The chairman of the Coalition's deregulation taskforce, Arthur Sinodinos, confirmed the opposition favoured using financial rewards to get the best from staff.

''Philosophically, there is a commitment to performance pay as an element of performance management,'' he said.

Most senior public servants received bonuses under the Howard government, which used the payments to encourage executives to be more responsive.

However, Labor opposed the controversial scheme, arguing it persuaded bureaucrats to give only the advice that ministers wanted to hear.

After winning office in 2007, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd abolished bonuses for department heads, and began to eliminate the payments from most senior executives' contracts. Only three in 10 senior officers got bonuses last year, compared with almost seven in 10 five years earlier.

The Coalition's regulation policy, released this week, says if the opposition wins the election, senior executives' salaries and bonuses will be linked to ''quantified and proven reductions in red and green tape''.

The Coalition will also make department heads' success in cutting regulation a ''key performance criterion'' when deciding whether to reappoint them.

Senator Sinodinos, who was the long-serving chief of staff to former prime minister John Howard, said it was difficult, but nonetheless possible, to measure the value of a public servant's work.

''We are cognisant of the fact that, in dealing with the public sector, where you have to juggle complex, multiple objectives at once, it's not as straightforward as in business, where you can just look at the bottom line,'' he said.

''It's always been more subjective in the public sector and there has always been this debate.''

The Howard government kept the size of individual bureaucrats' bonuses secret, along with details of how they were assessed.

When then Treasury secretary Ken Henry was denied a bonus in 2007, it was widely believed to be a result of his critical speech to staff on the government's water policy that was later leaked to the media.

However, Senator Sinodinos indicated the Coalition might publish its top officials' performance targets, as happens in New Zealand.

''There should be a bias towards transparency,'' he said.

''No government, of any persuasion, can ever claim it did everything perfectly. You need to reassess what you did and learn how to improve.''

Former government department head and diplomat Allan Hawke wrote an excoriating essay on pay bonuses last year, saying they had no place in the bureaucracy.

Dr Hawke said a bonus ''is at odds with public service culture, ignores the complexity of how the public service actually works [and] is bad for morale and teamwork''.

''As I recall it, performance pay was introduced as a back-door way of lifting remuneration for senior staff.''

Public Service Commission data shows most bonuses paid to public servants last year ranged from $800 for junior staff to $42,000 for deputy agency heads.