Why public servants leak

Leaking, or conspicuous public policy dissent, is most likely to happen in middle policy management - around assistant secretary and senior adviser level - where a good deal of politically sensitive material is accessible to people who might combine personal grievances with a still lively sense of the public interest.

Would a “Night of the Long Knives” have done anything to prevent the leak? Should Rudd have removed some notoriously Howard-compliant departmental heads upon taking office? Perhaps - not because any of these persons is likely to leak, but because their continued presence might send a demotivating signal to middle policy management that nothing much has changed in policy terms.

Thus, if a government that came in on a strong platform of social justice and human values continues to do things such as hound David Hicks, delay natural justice to Mohammed Haneef, clear up a backlog of refugee cases without much evidence of compassion, prosecute indefinitely a cruel civil war in Afghanistan, and do little to educate the public on the realities of global warming and peak oil, it might expect some public servants to leak.

If accompanied by a real change in policy approach on such matters, reshuffling a few departmental heads might do some good in signalling to younger public servants that reform was underway. If not, it would simply be reshuffling the deckchairs in a public service that still feels a bit marginalised.