A NEW GOVERNMENT IS AN EXCITING TIME, HERE ARE FOUR THINGS THE PM SHOULD THINK ABOUT IN BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL TRANSITION

The transition to a new government is an exciting time. Change creates new thinking and new possibilities. Optimism pervades public discourse, fleetingly anyway.

Australia has much to be proud of in the way transfers of power occur. The most recent change of national government has occurred quickly and smoothly. Politicians, losers and winners alike, have facilitated this process.  Smooth transfers of power should never be taken for granted and contrast starkly with many other places in the world.

The transfer of power starts a deeper transition to a new government. To be successful, the party taking the reins of power needs to build its capacity to govern quickly and well. In doing so, it needs to recognise that the capabilities needed to be a successful opposition and a successful government overlap, but only slightly.

The public service is critical to, but only one part of, a complex capability government needs to create. Modern government operates very differently to a traditional Westminster model. Its zeitgeist is captured more accurately by Utopia than Yes Minister.

So, what should the Prime Minister be considering? Here are four things.

Machinery of government

Part of the jigsaw has already been decided. Ministers have been announced and the structure of government has been set. Machinery of government changes need to occur quickly to get a government up and running. Decisions may be fast, but the ramifications are long. Major changes take many years to fully implement, and will be still be settling well beyond the current term of government.

With decisions taken, attention now needs to focus on making them work. There would also be merit in government having an eye to the future, and commission some thinking on what should guide future machinery of government decisions.

Secretary positions

Politicisation of secretary (and other senior) appointments remains a hot issue in public administration, and rightly so. Australia’s system of government is designed for, and relies on, an apolitical public service that is able to serve successive governments well.

Nights of long knives sit heavily in the memories of public servants. Appointments based on political alignment, rather than merit, undermine the integrity of the service. They are less harmful, however, than sacking secretaries for breaching undefined lines in implementing the agenda of a previous government. Both undermine an apolitical public service, but the freezing effect of political sackings on public service behaviour is inimical to Australian democracy.

Early signs from the new government are positive. The appointment of Professor Glyn Davis to PM&C has been universally welcomed. Davis brings deep expertise and a commitment to rebuilding much eroded public service capability. One suspects his personal policy leanings are a comfortable fit for government, but this comes with an undoubted commitment to apolitical service. It is a good combination for a head of PM&C.

Secretary appointments will be announced shortly. Space exists for some new faces, with more in the future as planned retirements occur over the next 12 months or so. This will provide the Prime Minister a chance to inject some new talent, make some shifts, all while maintaining a high level of stability. It is an opportunity he should take. The knives can (and should) remain sheathed, at least for now.

Longer term, more thinking is needed on processes for Secretarial appointments and terminations. Relying on a combination of Prime Ministerial personality and circumstance to avoid overt politicisation of secretary ranks is not sufficient. It will be interesting to see if the Prime Minister’s commitment, and Glyn Davis’ ambition, to rebuild public service extends that far.

Ministerial offices

Filling of ministerial office roles has begun in earnest. The process will take some time, as temporary positions held by public servants give way to permanent political appointments.

The role now played by the ministerial office is, arguably, the biggest shift in the operation of executive government in the last 40 years. Office staff play a critical role and work in a high-pressured environment. Yet they remain the least trained, supported and accountable part of executive government.

The vulnerability of ministerial staff was revealed starkly during the last Parliament. It is a point of national shame that the institution established to set the rules for society has allowed unacceptable workplace behaviours in its own precincts to occur for so long. The lessons from two reports, one from PM&C Deputy Stephanie Foster and one from Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins, require ongoing attention and priority.

Another report – that of the obliquely-named Ministerial Liaison Reference Panel – is also worthy of consideration.  The report, which forms part of the response to the Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, was completed under the previous government and released as an early act of the new government.

The Panel, chaired (again) by Stephanie Foster and comprising four eminent ministerial chiefs of staff, examined the relationship between ministerial offices and the public service. Its approach and recommendations were practical and pragmatic. At the heart of the report is a call for a more professional ministerial adviser service, and mechanisms to build better connections between ministerial advisers and public servants.

