Australian Department Heads Under Howard: Career Paths and Practice

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Australian Department Heads Under Howard: Career Paths and Practice Australian Department Heads Under Howard: Career Paths and Practice Collected Articles from The Canberra Times Australian Department Heads Under Howard: Career Paths and Practice Collected Articles from The Canberra Times Paul Malone Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] Web: http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Malone, Paul, 1947- . Australian department heads under Howard : career paths and practice. Bibliography. ISBN 1 920942 82 3 (pbk.) ISBN 1 920942 83 1 (online) 1. Civil service - Australia - Officials and employees. 2. Civil service - Australia. 3. Australia - Officials and employees - Biography. 4. Australia - Politics and government - 1996- . I. Title. 352.2930994 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover design by John Butcher Printed by University Printing Services, ANU The chapters in this monograph are based on a series of articles originally published in The Canberra Times between 14 November 2005 and 22 April 2006. Funding for this monograph series has been provided by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government Research Program. This edition © 2006 ANU E Press John Wanna, Series Editor Professor John Wanna is the Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration at the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. He is the director of research for the Australian and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG). He is also a joint appointment with the Department of Politics and Public Policy at Griffith University and a principal researcher with two research centres: the Governance and Public Policy Research Centre and the nationally-funded Key Centre in Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance at Griffith University. Professor Wanna has produced around 17 books including two national text books on policy and public management. He has produced a number of research-based studies on budgeting and financial management including: Budgetary Management and Control (1990); Managing Public Expenditure (2000), From Accounting to Accountability (2001) and, most recently, Controlling Public Expenditure (2003). He has just completed a study of state level leadership covering all the state and territory leaders — entitled Yes Premier: Labor leadership in Australia’s states and territories — and has edited a book on Westminster Legacies in Asia and the Pacific —Westminster Legacies: Democracy and responsible government in Asia and the Pacific. He was a chief investigator in a major Australian Research Council funded study of the Future of Governance in Australia (1999-2001) involving Griffith and the ANU. His research interests include Australian and comparative politics, public expenditure and budgeting, and government-business relations. He also writes on Australian politics in newspapers such as The Australian, Courier- Mail and Canberra Times and has been a regular state political commentator on ABC radio and TV. Table of Contents Foreword ix Preface xiii Introduction 1 The Consummate `Fixer' ± Peter Shergold, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet 7 From Timber to Tax ± Ken Henry, The Treasury 11 The Devil's Advocate ± Ian Watt, Department of Finance and Administration 21 Starting from Scratch ± Patricia Scott, Department of Human Services 25 The Reluctant Chief ± Ric Smith, Department of Defence 31 The Man with a `Promising Past' ± Michael L'Estrange, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 37 Californian Dreamer ± Lisa Paul, Department of Education, Science and Training 45 The `New' Old Broom ± Andrew Metcalfe, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 51 The Company Man ± Mark Paterson, Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources 59 Making the Best of It ± Mark Sullivan, Department of Veterans' Affairs 69 Going `Bush' ± Joanna Hewitt, Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 77 The People's Choice ± Jeff Harmer, Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs 83 The Unabashed Rationalist ± Peter Boxall, Department of Employment and Workplace Relations 91 Environmental Angler ± David Borthwick, Department of Environment and Heritage 99 Keeping the Customer Satisfied ± Robert Cornall, Attorney-General's Department 107 The Pragmatist ± Mike Taylor, Department of Transport and Regional Services 113 Pioneering Survivor ± Helen Williams, Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts 121 vii Australian Department Heads Taking the `Hospital Pass' ± Jane Halton, Department of Health and Ageing 129 viii Foreword It is a noteworthy indicator of change in a public service that it is now possible for a journalist, with official sanction, to write profiles of departmental secretaries based on interviews. Until the mid-1960s department heads were rarely mentioned in the media. An attempt in the immediate post-Menzies era to profile secretaries ended in grief after only two interviews. In the end, the attempt was not entirely futile for, in subsequent years, journalists became adept in covering bureaucracy. In Australia, the Canberra Times led the way with a succession of highly skilled reporters on the public service round. The unlikely pathfinder was the irascible Bruce Juddery. The first great story revolved around the controversy over use of the VIP flight in the RAAF during the last months of the Holt Government. It was followed hard apace by newly-installed Prime Minister John Gorton's removal, early in 1968, of Sir John Bunting from the post of Secretary, Prime Minister's Department. The round was rewarded with especially rich pickings in the days of the McMahon Government and the temperamental, erratic Whitlam prime ministership. The baton is now in the hands of Paul Malone, author of this monograph. Malone is very well equipped for this assignment. His career in journalism includes 12 years working in the Press Gallery (five as political correspondent and bureau chief for the Canberra Times, the rest for the Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald). He has also seen bureaucracy from the inside, as a departmental officer and as a ministerial staffer. These profiles show that while most of those who reach to top of the public service come from the career service, it is now probable that they will have had a range of experience elsewhere, often in a university, very occasionally in commerce. This experience might come at the start of a career or during a short break after some advancement up the ladder. In many respects the secretary cadre is very diverse; at around 20 in number it can hardly hope to be representative of the entire nation. They come from all states and Territories, except Tasmania and the Northern Territory, with Victoria predominating, and from abroad. For Peter Shergold, arriving in Australia in his 20s, the route to Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, was probably more assured than had he entered Whitehall, aspiring to head the British Cabinet Office. Three of the group covered in this book have had no post in Australian Government except as departmental secretaries. All have university qualifications, gained, with one exception, full-time. Most have second degrees, in five cases at doctoral level. ix Australian Department Heads A number have combined experience in Canberra with periods abroad, usually but not entirely in Western Europe or North America, or both. Apart from the three recruited directly as department secretaries, public service experience in Australia outside Canberra is unusual but not entirely absent. Regional experience is obviously not obligatory in the climb to the top. For a public service based on merit, the collective portrait contained in this book will be reassuring. But it should not be entirely so. It is replete with many views, especially on work-life balance, which will be well-received and perceived as progressive. But there are other matters which show that, beyond the jargon, older bureaucratic instincts and insecurities are far from absent, though sometimes with good reason. In his introduction, Paul Malone comments on the preponderance of training in economics among the secretaries and revives the debate about economic rationalism promoted a decade or so ago by sociologist Michael Pusey. It is not surprising that economics training should figure so prominently. Walter Bagehot described economics as the "science of business". It is also a "science of government". It is a logical course of study for someone wanting a career in government; and it is not surprising that people with training in economics should subsequently seek a career in government service. Malone worries that so restricted a disciplinary background could too easily lead to "group think" within government. There are indeed disturbing signs of "group think" in the profiles, but its source does not necessarily lie in disciplinary background. If anything, the secretaries protest too much about the collegiality and cooperativeness of their whole-of-government endeavours in contrast to what they see as great turf wars of earlier generations. They may be right that the environment has changed, and Malone may be partly right in attributing it to encroaching disciplinary homogeneity, but other explanations are possible. The post-1987 departmental machinery of government
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