Australian governance

1 Perpetual downsizing

The Australian public service is subject, since 1987, to a perpetual ratcheting budget gut regime called the Efficiency dividend, which is an attempt to address bureaucratic inefficiency.

Incentives to reduce expenses don’t sound like a bad idea. There are many critiques of the details of this particular one:

• Not Neglecting, Strangling: A Short History of a Most Inefficient Policy
• Is the Commonwealth ‘efficiency dividend’ really that efficient?
• ‘A lazy cost-saving measure’: the Coalition’s efficiency dividend hike may mean longer wait times and reduced services

For some agencies for example research entities which are supposed to expand, this situation might be an especial problem.

From my systems thinking perspective there is at least one clearly missing feedback loop here, which is provision of public benefit. What if my agency works out a way to spend 10% more money and deliver 20% more public benefit? Or %100?

2 Public service conditions

Employment and workplace conditions at public institutions are governed by the Australian Public Service Commission, a meta-bureaucracy which manages Australian government bureaucracies.

For some, this is a deeply unpopular entity, set up, according to some, to discredit socialism by imposing all of its mistakes and yet none of its wisdom upon the organisations it manages. Others like it, for reasons that it seems to provide reliable job security, and good employment conditions, which is often does.

APS-constrained organisations are not permitted to price wages to market, and so for the most in-demand, critical skills, or staff in places where the cost of living is high, it must recruit from the pool of people who will accept bad salary compared to their earning potential.

This bits hard for specialist skills such as legal advice, engineering, IT, and trades, where the market rate is high. There are such people, because they are patriotic, or who really need a visa sponsorship, or who are idealistic about public goods, or who are outcomes-focussed and really want access to the facilities, or who are independently wealthy and don’t need to worry about money so they treat Australian government work as a charity project. Alternatively, agencies fall back to people who are not very good at their job, or make do without crucial skills.

This system breaks in many entertaining ways:

• Tech skills, recognition, finally hit APS pay bargaining table

• Poor pay for in-house tech staff bites APS chiefs in real-time

• Parliamentary Services sparkies pull plug on short APS pay deal

  “The Department of Parliamentary Services’ refusal to lift wages for its full-time trades staff is senseless. Because permanent trades staff’s wages are so low, positions are left vacant, yet the department is willing to outsource the roles at a much higher rate of pay.”

• Government spent at least $1.9bn in a year sourcing IT and digital skills

• Professionals Australia (2021)

3 Public servants are semi-gagged

Public political speech by public servants may be punished by sacking, which sound reasonable, except that the extent is remarkable.

Social media still counts as public speech. Anonymous speech is still public speech. The precise criteria for sacking are opaque and arbitrary (Gray 2021; Morris and Sorial 2023).

• An apparently innocuous blog post by Josh Krook, if his testimony is correct, has resulted in sacking.

• Better documented, the High court decision about Michaela Banerji

• APSC guidance:

  • Employees as citizens
  • Social media: Guidance for Australian Public Service Employees and Agencies

4 Punditry

I feel the lack of the rich political blogosphere of the USA. But there are commentators in Australia who are worth reading.

• Australian Policy and History Network

  Australian Policy and History is a network of historians that provides politicians, bureaucrats, journalists and the public with historical knowledge in the pursuit of better public policy outcomes. We publish a range of material that connects historical research to current-day policy issues, and we run conferences and workshops. Australian Policy and History is run chiefly by historians at Deakin University, with support from the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University.

• Raising Hell by Royce Kurmelovs

• Nicholas Gruen

• John Quiggin’s Blogstack

• Pia Andrews

• The Mandarin

  The public sector plays a critical and sometimes underappreciated role in this country. It needs strong and independent news coverage, and a place where its leaders can discuss the issues they face at the coalface of modern bureaucracy.

  That’s where we come in. The Mandarin is made for public sector leaders and executives and reaches 1.5 million public sector readers and the many stakeholders interested in their work each year.

• Australians for Science and Freedom is a local ❄️🍑 mob, affable enough. Heavy on the fringe science (“Are viruses even a thing?”). The adverse selection problem is clear. If you run a heterodox media site, you will soon find your reasonable, under-represented opinions joined by fruity-nut-job opinions which have nowhere else to go.

• Unsolicited Reflections

  …commentary and analysis from a young Australian on global and Australian politics, history, and the raging social and cultural questions of our time.

• Economy for Australian people

  […]we need to build economic democracy.

  As our industrial profile changes, we need new ways of approaching economic management that maximise the benefits to all stakeholders in the economy, not just private shareholders. The ongoing crisis associated with our once proud national air carrier is symptomatic of the disease at root in our economy.

  For too long, we have allowed corporate Australia to do as they please, relying on revenue and profit to be the only yardstick against which their operations are judged. However, if the pandemic and its associated economic crisis has taught us anything, it is that we need to build a new economy that is more resilient and self sufficient, one that is better managed and able to deliver better social outcomes for Australians.

  Traditional approaches to economic development, which treat all investment agnostically, do little to keep key production and essential services grounded in communities. Instead, there should be a focus on investment that has a long-term interest in the development of the community.

5 References