The endemic problems of the Gillard Government

It is not entirely clear to me what 'Labor' and 'Liberal' mean any more, and it seems that a great deal of contemporary politics is simply about staying in power. And all of this has been shaped by another great weakness - the role, size and power of the Minister's private office.

The Ministerial offices

These are large groups of advisers, appointed by the Minister and answerable only to him or her. They cannot be brought before parliamentary committees, and they are not public servants.

There have been fusses about them before, but usually because a Minister has appointed a close relative. The existence of the private office goes back to the Whitlam period. After 23 continuous years of Coalition government there grew a feeling within the Labor Party that the public service was not to be trusted, because most of its members had only ever known Liberal or Country Party Ministers.

So Ministers acquired a small staff whose purpose was to check that the boss was being given the right advice from the department. The Coalition objected to this initiative, but retained it when in office from the end of 1975. The size and scale of these offices has grown over the forty years and they are a now a permanent feature of Australia federal politics.

In my view they are pernicious. They do not aid the business of Australian government.

To begin with, they are focussed on the Minister, and the Minister's needs. What are they? Well, to be seen to be successful, to be in the public gaze, to be rising in approval within the Government, and to avoid flak. What's wrong with that, you ask?

I would argue that the Minister is there to oversee the work of the departments and agencies described in the administrative arrangements order, and to ensure that they are doing what Cabinet has decided, and what their legislation sets out.

The department and agencies need the Minister to be aware of their needs, to be available when matters have to be sorted out and to advance their interests (funding, appointments, jurisdiction problems) in the Cabinet room. They are able to advise the Minister on the best way to achieve particular outcomes.

From the point of view of the Ministerial office, the department's needs are secondary. They are there to do what the Minister wants. The trouble with that is that the business of government is now very large, and that people need to be paid, transfers need to take place, appointments need to be put through in time, and agreements need to be signed, no matter if today we have a new crisis.

I think it is common knowledge around Canberra, at least in public service circles, that today's Government is bumble-footed. Some things aren't being done in time and some are done too quickly. It is not Julia Gillard's fault, because it was not much better, if at all, in the Rudd and Howard periods.

But Ministers are not as close to the work of their departments as they once were, and should be. And their private offices are part of the problem, because they have, to some degree, usurped the role of the departmental secretary and the other senior public servants. The outcome is a lack of competence in the ordinary business of government administration.

The consequence is that each day, each week, there is another small failure. My feeling is that our present Government is likely to suffer the death of a thousand little failures, rather than of one big one.