Table of Contents
Almost immediately following the 1996 election, the new Government made it clear that it was now up to public servants to prove that they could offer the services it required as efficiently and effectively as the private sector.[1] At the same time, the Government reduced the size of the public service by around 10,000 people in each of the years 1997, 1998 and 1999.[2] The Government argued that the disciplines of contestability would mean increased cost-effectiveness for the public. For the public service, as one secretary argued, it meant:
Just generally greater insecurity—not just for you but for your department. Really knowing that you’re in a contestable, competitive environment … knowing that you’ve always got ministers asking if you can do it better elsewhere, doing it outside the public service. So it’s insecurity, not for myself but the insecurity of the public service environment, I think that’s a profound change.[3]
The new onus of proof for public service delivery raised a notoriously difficult question of which services were core public sector activities and which were not. According to the Auditor-General, the answer was that ‘any definition of core government seems to be constantly changing … including even those that would be considered to be traditional public services, such as policy, including legal advising, corporate management and the delivery of welfare services.’[4] How, in practice, does the requirement that public servants contest their role in delivering policy advice for government intersect with the APS Values that are meant to characterise the public service? In particular, how can the public service compete with organisations that say (because it suits their constituency or because they, too, are competing) what a government prefers to hear? How can they compete with ministerial advisers, who will also have the minister’s personal political interests at heart? What does responsiveness mean in such a context? Does apolitical professionalism really represent a competitive edge in getting the attention of government under such circumstances? Is competition a useful model for the delivery and receipt of policy advice? How do these questions affect the decisions made by public servants on a day-to-day basis? These are the questions that are considered below.
The answer, according to the former head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, is that competition is honing the skills of public servants who have entered the new marketplace and are now ‘vying’ for ministerial attention:
The administrative reforms that have marked generational change in the APS, often characterised as the ‘new public management’, have been extolled, debated and criticised. But, beneath, something far more profound has happened almost unnoticed. Governance has been democratised … [and] the making of public policy has become increasingly democratic. There is more competition in ideas than ever before. Think-tanks, research institutes, consultancy companies, private sector lobbyists and community advocates each pursue their particular interests with increasing professionalism, vying with public servants for the ear of ministers and their political advisers. To my mind that’s beneficial. Why would one want public servants to have exclusive access to a minister? Why would public servants not themselves want to listen to the views of those who share an interest in the outcomes of public policy?[5]
Vying for ministerial attention is not just about being interesting or novel, or even open and contestable. Increased competition for ministerial favour may not have the effect of broadening debate any more than increased competition in the fast food sector broadens the menu. In fact the market for ministerial attention is no simpler than other markets, and the competition of ideas is not a simple contest on an even ground, where the best idea wins. In practice it takes place in a highly landscaped playing field in which interests and interdependencies create gently rolling hills, pitfalls, wind tunnels and extensive deserts—and where the goalposts are moved constantly.
[1] See Peter Reith, Towards a Best Practice Australian Public Service: Discussion Paper issued by the Minister for Industrial Relations and the Minister assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service (Canberra, 1996), p. x; Pat Barrett, ‘Corporate Governance in the Public Service Context’, Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration 107 (Mar. 2003), 8.
[2] Australian Public Service Commission, Australian Public Service Statistical Bulletin, 2004–05, Table 1, p. 13.
[3] Patrick Weller, Australia's Mandarins: The Frank and the Fearless? (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2001), 104–5.
[4] Barrett, ‘Corporate Governance’, 8.
[5] Peter Shergold, ‘Pride in Public Service’, speech to National Press Club, Canberra, 15 Feb. 2006, at http://www.pmc.gov.au/speeches/index.cfm, viewed 15 Mar. 2006.