It's Senate estimates season, or as some might say, Canberra's nerd Olympics.
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And one of the public service's star performers, Home Affairs Department secretary Mike Pezzullo, has already made a bold entrance.
The colourful top bureaucrat is well-known for his esoteric musings and creative flourishes, and last Friday's hearing did not disappoint.
Like a human dictionary, the department head helpfully described to Liberal senator Paul Scarr what a MOG is - an acronym few outside Canberra's public service bubble would know.
"We're public servants so everything's got an acronym - a MOG, a machinery of government - so we've turned it into a verb," Mr Pezzullo said.
"Departments themselves are typically not MOGged. The verb form applies typically to agencies, or functions get MOGged."
Senator Scarr's line of questioning picked at whether Mr Pezzullo considered the Labor government's gutting of his department in July to have been drastic.
He did not, calling it a "speed bump" as far as MOGs go.
It was nothing like the 2017 one that created the department, under then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and home affairs minister Peter Dutton, he said.
"We did much more work on unpicking what was, frankly, a fragmented and disparate set of related functions from across the rest of government," Mr Pezzullo said.
"I think I found cybersecurity in several pantries and looked under a few cushions and I found it there as well.
"What was much harder in the stand up of Home Affairs ... was really getting the big magnet and sort of finding all sort of filings and elements of metal that were scattered right throughout the rest of government."
Lost yet?
Evidently it takes more than one metaphor to explain a MOG.
And if you ever find a policy division in your pantry, let us know.
Is the Barton party just getting started?
Who would have thought that Barton would ever be so in vogue? Weeks after the Australian Taxation Office staked out a place for new offices on Sydney Avenue, the budget revealed the government would build what's expected to be a very large National Security Office Precinct nearby, as well. It'll house Office of National Intelligence staff, and people from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (read spies).
Could anyone else join them in Barton? Is there any room even left in the joint?
Two federal agencies could soon answer the question. The Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts is the latest to join the Canberra Monopoly game that is public service office property, announcing they are also looking for new offices in either Civic or, yes, the increasingly fashionable Barton.
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Along for the ride is Austrade, which could leave its New Acton offices in the Nishi building if a developer or building owner offers what the agencies are looking for elsewhere. They're in the market for a building to share with 31,300 sqm to 36,200 sqm in floorspace, ready for them to move in by June 2026.
It'd spell the end of the Infrastructure Department's time at the ageing Infrastructure House on Alinga Street, as well as its digs on Northbourne Avenue and in the Nishi building, where it shares some space with Austrade.
By then, anyone else wanting to get closer to Parliament may risk being too late to the Barton party.
Brand new department, same old problems?
Now on a more serious note. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese created two new departments following his elevation to the top job; the Workplace Relations and Climate Change departments.
But it's the latter that might have some teething problems just four months in.
The department has confirmed it has received 12 reports of bullying and harassment involving staff, meaning it's averaging one report a fortnight since its formation.
Those reports vary but include one instance where an inappropriate joke was made at a meeting, and another where a worker shared explicit material with a colleague.
According to budget papers, the new department has nearly 2500 staff with more than 5000 across the portfolio agencies.
Much of that number is made up of divisions pulled over during the machinery of government, with the department pulling teams over from the former Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as well as the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources.
But inheriting existing teams means taking the good with the bad and judging by the number of harassment reports, it's not off to a good start.
APS name controversies travel at the speed of sound
The furore about the Bureau of Meteorology's ill-fated move to stamp out its "BOM" nickname has evoked memories of other disastrous attempts at public service nomenclature changes.
One reader reminded us of the National Film and Sound Archive's 1999 rebrand as "ScreenSound Australia" (it later quietly reverted back to its earlier moniker).
As a study into the controversy observed at the time: "Institutional names are vital statements of professional mission, identity, relationships and status, and should be devised with care and intellectual rigour. It is perilous to change them lightly or hastily."
And our reader makes the point that new names should not have other meanings: "'The Bureau' - the proposed new name of BOM - is a spy thriller TV series on SBS. BOM works because it is distinctive, and you don't lightly throw away that equity," they said.
Those who don't learn from history, right?
Regional hubs snub
With the former Coalition government out and Labor's ideologies in, the public service is experiencing a flux of change.
One of the early sacrifices in this era are the regional hubs. Labor's first budget last Tuesday saw to chopping it to pieces.
Does that spell the end of the Coalition's decentralisation plans to get bureaucrats out of Canberra? Only time will tell but we don't think it's much of a question mark.
ASIO ups industry's spy game
ASIO is on the lookout against foreign spies infiltrating defence industry, the spy agency's director-general Mike Burgess says.
Our colleague Lanie Tindale reports the security agency this week said the "Prying Minds" campaign to raise awareness of foreign spies had reached tens of thousands of defence industry employees working in engineering, design, manufacturing, program management, logistics and IT support.
The idea is to educate the industry about the threats, and give it a way of reporting suspected spy activity.
Espionage and foreign interference have overtaken terrorism as ASIO's priority. Watch out.
Over to you
- Is there a culture problem at the Climate Change department?
- ps@canberratimes.com.au