One of the seminal characteristics of political populist idiocy is the trumpeting of an intention to carve up the population of public servants. The underlying assumption is that the majority of electors will be greatly in favour of this, as they surely believe that all their ills with interaction with the PS are the result of intransigent, malicious, lazy, overpaid, valueless members of the PS.
As a member of the APS for 27 years, I repudiate this tarring with one large brush while lamenting the evident excesses of the gross coterie of bureaucrats involved in Robodebt. A forensic examination of the prime causes of that fiasco would trace its miscegenation back to Howard, ‘Max the Axe’ and the overall politicisation of the APS that ensued, where ideological loyalty to the leanings of the government of the time overrule adherence to the ideals of the conduct of government business in accordance with Westminster principles.
In less decorative language: ‘your career depends on keeping the Minister happy’ – which is in no way the same as ‘doing the best for the nation’. Especially when the Minister(s) concerned have the IQ of a bent brick and the scruples of weeks-old roadkill – and we get far too many of those, courtesy of such pressures as factional representation, ‘quotas’ or a dearth of talent within a Party for which the ideological foundation for membership is, societally, crap.
Just because you can spell ‘Army’ correctly for two times out of five tries does not necessarily make you a top-notch candidate for Minister of Defence. (This may/must have come as a surprise to some Party leaders). Just because you are on intimate terms with the god of your choosing does not necessarily make you the obvious choice for Minister of … well, anything, actually.
This examination of the capabilities of Ministers is relevant to any discussion concerning the correct quantity of Public Servants within a Department – because the Minister directs the Departmental order of business and the workload of business creates the necessity for operatives aka ‘staff’. If the Minister decides some activity is a priority, then it must receive adequate human resources to execute – and it is rarely the case that a Minister will acknowledge that some other of the Department’s workload has to be sacrificed in order to move resources to the new priority.
Therefore, additional human resources must be engaged…
To those with no experience of working in the Public Service, it may be an epiphany to discover that the PS is not a self-generating entity, spawning new members with the coming of Spring. Aberrations resulting in engorged empires such as witnessed in the Pezullo era – now who was his Minister, remind me?? – are thankfully few.
In fact – unless things have changed vastly from my experience, which included the generation of new positions requiring extensive workload analysis (then called ‘Work Studies’) – every position is properly justified by a quite rigorous quantification of workload and expertise analysis.
Which requires an actual understanding of the processes involved in executing government business.
So the mindless, witless, populist dog-whistle of ‘maintain front-line services, reduce bureaucracy’ is a clear and present indication of administrative stupidity or cupidity. Despite his well-earned reputation as a Minister not to be emulated for Anything, even an ex-traffic cop can potentially learn the basics of business administration.
Here is the situation in a nutshell: ‘frontline staff’ are the first point of contact with the business of a Department. They are the cannon-fodder of decisions of legislation that is to be enabled through the routine processing of business as prescribed/proscribed by the relevant legislation.
I’ve been ‘frontline staff’ – don’t kid yourself that it’s easy. As a junior officer charged with a specific set of tasks, you have no flexibility to ‘interpret’ or qualify the basic rules of the service you have to deliver. If the situation with which you are presented does not fit exactly within the prescribed boxes, then judgements may have to be forwarded to more senior officers.
And it is exactly those ‘more senior officers’ that Dutton’s populist parade pledges to remove. So, decisions necessary to actually provide a fair, decent, timely delivery of ‘service’ to a Departments clients, get delayed – perhaps for many months, possibly forever.
So: (hypothetical but entirely possible example): the single mother of three young ones, widowed by an industrial accident, misses a Jobseeker appointment that requires her to travel several hours to another regional town for an interview because one of the children has presented with Murray Valley Encephalitis, is hospitalised and in critical condition, the rote of the legislation demands her pension is suspended.
The ‘frontline staff’ officer handling the case has no authority to override the basic rule, but can only forward the case to a more senior officer for decision – but under the Dutton idiocy, there are but a few officers in the entire Department to handle all such cases.
What do you do, with no money, no relief in sight and a child who might or might not survive? There is no prize for the neatest correct answer.
Is this all a fanciful extrapolation??
Ask the families of Veterans who have ended their lives while waiting for help from a Department badly understaffed by governmental policies to limit the number of public servants.
Or Robodebt casualties.
Richard Llewellyn
Richard Llewellyn was Registrar at the Australian War Memorial from 1986 to 1995.