“The first thing we’ll do is sack those 36000 public servants in Canberra” – David Littleproud, leader of Australia’s National Party.
Donald Trump’s Cabinet is fraying at the edges before it gets down to business. Matt Gaetz surrendered the Attorney-General offer and Chad Chronister, fingered to be the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, self-ejected. Concerns about the rancid unsuitability of many others will not go away. Would anyone buy from Robert Kennedy Jnr, the nominee for Health Secretary, so much as a packet of suppositories? And it would be foolish to rule out Hulk Hogan as the next US Ambassador to Australia.
The farces are unsurprising as Trump’s selections have unequivocally been based on canonical loyalty to The Leader. While political sympathy has been a strong strain in US government appointments going back at least to Andrew Jackson in the 19th century, Trump has taken it to new extremities. There’s something, although not much, to be said for the American so-called “spoils system”. Those with lingering sympathy for it can be sobered up by reading Hugh Heclo’s bracing volume “A Government of Strangers”.
By the bye, apart from like attitudes to executive appointments, Trump and Andrew Jackson have much in common. Jackson purged Native Americans from their homelands, was a tariff booster, had a casual attitude towards the law and survived an assassination attempt. However, he was intelligent and had a strong military record while nasty bone spurs in Trump’s feet are alleged to have thwarted his ambitions for a military career including service in the American war in Vietnam – what bad luck.
But to return to the nub, loyalty and merit need not, of course, be wholly incompatible, although in a practical sense for Trump they just about are. His nominations for high executive office are under-written by expectations of sub-human brown-nosing and those who don’t keep their nostrils to the grindstone, as it were, can be confident of a bopping from the vengeful buffoon who will have the whip hand early next year. His Everest-like ego is coated in a skin about the thickness of that on a rice custard.
In the election campaign Trump was fond of alleging that the US had become a “joke” other countries were “laughing at”. He’s made the joke bigger but not many seem to be laughing.
So if the Dutton Coalition were to win the next federal election might it veer in Trumpist directions in appointing executives and others to the public service? The Morrison Government had relevant form most notably in filling the Administrative Appeals Tribunal so close to its brim with cronies as to cause the Albanese government to abolish it and start again. And Dutton’s inclinations might be piqued by Trump’s success and fortified by the urgings of like-minded barrackers, such as that keen public policy analyst, Ms Gina Reinhart. Already the leader of the National Party, Mr Littleproud, has been pleased to say that “the first thing we’ll do is sack those 36000 public servants in Canberra.” Such political crudity is not a gladdening sign.
The Federal Government has reasonable protections against any Trumpist “jobs for mates” push although there are vulnerabilities.
The heads of departments – Ministers – must be chosen by the Prime Minister from those who’ve been elected to Parliament. For US equivalents Trump could cast widely and no rock seems to not be worth lifting in the search..
In appointing their personal staff, the law requires Australian federal Ministers to take “capability” into account and act within any procedures determined by the Prime Minister but there is scope, quite reasonably, for them to give weight to political leanings.
Secretaries of departments are appointed by the Governor-General on advice from the Prime Minister who in turn must be advised by the Secretary of his department and the Public Service Commissioner. While most of these appointments usually have been based on merit, the scope to consider political sympathies is not limited and Secretaries have no security of tenure. Thus, it would be open to any government to dismiss all the Secretaries it inherited from a predecessor and put in its own.
The Public Service Act provides substantial protection against political interference in appointments and promotions below the Secretary level. However, related merit requirements can and have been worked around by using consultants and labour contractors as de facto employees, a corruption wound back by the Public Service Minister, Senator Gallagher.
Finally, governments have wide discretion in appointments to hundreds of statutory authority positions where independence from political influence is critical. In some cases there are procedures to provide degrees of insulation against politicisation but these also can be worked around.
Two critical points of weakness are with departmental Secretaries and statutory officers. The 2019 Thodey review of the public service made important recommendations that would have strengthened the protections on Secretaries. These were repudiated by the Morrison government and not acted on by Albanese’s. The present government commissioned a review of rules for statutory appointments whose report it has had for probably a year. It has not seen the light of day.
As Australia veers towards many American habits, every now and again it has been attracted to the US “spoils system” for filling government positions. Some Secretary and statutory office appointments by both major parties have been overtly political and in 1984 the Hawke Government came close to reserving a proportion of Senior Executive Service positions for political appointees. It could happen again as the perils of Trumpism ooze across the world.
While the Albanese Government has done much to improve standards of merit and capability in staffing, it’s done virtually nothing to legally sandbag Secretary and statutory office appointments against politicisation.
The solutions are easy but getting them accepted is titanically difficult. The crux is that governments and ministers do not want to have their discretion to use senior appointments as a means of better controlling what they should leave alone and to reward pals many of whom would not be employed on their merits. This is the rock on which the public interest comes to grief and for as long as it does, it will be a shame that governments and citizens will not be as well served as they should be.
Paddy Gourley is a superannuated Commonwealth public servant.