The party never quite known as the New
Liberals, the Queensland Nationals, claim to have put their failed amalgamation
behind them and have been conferencing happily over the weekend. It’s perhaps a
sign of the times that the policy debates which got a run in the
papers related to public administration. The Nats have promised to
keep Queensland’s 193 000 public servants under the state Industrial Relations
system. And they’ve come up with a gimmicky promise about rebates to citizens
for public service delays. The second promise sounds like public service
bashing (though it’s unlikely to win any votes), so what explains the first?

When Wayne Goss broke the Nats’ 32 year stranglehold
on power in 1989, the public service was overhauled – and not in a softly,
softly way. With then bureaucrats (since gone on to bigger or at least
different things) Kevin Rudd, Peter Coaldrake and Glyn Davis doing some
headkicking for the ALP, the public service under Goss went through several
rounds of traumatic restructuring. When National Party Premier Rob Borbidge
took the reins of state in 1996 he was quick to make
some changes at the top end of the public service. This was to root
out Labor supporters, but often overlooked was an early Cabinet instruction
that there were to be no more redundancies from lower levels. Borbidge correctly
perceived that Goss had paid a heavy price for “reform” from the large public
service vote in Brisbane.

Current Nats leader Springborg probably
won’t be able to capitalise as much on his public service agenda, because under
the “New Federalism”, state oppositions have to spend most of their time
criticising service delivery. And the Queensland Coalition is devoid of new
ideas in areas such as health and infrastructure, instead thumping the “waste
and inefficiency” drums over and over. But Springborg is showing some political
smarts in protecting state public servants from the AWA agenda of WorkChoices.
Barnaby made some states’ rights noises over the IR changes last year and Springborg’s Nats voted
with Beattie’s ALP in State Parliament to condemn the bill.

With WorkChoices now in operation,
Springborg’s ploy is more evidence that even conservatives with an ounce of
pragmatism can see that it’s an electoral stinker. This is one story out of the
Nats’ Queensland conference that deserves more national media attention than it’s
received.