Balancing collective and individual responsibilities is not always easy. Where a minister has firm views that conflict with the views of the senior ministers and/or the central agencies, the secretary can be in a difficult position. The role in these circumstances is still to give the minister all the necessary support and advice, but also to facilitate informed debate in the appropriate ministerial forum. That might involve informing the secretaries of the other agencies of the minister’s views and ensuring there is an opportunity for political debate. In doing this, care needs to be taken to ensure the minister does not feel the secretary is undermining the minister’s position (particularly when the secretary has advised against the minister’s position).
Table 4.6 Michael Wooldridge and control of the health agenda
Michael Wooldridge completed a thesis on the Fraser Government’s initiatives on health financing as part of a master’s degree. It convinced him of the need for the health minister and department to have control of the health policy agenda and not to allow the central agencies, with only a theoretical approach and limited practical understanding of the sector, to take the initiative.
While at times this led to some tensions, with the departments of PM&C and Finance in particular, for the most part it served the government well. Wooldridge as a member of the ERC felt obliged to ensure his proposals were financially and economically responsible, and we developed a series of budget packages that, while not always publicly popular, were effective, reduced outlays growth and addressed longer-term concerns. These included changes to aged care, the Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS), primary care, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and the introduction of lifetime community rating for private health insurance.
Wooldridge had Prime Minister Howard’s full confidence in these issues for most of the time and in working with the sometimes difficult medical profession. Where he and the department were less successful in retaining the confidence of the central ministers and departments (particularly PM&C) was in public health policy (for example, drugs), Indigenous health (where the minister and department felt strongly that sustained increases in funding were required) and in the relationship between private health insurance and Medicare (it was widely known within the government that the department had not supported the 30 per cent rebate initiative at the time, despite the minister’s involvement).
There were also sharp tensions at times over the negotiation of the 1998 Australian Health Care Agreements, particularly with the Department of PM&C and the PMO (see Chapter 8).
As mentioned, the Prime Minister appoints secretaries after a report from the Secretary of the Department of PM&C. They are acutely aware of the Prime Minister’s priorities and expectations even while they are formally responsible to their own ministers. I have written previously of the challenge in balancing these pressures; Brian Howe more than once complaining that he felt I was more concerned about the views of the then PM&C Secretary, Michael Keating, than I was about his (Howe’s) views. Mostly, however, Howe was conscious that I, as well as he, had Prime Minister Keating’s confidence (from my earlier time in the Finance department and advising the ERC), and that this was helpful to him. For the most part, I think I also had Prime Minister Howard’s confidence, but my more rocky relationship with Max Moore-Wilton presented challenges.
A more subtle issue is how secretaries handle the demand for collaboration when there are serious differences of perspective that should be addressed. There is a risk of ‘group think’ in collaborative processes, just as there is a risk of obstruction and delay in the traditional Interdepartmental Committee (IDC) process. For this reason, I have always favoured the task force approach combined with a reference group of relevant secretaries (or their representatives). Secretaries can find it difficult to ensure different perspectives are fully appreciated where there is no such reference group. It might be too late to advise a minister of concerns about a task force’s recommendations after it has reported, particularly if the task force has officials and external people involved. By then, the recommendations might have a political momentum that, if halted, would cause significant damage.
Table 4.7 Collective responsibility or centralisation of power
One of Brian Howe’s comments when we discussed a draft of this monograph was whether the increasing power of the Department of PM&C was not so much an emphasis on ‘collective responsibility’ as the centralisation of political and public service power. He cited the instance, when he was Deputy Prime Minister, of Robert Tickner (the then Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) being excluded from the then government’s deliberations of the Mabo High Court case on Indigenous land rights; he felt that the Prime Minister and his department took over the issue completely, rather than just ensuring collective responsibility.
There certainly is a risk that ‘whole-of-government’ processes do not simply facilitate constructive collaboration and coordination, but involve coopting public servants to serve the interests of the Prime Minister (or other central ministers) at the expense of the interests of line ministers and the groups and communities their policies and programs are designed to support.
For these reasons, it is essential for secretaries to keep their ministers closely informed about cross-portfolio activities and deliberations. There were occasions in my experience when central agencies, at the apparent behest of their ministers, attempted to constrain ministerial discussion of significant policy matters on the pretext of overriding financial imperatives. The Department of Finance at one stage even promoted a culture among its staff of ‘winning’ debates over resources and policies, rather than ensuring informed discussion among ministers to allow them to exercise collective responsibility properly.
My own approach in such circumstances was not just to keep the minister informed as best I could, but never to accept arguments that our concerns were not relevant because some more important issue was at stake that I was not authorised to debate.
The problem is not a new one, though it has almost certainly become more acute in recent decades. I learned my approach from very early days in my career not to be bullied by the Treasury in the 1970s over family allowances and tax expenditures, or in the 1980s over superannuation and tax reform, nor by all three central agencies in the 1990s and 2000s over Better Cities funding, Indigenous health and hospitals funding.
A related issue is the appropriate role for ministerial staff (for example, from the Prime Minister’s Office) in task forces and reference groups. Their involvement can certainly facilitate clear understanding of the Prime Minister’s wishes and concerns and help to give focus to the work of the task force. On the other hand, they can inhibit discussion of sensitive issues by secretaries (or the task force) that could be interpreted by ministerial staff as obstructing the work the government has requested. I felt this was the case in the Prime Minister’s task force on drugs and, to a lesser extent (as I could personally resist the pressure), in the reference group of secretaries for the task force I chaired on health services delivery in 2005.