This time it has been a silent transition to government for Labor. There was all that slowing down expectations that was a hangover in 2019. Then he wondered if there would be a majority or minority government.
After almost a decade without office, newly coined MPs and ministers still accidentally referred to “government” – as in the previous one – in interviews, and sometimes realize with surprise that when people used the titles of “Prime Minister” or “Minister”. ”Referring to them.
This government comes with few expectations, except those it now decides to describe for itself, and no Messiah complex.
If you ignore the outcome of the 2010 minority government elections, the Labor script for winning government has historically been one of euphoria based on a big landslide, big ideas and high voter expectations.
This government comes with few expectations, except those it now decides to describe for itself, and no Messiah complex.
Although the countdown to closed seats continued in the days following the election, the question of how and what the government could do turned out as Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong immediately headed to Tokyo for the meeting. of the Quad, and attempts to reposition Australia’s reputation on the world stage.
There were some important signs and domestic actions by the government: returning the Nadesalingam family to Biloela; start working to get rid of your cashless debit card; and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen met with former heads of emergency services, who had not been so often ignored before, led by Greg Mullins.
The government has submitted a submission to the minimum wage case arguing that workers should not back down: that is, a message to the Fair Work Commission that there should be a wage increase proportional to whichever is the best. measure of inflation that the commission deems appropriate. .
Anthony Albanese and some of his ministers meet in the cabinet room for the first time. Alex Ellinghausen
The immediate crises and headlines in this government relate to foreign policy and an energy crisis that has erupted in full force when a cold snap hit south-east Australia this week.
The energy crisis is a crisis without a really easy immediate solution, and of a magnitude that will make voters very intolerant of everything that sounds like the old government’s fault.
There is now a cabinet and a ministry in place, and the government has begun to restructure the bureaucracy so that it looks largely like it did when Labor last took office.
Some public officials are silently shown the door; Departmental secretaries whose retirement had been postponed pending the outcome of the election will finally be able to leave. A new head of the Prime Minister’s Office and Cabinet, Glyn Davis, will officially take over on Monday, bringing with him his experience in state public service, academia, philanthropy and the arts.
Chief Ministerial Hunting Staff
The call has come out for the staff of the ministers’ offices.
There has been much controversy over the ever-expanding role of ministerial offices and their inhabitants in recent years, and the tendency to fill them, well, with party pirates rather than policy experts. It is not surprising that people in the role of policy advisor do not have experience in specialized policy.
Davis sat on the Thodey review of the Australian Public Service: a thorough work that advocates a significant shift in the way the federal government machinery works. Their findings were largely stopped by the previous government.
But Labor has also never been explicit about what exactly the recommendations of the review would adopt. Recommendation 11, for example, called for at least half of the political advisers in the ministerial offices to have experience in public service.
The call for expressions of interest in ministerial staff jobs published by the new government does not go that far, simply saying that applicants should have “proven experience in advising on a wide range of policy, public administration and political issues in a public and non-profit or private sector. ”
The provision of the service desperately needs a solution
Both experienced and inexperienced ministers as ministers are beginning their new duties, understanding how difficult the government has become since 2013, both geostrategically and in terms of government expectations.
Some of the wisest heads of public service would have been advising the incoming government that if there was only one thing to do while in power, it would be to clean up the way the government provides services to the public.
The traditional division of responsibilities between the federal and state governments has meant that the federal government oversees the major political levers and funds the revenue subsidies, with the states making the actual provision of services in areas such as health.
But in the last decade, and especially as a result of COVID-19, this has become a very unclear division.
The federal government is now implementing the provision of care services for the elderly and the National Disability Insurance Plan. Effectively manages child care, mental health and suicide prevention.
All this is difficult to do from Canberra. And it’s hard to do when most of these services are provided by contractors, and often contractors, where you have an even more limited view of what often happens in services provided in the homes of vulnerable people, rather than institutions. . configurations.
Don Russell, a former chief of staff to Paul Keating, head of the federal and state department and ambassador to Washington, noted last year in his essay On Leadership, that “when things go wrong, they can go wrong. inadmissible “. in a way that causes a fire of public scrutiny ”.
“Ministers, ministerial officials and public officials are caught in an ugly melee that includes royal commissions, corruption commissions and cases of maladministration, processes that can be very detrimental to them, not to mention vulnerable members. of the public who find that the system has failed, they at a time of great need.
“I suspect that Commonwealth ministers today are in the process of entering a world of pain, already known to state ministers, for which they are not well prepared,” he said.
The least glamorous part of being a minister and running a government should be that these services work better for both those who need them and the taxpayers who fund them.