled by the increased complexity and sophistication of government decision making. These same factors have contributed to a growth in the role and significance of lobbyists in the political process and in the policy making process.
For that reason, since 1 July, third party lobbyists who act for clients now need to sign up on the new Lobbyists Register, and they need to comply with a new Code of Conduct. It must be made clear to any government representative on the receiving end of lobbying, who the lobbyist is acting and speaking for.
The Code also imposes obligations on those of us who are government representatives – including Ministers, Ministerial staff, public servants, and public service contractors and consultants. We must adhere to the new Code, and report breaches that come to our attention.
Transparency is the key objective of the new code, but significantly, the new Code also puts a spoke in the revolving door – the well-worn path from working in government one day, to promoting to government the next, as a lobbyist. Under the Code, departing Agency Heads and SES public servants will not, for 12 months, be able to lobby on matters on which they have had official dealings.
We recognise that this is a significant restraint on public servants and the decision to impose this on public servants was not taken lightly. But we felt it was important to make sure that no-one working in government could use information they had gathered in their official role, as leverage in their advocacy for clients.
As the growth of the lobbying industry and the proliferation of ministerial staff have introduced new actors to the process of policy making and public administration, new solutions to the age-old problem of safeguarding the integrity of the system are required.
This morning I would like to acknowledge the professionalism with which our senior public servants have accepted this significant restraint. I am sure this reflects your recognition of the motives underlying the obligation.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you look upon the Government’s full range of reforms as not just constraints on one or another aspect of your work in the public service and your relationship with the government, but as an enabling framework, providing guidance and raising standards, not just imposing restrictions. We know that the way you do your jobs, the way you negotiate the tricky ground between government requirements and our Westminster traditions, can be made more or less difficult by Government’s explicit and implied expectations.
The Rudd Government is committed to a clear and transparent framework that supports you in this delicate undertaking. But, as you know, there is only so much Government can do in changing the way things are done in the APS. We rely on you, on your capacity for vision, on your ability to inspire and motivate those you work with, and especially on your ability to show, through example, the values on which we all depend: impartial professionalism, ethical behaviour, accountability, and of course, frank and fearless responsiveness.
And I have complete confidence that you will deliver.
1 Eva Etzioni-Halevy Bureaucracy and democracy
| Media Contact: | Website: |
|---|---|
| Media Advisor - Ashley Hogan - 0417 651 952 | www.cabinetsecretary.gov.au www.smos.gov.au |