OPINION
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The election result in May surprised pollsters, political pundits and the public service. There are disturbing signs the Australian Public Service is finding it hard to adjust to reality. It is clearly failing to meet the expectations of the current government. This means the coming months will be challenging; if, however, challenges are met, the public service has an opportunity to rebuild trust and confidence with ministers and the public.
A report published last month by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, Today's Problems, Yesterday's Toolkit, found trust in government in Australia at an all-time low. This is not just a perception problem, it says: "Government is indeed failing to deliver solutions that improve people's lives in measurable ways."
We hear the same thing from ministers - in their view, increasingly, the public service is failing to deliver. The Prime Minister has made a series of comments about the need for the public service to improve service delivery, as have other ministers. It is a common theme. At the launch of Paul Tilley's history of the Commonwealth Treasury last month, former treasurer Peter Costello (still well connected to the Coalition government) added his voice to the chorus of calls for the public service to concentrate on implementing government policy. Former treasurer and now Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is quoted in the book saying the same.
A detailed elaboration of the government's concerns was contained in the Prime Minister's August 19 speech to the Institute of Public Administration Australia (also see this article by Paddy Gourley). Some commentators have characterised it as an important statement of principles, others have criticised it trenchantly. Crikey called it a "meaningless daggy dad BBQ"; Dr Geoffrey Edwards at Griffith University sees it as trashing an apolitical merit-based public service. Regardless of where one stands, it sends a clear signal about the government's level of concern.
A delay in releasing the report of the independent review of the APS chaired by David Thodey sends a more subtle signal. Most journalists had expected its release to accompany the Prime Minister's speech, but it has been put off. Mid-last month, Phil Coorey from The Australian Financial Review reported it had been sent back to the panel to toughen up the recommendations. This is not surprising. The review was commissioned under the previous Turnbull government, with weak terms of reference and a panel drawn from the technocratic elite, people much like Turnbull.
We had a foretaste of what the review might have been - prior to the change of prime minister - at the Crawford Leadership Forum at ANU a few months ago. A session on trust in the public sector included some members of the APS review panel, an academic and a senior public servant.
Had Scott Morrison been there (he wasn't) it would have confirmed his negative view of the "Canberra bubble". The only panellist prepared to discuss fundamental problems with the public service was, to her credit, the public servant in the mix. Other panellists were bland and reassuring. In question time, the mood of complacency and denial from high-level public servants in more troubled departments was palpable. One even proffered an excuse for delays in processing being the department having to work with old IT systems. Imagine that being trotted out as an excuse by a bank manager who loses your account! At least customers can change banks; clients mistreated by government departments have no choice. They can, though, change the government at the next election; this worries the Prime Minister.
We can identify problems in almost every portfolio: failure to manage and regulate the Murray-Darling river system; a biosecurity levy promised but not delivered; miserable internet speeds (although arguably due more to policy dithering than poor administration); mistreatment of detainees by Home Affairs contractors; #censusfail; endemic problems with tax administration (and prosecution rather than congratulations for the whistleblower involved); a failing vocational training system; the robodebt shambles; absurdly long Centrelink call waiting times; lack of support for Australian veterans; the failure of banking and finance regulation revealed by the Hayne royal commission; dodgy visas for high-rolling gamblers after inappropriate contacts between officials and Crown casinos; contracting out detention services to Paladin; mismanagement in Defence, including procurement bungles and travel allowances; the list goes on.
The spate of external inquiries and royal commissions in recent years indicates that in many cases the government does not trust the public service to sort out its own problems. The current royal commission into aged care is one such investigation, identifying widespread and grave failures of public service regulation of nursing homes.
Faced with ongoing evidence of the public service failing to deliver, is it any wonder the government now wants policy developed elsewhere? The public service has three roles - policy, regulation and program administration - which interact. Traditionalists who lament that the government is bypassing the public service on policy miss this point. Governments won't trust advice from Keystone Kops. To engender trust in policy, the public service must demonstrate it can implement, regulate and administer it effectively.
The spate of external inquiries and royal commissions in recent years indicates that in many cases the government does not trust the public service to sort out its own problems.
Successive governments over the past 15 years shoulder the blame for this state of affairs. They have regularly made senior-level appointments on the basis of extreme risk aversion, appointing people with a reputation for making no mistakes, the proverbial "safe pair of hands". In a column many years ago I warned of the dangers of this approach. The only way to avoid mistakes is to do nothing. People who have done nothing rise to the top in a system set up for risk avoidance. Ironically, this is designed for eventual failure. If people are not allowed to learn from small mistakes they are unable to cope when a large problem arises.
Ministers are risk-averse because of intensely adversarial politics, amplified by the shortened media cycle. A "gotcha" culture around even small mistakes has evolved. So even if ministers talk the talk about the need for risk-taking, in practice they cannot afford risk; and they communicate this attitude to the public service leadership, where it takes hold. We have thousands, literally, of junior and mid-level public servants who can see problems emerging, want to take risks and innovate, but are stifled by the risk-aversion culture.
Where's the good news? The answer is that the Australian Public Service can be more effective. At key points in Australia's history - federation, the establishment of a national capital and the public service move from Melbourne, post-World War II reconstruction, the reform period of the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, weathering the global financial crisis - we have had a public service which has performed as well as any in the world. Recapturing that will require public service leaders with the courage and honesty to acknowledge fundamental problems.
Superficial problems will be amenable to solutions like investment in IT and training, clarifying relationships between ministerial staff and public servants, and more transparency. These are worth doing, but will not restore trust. We need deep structural shifts, including: central agencies driving rather than impeding change; managers taking genuine risks requiring hard conversations with ministers; departments not consulting but engaging with the community on decision-making; a strong, independent anti-corruption investigator; and the alignment of incentives to results.
- Stephen Bartos is a former deputy secretary of the federal Finance Department.