What had deteriorated under the Coalition was the confidence of public servants that fearless advice on policy options, the essence of what makes the system so effective, was welcome. The message was sent and received that public servants should give the advice the Coalition wanted to hear.
Albanese’s visit to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on Monday could not have been more different. He met with a large group of PM and C staff in the department’s training room, gave a speech reflecting on the role of public service, and then spent time speaking to small groups from across the agency. Albanese later spent an hour with departmental secretaries from across the public service, sharing his vision of government and his expectations for professional, systematic and thoughtful policy advice. There was no fanfare, just a short LinkedIn post and a tweet.
Anthony Albanese at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute on Wednesday. Credit: Penny Stephens
Since there was very little to go on, the ancient skills of Kremlinology and Sinology from the time when Russia and China were closed to the West, then employed to piece together meaning from the scraps of available information, were dusted off to make meaning to the meaning of Albanese. visit
The departmental secretaries looked happy in the picture the Prime Minister tweeted of them with him. Gordon de Brouwer, appointed at secretary level to assist Katy Gallagher in public service reform, was notably in the picture. De Brouwer was a panel member of the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service (APS), established by Malcolm Turnbull as Prime Minister and chaired by David Thodey.
The eventual Thodey Report proposed a strong and cohesive program of APS renewal along traditional Westminster lines, taking into account the digital developments of the 21st century. He defined the modern Westminster principles of government as “an apolitical, merit-based and open public service, underpinned by integrity, serving the government, parliament and people of Australia”.
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Those who find this statement vanilla are unaware of the extent to which the decline of Westminster principles in Australian government has come under successive coalition governments, and first started under the Howard government. Bolstered, undermined, underfunded and marginalized by private sector consultants paid multiple times the equivalent, and often better, APS advice would have destroyed morale and worsened government outcomes.
The Thodey report, delivered after Turnbull’s impeachment, was ignored by Morrison. Instead, the image that Albanese tweeted with a brief message endorsing “a strong and independent public service” featured not one but two members of the Thodey Review: de Brouwer and Albanese’s department secretary, Glyn Davis.
When Jim Chalmers announced the composition of the Reserve Bank review on Wednesday, de Brouwer was named as one of three members of the panel. All roads apparently lead to the Thodey report. People who believe in good government along traditional Westminster lines are encouraged that better politics lie ahead.
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The “rear-view mirror” handling of the latest wave of COVID is a testament to how broken parts of the public service are, with the Department of Health a particular example of an empty department.
Health Minister Mark Butler is ultimately responsible for the government’s public health performance. There is a strong feeling that the Department of Health has provided less than necessary advice during the pandemic and continues to do so.
It may be time to shuffle through the red tape. This would give more room for a faster renewal of Health. Given the increasing daily deaths in Australia, it can’t wait.
Meanwhile, there are signs that the government is coming to grips with the rapidly worsening COVID situation for the first time.
Albanese was wearing a state-of-the-art N95 mask in the image he tweeted on Wednesday of a visit to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne. He showed that he is now more on top of the latest scientific advice than the scores of Institute staff in surgical masks shown with him – an index of how big the government’s public health education campaign is for in front.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, opinion and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can subscribe to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.