An initial test will be the extent to which the report is used in establishing the training and support for incoming ministerial staff. Tension exists here. Building a more professional ministerial adviser service takes time and the investment in new structures. Government, on the other hand, needs a new cohort of advisers to be up and running quickly.

Providing more professional environment for ministerial advisers is long overdue and will not happen overnight. Government needs to do what it can to ensure the new cohort of ministerial staff receive better training and support than in the past, while investing in structures that will benefit all governments of the future.

Policy and delivery support

This term of government is likely to be one of the most challenging in recent history (and yes, this does include dealing with the pandemic). Australia faces a cascade of global, national and local challenges – some familiar, some not. This comes at a time where the benefits of our domestic response to the pandemic have been largely realised, but the economic costs are largely yet to be paid.

It is clear also from a series of Royal Commissions and other inquiries that government has much work to do on both a policy and delivery front across a wide range of areas. Government must be ready to meet an evolving set of new challenges, while remediating a service system that is operating well below expectations.

Investing in the capability of the public service to better meet these challenges is important, but not sufficient. Australia needs a much stronger ecosystem around government with the deep understanding of society and policy / delivery design capability needed to complement the work of the public service. These institutions need to operate effectively with government, but also be a place where new ideas can be robustly generated and tested without being ‘managed’ politically.

Designing and developing this capacity will again take time. It is not simply a case of channelling more money to universities or to existing institutions. Rather, it requires a deeper think about the support government needs to meet the challenges of the future.

Decision making processes

Executive government is, at its simplest, a decision-making machine. Its structures - cabinet, legislative delegations, the budget, parliament etc – tend to be stable from government to government. But as any senior public servant know, individual governments can be wildly different in the way consider and take decisions. Within the stable structure, lies potential for both chaos and order, depending on the government.

Early signs are that the new government has thought about its role as decision maker carefully. The Prime Minister has emphasised a methodical approach to decision making. This stands in stark contrast to some of his predecessors on both sides of politics. 

Perhaps the biggest challenge government faces is in responding the ravenous expectations of a 24/7 media cycle. The expectation that government should have an immediate response to every passing issue is both unrealistic and harmful to good governance. Here again, the Prime Minister has sought to set some sensible ground rules.

A second challenge involves arresting the drift towards a centralised presidential model of decision making, controlled by the prime ministerial office. Empowering ministers to be more responsible and accountable for their portfolios, when combined with robust Cabinet processes, has the potential to significantly improve government decision-making. The cost is less central political control over the so-called narrative. It will be fascinating to see what balance the new government strikes.

A third challenge involves the budget. The budget is, rightly, a pinnacle of government decision making. Budget processes are used to order government priorities and ensure that precious tax-payer resources are being devoted wisely. Fiscal settings are also critical to managing the economy – something that will become more apparent this term.  

Australia’s highly controlled and resource intensive budget process is not delivering the quality of decisions it should. The new government’s proposed wellbeing framework (when implemented) is a good idea and could help. But there is a deeper need to rethink the role the budget process play in government decision-making overall. One key consideration should be creating more space for government to better monitor and assess the delivery performance of its big service systems (tax, aged care, health etc) – as these have been a source of ongoing failure.

There may also be merit in government considering new approaches to engaging citizens in the deliberations of government. Government decisions need to balance the reasonable competing claims of an increasingly diverse population. Demonstrating the ‘reasonableness’ of its decisions to the public is becoming more difficult. New models are needed to help government do this.

One approach worth considering is the use of citizen-style juries. Citizen juries are expensive and have limitations, but provide a potentially powerful mechanism for supporting some government decisions. Other models should also be explored as a genuine investment in the capability of government and the future of our democracy.

Sean Innis is Principal of Damala St Consulting. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Studies Institute and ANU, and Chair of Public Policy at ADC Forum.

First published in The Mandarin on 16 June 2022.