The head of the Prime Minister’s Department,Phil.Gaetjens,has effectively green-lighted behaviour that would not be tolerated in the public service he leads.
If a fish rots from the head, then the finding by the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet that there was no basis for suggesting political considerations were the primary determining factor for allocating $100 million in sports grants makes a mockery of the Australian Public Service commitment to the highest ethical standards among its leaders.As head of the public service, Phil Gaetjens is the one who sets the standard for others to follow. By finding political considerations were not the primary reason for the awarding of the grants, he has directly conflicted the Australian National Audit Office finding that 61 per cent of successful applicants would have failed if the minister and her office had not intervened with their focus on marginal seats.
The audit office report could not have been clearer: “The award of funding reflected the approach documented by the Minister’s Office of focusing on ‘marginal’ electorates held by the Coalition as well as those electorates held by other parties or independent members that were to be ‘targeted’ by the Coalition at the 2019 Election.”
The secretary was asked to review the ministerial guidelines, but the minister and the sport bureaucrats are also bound by a legal requirement to act ethically.
The Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PGPA) Act is the bedrock of accountability, transparency and integrity for the commonwealth public sector.
It requires public servants and ministers to act “properly”, which is defined to include “ethical” behaviour.
The ANAO has issued specific guidance on what this means for grants and has emphasised “the geographic distribution of grant activities as a measure of equitable distribution and as an indicator of party-political bias in the distribution of grants”.
In this regard the audit office found widespread political pork barrelling, with 47 per cent of funds for first-round applicants going to politically targeted seats.
Influential advice
It only got worse in the latter rounds, with some clubs that had not even applied given grants in the run-up to the 2019 election.
While Gaetjens was told to just look at the ministerial guidelines, the optics of the head of service ignoring the obvious prima facie breach of the PGPA act is a dreadful look.
The recent Thodey Australian Public Service review found trust in government has almost halved over the past 20 years from 48 per cent to 26 per cent.
Trust is the glue that enables the APS to do its job and when ministers are given a free pass by the head of the APS for what prima facie looks to be clearly unethical behaviour, it becomes deeply cancerous.
As David Thodey put it: “Scepticism is part of a healthy democracy but extreme low trust is detrimental. It compromises the APS’ capacity to provide services to citizens, to regulate effectively and to provide well-informed and influential advice.
While there are many drivers of trust in the public sector – including reliability, responsiveness, openness, better regulation and inclusive policy-making – the OECD identifies integrity as the most crucial determinant.
To build trust in the public sector, all participants in the system – the APS, Parliament and ministers (along with their advisers) as well as third parties – must operate with high levels of integrity. Their actions are all interlinked, and how they operate – the standards they uphold – must be considered.”
As head of the service, and custodian of APS integrity, Gaetjens has let pass ministerial behaviour, which frankly fails both the “pub test” and the ethical test. If any of his other secretarial colleagues or senior executives had so acted, it would have seen them out the door in minutes.
As we have seen in the US, if the public sector gives its executive masters a free rein to prosecute political advantage, dressed up as OK public purpose, then we green-light a whole set of behaviours that ultimately corrupt the very democracy our governments are meant to serve.
Tom Burton has held senior editorial, and publishing roles with The Mandarin, the Sydney Morning Herald, and as Canberra bureau chief for the Australian Financial Review. He has worked in Government, specialising in the communications sector. He has won three Walkley awards. Connect with Tom on Twitter. Email Tom at tom.burton@afr.com
John Menadue is the Founder and Editor in Chief of Pearls and Irritations. He was formerly Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.
Comments
7 responses to “TOM BURTON. Gaetjens makes a mockery of public service standards.(AFR 3.2.2020)”
Unfortunately, with the loss of employment tenure and introduction of 5 or 3 year contracts for senior public servants that coincided with increased salaries in the late 1980s in the Commonwealth and NSW public services, senior officers have become politicised. They serve the Minister not the public and focus on careers and income. It is the Minister and political committees who determine their security. One means to reduce pork-barrelling of taxpayers funds is for totally independent authorities to be in charge of the distribution of grants. Any Ministerial involvment should be subject to real time public disclosure!
Gaetjens should be charged with partisanship – too cosy with the PM – how can this possibly be independent. The AFP should be involved here – at the very least Gaetjens sacked and his superannuation denied.
The action also fails a legal test.
The Criminal Code 1995 has Chapter 7 – The proper administration of Government, which should be essential reading for Members of Parliament and the Australian Public service.
An extract:
142.2 Abuse of public office
(1) A Commonwealth public official commits an offence if:
(a) the official:
(i) exercises any influence that the official has in the official’s capacity as a Commonwealth public official; or
(ii) engages in any conduct in the exercise of the official’s duties as a Commonwealth public official; or
(iii) uses any information that the official has obtained in the official’s capacity as a Commonwealth public official; and
(b) the official does so with the intention of:
(i) dishonestly obtaining a benefit for himself or herself or for another person; or
(ii) dishonestly causing a detriment to another person.
Penalty: Imprisonment for 5 years.
Other sections of Chapter 7 also make sobering reading.
The question is: why is the Criminal Code, Chapter 7 – The proper administration of Goverment more honoured in the breach than the observance?
Interesting. But I’m thinking that the wording doesn’t cope with political games. Could rigging an administrative process to benefit a political party be categorized as benefiting a person? Like the just concluded trial in the US Senate, both short and long term outcomes will be resolved politically. And in these aspirational days getting ahead seems to trump (!) integrity.
As the merest ‘bush lawyer’, I note, with the most intense regret, that Gaetjens does not appear to have ‘dishonestly’ obtained a benefit for anyone: he was constrained by his terms of reference.
Thanks, Tom. I agree, this is a new low in Morrison’s relentless attacks on the APS, and it cannot be allowed to just fade away, as if nothing had happened.
When one considers the behaviour of he who wrote this “secret report” against the Auditor General, and the behaviour of he who weaponised it, we have a good word for that in our language – cowardice.
What was the (lack of) trust level in the financial services industry before a Royal Commission was called and we were promised the tumbrils would be mobilised?