The most demanding issue for secretaries and other senior officials is balancing responsibilities to the minister and the elected government and obligations to the Parliament, to whom ministers are accountable (secretaries are statutorily required to assist ministers to meet their accountability obligations, as mentioned in Chapter 1). There are formal rules for public servants appearing before committees and supporting guidance from the APS Commission, which coordinates some excellent training courses for senior public servants assisted by the parliamentary departments and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
The rules relate to being honest and not misleading, while not answering questions relating to policy or policy advice. The issue of balance comes most often in whether to elaborate a strictly accurate answer in order not to mislead, with the risk of revealing through subsequent questions matters embarrassing to the government. For the secretary, this turns on whether and how to intervene to take a question or to cut off an answer, including where the questions are to officers of a portfolio agency that is not strictly within the secretary’s responsibilities.
Table 5.5 Rule 1: keeping answers short
To the occasional chagrin of the minister sitting beside me, I did not always stick to the rule of answering only the question asked, even if that rule is generally a good one. At times, I felt respect for the Senate demanded some explanation of the context of an answer, but I usually preferred to give that myself rather than allow a less experienced person to do so.
I can recall on one occasion a minister doodling rather ostentatiously and constantly on a pad beside me as my officers and Health Insurance Commission officers answered questions on Medicare, the doodling being in the form of a schoolchild’s 50 lines, each stating something like ‘Why don’t they just answer the question. Why don’t they just answer the question’.
Sometimes getting the balance right is best managed by applying the ‘no surprises’ rule, warning ministers of the answers that must be given if discussion moves in a particular direction, despite the possible political embarrassment involved.
Table 5.6 Landing them in it: handling unavoidable questions
When Minister Wooldridge was under attack for not correcting a statutory declaration he had tabled in the House of Representatives to defend himself against accusations of leaking confidential budget information on MRI benefits, I was acutely aware we would be questioned on the matter when we appeared before the Senate Estimates Committee. I therefore spoke beforehand to the minister’s chief of staff clarifying what I would say in answer to the questions I expected. He was decidedly unhappy about my intentions, but at least he was forewarned and could consider how best to handle the inevitable political fallout. I warned that, while I would refuse to answer any question about the real advice I had given, I would have to answer questions as to whether I had given advice and, if so, when.
Senator John Faulkner was cleverer than even I had anticipated. He tested me about my understanding of the need to correct, at the earliest possible opportunity, any misleading — deliberate or otherwise — information provided by a minister to the Parliament. I could not avoid giving an answer and I acknowledged that we were aware of the guidelines in this area. He then asked the questions I had foreshadowed: had I given advice, when, whether orally or in writing. I answered each question, as indeed I had to, while knowing everyone in the minister’s office was watching on their TV monitors. While he also unsuccessfully sought a copy of my advice, he did not really need to. (The full picture was not all bad for the minister, as he had eventually agreed to correct the record, but I was hardly popular at the time.)
An issue I found particularly difficult was the right of Parliament to access market research collected by a department. Such information is inherently politically sensitive, providing guidance to the government about how to manage an issue, while simultaneously revealing the public relations risks that need to be addressed. My approach was to try to apply the FOI principles, but this was not easy to do.
Table 5.7 Parliamentary access to market research
Senate Estimates were continually interested in the market research conducted by the Howard Government into private health insurance.
The market research helped us in particular to develop strategies for introducing the complex Lifetime Cover initiative, including the language to use and the stakeholders to involve (those to whom people most often turned for advice).
I felt there were entirely legitimate reasons for Parliament’s interest, given the risk that the research might be used for partisan purposes and/or that it might be exploited to run advertising campaigns of a partisan nature (because of content or scale). Release of the information could, however, equally undermine the program of government support for private health insurance membership and the implementation of the Lifetime Cover initiative, by informing opponents how they might most effectively damage public understanding and support. Accordingly, release would not be in the public interest.
I prepared some guidance for the department on appropriate investment in market research and consulted the minister’s office. The guidance focused on the legitimate role of market research if it was focused on program effectiveness or successful implementation of a new initiative and was non-partisan. It also suggested that the research should be made public in due course, but not while this could undermine the program’s objectives or the initiative’s successful implementation. This clarified the public interest case and could also put a brake on attempts by ministers or their advisers to use market research for partisan purposes.
I tabled the guidance at a Senate Estimates hearing and gained some temporary support. The support fell away during the next few years, however, as the research was still not made public and we continued to argue the risk of undermining the private health insurance program objectives (the minister and his office had ruled out tabling the research at the time anyway).
I was conscious that this understandably left the committee uneasy about the legitimacy of the research. As a result, we prepared summaries of the research omitting details that could be used to undermine the program but demonstrating that it was being used for legitimate purposes.
Getting the balance right also involves deciding when to be proactive and how. On a few occasions, I decided to make an initial statement to put on the record the context of a matter under investigation and our approach towards dealing with the issue. While this was intended to put the matter in the best light for the government in the circumstances, and to dampen enthusiasm to go for the jugular, it was also intended to acknowledge the concerns of senators and our respect for the point they had raised. I did this during the MRI inquiry in 1999 (the ‘scan scam’) and the hearings on aged care in 2000 (the ‘kerosene baths’ case); I also did it when accrual accounting first came in, admitting openly that the financial accounts in our annual report, while fully audited, were very difficult to follow, and stating that all of us were on a learning curve on accrual accounting.
Table 5.8 Treading the line between ministerial and departmental performance
A perennial concern of Senate Estimates Committees is the slowness of responding to committee Questions on Notice. The health portfolio was frequently singled out, with little sympathy for the much higher number of questions we received compared with other portfolios. The problem was not just slowness in the department: it was gaining clearance from ministers. The bulk of the outstanding questions related to aged care.
After a series of hearings in which the department’s performance was heavily criticised, I was asked sharply to explain the worsening record and our failure to take the committee’s concerns seriously. I decided it was time to defend my staff. I provided data on the numbers of answers to questions that had been drafted by the department and sent to the minister’s office, as well as the (much smaller) number of answers cleared and sent to the committee. Committee members’ eyes lit up. My relations with the minister hit a low point.
At the next hearing, I was asked for an update of the data and revealed that hold-ups in the minister’s office had worsened and that the department itself had provided draft answers to the majority of questions asked. The committee went on strike. It refused to proceed with oral questioning of the department until more answers to the Questions on Notice had been received. During the next hour or two, I was asked for regular updates on the situation. We had more answers cleared more quickly that morning than ever before, or since.
I have seen public servants go too far, advocating rather than basically explaining government policies and being disrespectful or even dishonest in avoiding answers or giving answers that are just too smart. As a secretary, I was always mindful of the influence my own behaviour would have on my staff and portfolio colleagues. In hindsight, I did not always call it right, but just having the issue of balance always in the front of mind is no bad thing.