Public Sector Informant: Americanised public service goes under the radar

There is a lively public debate about Americanisation of Australia's politics, but far less about its impacts on the public service. We have imported a number of political campaign methods from the US including political parties amassing huge voter databases, negative advertising aimed personally at candidates, polarisation of debate on issues and push polling.

Push polling is highly unethical. It is a pretend opinion poll to spread misleading information about political opponents, using seemingly innocent questions like "would you be less inclined to vote for candidate x if you knew he or she snorts cocaine/steals groceries/abuses koalas" to plant such ideas in the minds of voters.

Although both major parties condemn the practice, there are often claims about it being used, including in the most recent ACT election.

Also common in the United States is the practice of millionaires and billionaires using their wealth to buy their way into office through massive advertising campaigns. The experience of Clive Palmer in the last Australian election, where despite his saturation advertising campaign he and his party's candidates failed to win seats, indicates we are not yet as far gone down that path as the US. But the fact he did it at all, and then after the election claimed credit for the Coalition win, suggests this practice may become more common in future.

Australian elections have become increasingly presidential, along US lines. Australians do not vote for a prime minister. We vote for candidates in our local electorates, and the party that gains a majority of seats in the House of Representatives elects a prime minister.

Yet the last election was portrayed in almost all the media coverage as a contest between Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten. They were not standing against each other - they each had their own safe seat, in different states - but most voters did not get that impression.

This presidential approach affects the work of the public service. The prime minister, with his or her office and department, now dominate policy making. No longer will a well-argued submission from a minister have a chance of prevailing in the cabinet room if the prime minister opposes it.

The last Australian prime minister to have run cabinet along consensus collective decision making lines was Bob Hawke. There have been occasional glimpses of the Westminster tradition of cabinet government since, but they are becoming rarer with each new administration (as increasingly commentators, using US terminology, refer to the time in office of a prime minister).

This weakens public policy. Considerations of what will play best to public opinion polls and help the incumbent prime minister remain in office become far more important in this climate than they were when the government as a whole, not the prime minister, faced voters. These prime ministerial considerations can correspond with what is best for national wellbeing - but don't always.

Another far more damaging US public sector practice we have been copying more over recent years is political appointments to key senior jobs.

Presidential appointees fill large numbers of high-level government jobs in the US. From its earliest days as an independent nation the US had a "spoils" system where a newly elected president appointed literally hundreds of supporters to key civil service posts. Congressional reforms from the Pendleton Act of 1883 onwards sought to deal with the negative consequences of cronyism by encouraging a merit based, impartial civil service. Nevertheless numerous high level appointments, including heads of departments, many senior staff, ambassadors, committee positions and the like are still politically based.

Australia has been going down that path. Today bodies like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the board of Australia Post are full of unashamedly political appointees. We don't even have the safeguard of confirmation hearings, which in the US have the virtue of weeding out obviously unsuitable candidates.

Equally concerning is the way in which, as in the US, security and intelligence agencies have come to exert power within the public sector well beyond any reasonable assessment of the problems they are meant to address.

Our department of Home Affairs, although in some respects like the United Kingdom's Home Office, has many of the features of the powerful US Department of Homeland Security. Most of the department's border force staff wear uniforms and carry guns. Although US gun culture has not spread widely to the general population, it has infected our public service. Overseas visitors (not that we have many in COVID times) are today more likely to be treated with the coldness and suspicion that characterises US border officials than given what was once a friendly and open welcome.

There are some who welcome this, and other aspects of Americanisation, viewing it as making us more secure and closer to the US alliance. For others it is worrying, representing practices that undermine public service values and make it less effective.

Either way, it should not be happening below the radar. We need to be conscious of the trends and not let them creep up on our public service without question. They should be thought through not only by the leadership of the public service but by politicians and the Parliament.

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An odd historical quirk is that every four years the US election will coincide with the publication of The Public Sector Informant, except if the first Tuesday in November is November 1. This is because the US election Act of 1845 specifies presidential elections be held "on the Tuesday next after the first Monday in November". This was to prevent voting ever falling on All Saints Day, November 1. The US was then, still is, very observant of major religious dates. Why Tuesday? It's because market day for farmers usually fell on Wednesdays. They could not travel on a Sunday for religious reasons. So Tuesday gave them time to travel to town by horse and cart on Monday, vote on Tuesday, sell their goods at market on Wednesday, shop on Thursday and return to the farm on Friday in time for the next Sabbath.