A Labor government would need to fix flawed APS structure through Administrative Arrangements Orders

Perhaps Phil Gaetjens has done so. If he hasn't he should.

Without patronising readers of The Public Sector Informant who in sum will know more about the AAO than could be written down, a little background shouldn't be avoided:

The Constitution does not specify how the exercise of the powers in sections 61, 62 and 64 are to be documented. Thus, the first AAO setting out the titles of departments created by the Governor-General in Council, the subject matter for which they are to be responsible and the legislation they are to administer did not turn up until 1906. Since then the AAO, roughly in its original form, has provided the foundation for the organisation of the Commonwealth government's administration.

There have been three major developments in the AAO since 1906:

Although it probably doesn't mean anything, these three major changes in the evolution of the AAO were made under ALP governments.

It's unlikely any AAO ever could be the acme of administrative rationality and good order. All of them will be affected by the interests of individual ministers, their relative political power and contests for administrative territory. The 1987 edition might have been better than most although it had its doubters.

What can be said with more certainty is that the AAOs of the last 15 years or so are not up with the better ones. The reasons for this are difficult to unravel although it's a safe bet that the gradual erosion of a strong central core of expertise of the structure of government organisations that was pretty much snuffed out with the abolition of the Public Service Board in 1987 has been unhelpful.

What can be said with great certainty is that the present AAO has more than its fair share of messy bits and that it would not suit the ALP if it were to get into government.

The biggest mess is the Home Affairs portfolio. Significantly inspired by phobias about asylum seekers arriving by boats (although seemingly unaffected by the vastly greater number arriving by plane), this product of political and bureaucratic empire building conforms to no sensible machinery of government principles. It brings together unlike functions on a false premise of consolidating all "border protection" functions; it does not do so. It has militarised civilian aspects of border control while converting the vital immigration and settlement functions to a secondary status dominated by a desire not to welcome new arrivals but to keep asylum seekers arriving by boats and bad eggs out. And it wrongly includes the ASIO and the AFP close to the very functions they should be kept at a distance from.

No minister or official has come within a bull's roar of justifying this machinery of government anomaly because there isn't one. The Home Affairs Department secretary, Michael Pezzullo, is pleased to refer to "the apparatus" of the portfolio vainly implying it is a bit of scientific machinery whose cogs are whirring away at close to perfection. That is not so and any who need convincing on the point should consult the many reports of the Auditor-General lambasting the "apparatus", usually in graphic terms. The Djokovic fiasco is the tip of an iceberg about the bigness of Antarctica.

The Home Affairs portfolio looks for all the world like something cobbled together to fail as it has and as it will continue to no matter what fog of clichés its advocates use which masks its true self. If the ALP gets to govern and if it wants to minimise its political and administrative problems, it would move on the Home Affairs portfolio. At a minimum it should revitalise and restore the prominence of immigration and put ASIO and the AFP back where they belong in the Attorney-General's portfolio.

But it shouldn't stop there.

The industrial relations function should not be in the Attorney-General's Department where it can be tainted by legalism which in 2020 presumably led the Prime Minister and the then attorney-general, Christian Porter, to tout the simplification of industrial awards as a fresh path to productivity growth. Awards had been simplified years before and the delusional pretense that mucking around with clauses in awards will do anything about productivity appears now to have come in, after a great deal of sound and fury, with a nil result.

While the dread words "climate change" are only given a passing reference in the current AAO in the Agriculture, Water and Resources portfolio which is given responsibility for its abatement and coordination, the entry for the Industry, Science. Energy and Resources Department doesn't mention climate change as part of its responsibilities for greenhouse gas abatement, renewable energy and the promotion of industry. Is it any wonder that the government is forking out billions of dollars to producers of greenhouse gases to encourage them to reduce their emissions? That is to say, taxpayers are paying polluters rather than polluters paying for their emissions. Avoiding a "carbon tax" has come at a high price for taxpayers. Perhaps the ALP will want to give greater prominence and coherence to its climate change policies and their administration and have that clearly recognised in any AAO it has the fortune to author.

It might also like to do something to give its policies on Indigenous people a greater chance of success. At the moment the AAO has this function in the Prime Minister's portfolio, a hangover from the Abbott era probably honourably intended to give greater political clout to Indigenous policy and administration. It's likely, however, that in the rush of prime ministerial business, and notwithstanding a cabinet minister for Indigenous Australians, this function is given less political attention than it would get if it were located elsewhere.

But back to Mr Gaetjens and the officials he should have working on an AAO against the possibility of an ALP win.

It's to be hoped he's alerted them to the opportunity to clear up some of the present inadequacies and to make sure that any new AAO:

For its part an ALP government should be cautious of any urgings from officials about minimal change to the AAO.

Sure, changes can be disruptive and costly but it's better to get the organisation of government functions as right as possible first up rather than risking the need for frequent fiddling as time goes by.