Forget the content of the FuelWatch leak, it’s the mere fact that it occurred that’s significant. It will deeply trouble the Government.
For those outside the charmed circle of bureaucratic process, let’s be clear what was leaked: a page of coordination comment from the Cabinet submission on FuelWatch.
Coord comments are the bureaucracy’s opportunity to say what they think of a Cabinet submission. Usually submissions are circulated in draft form so departments have a few days to work out what they think of a proposal. Sometimes deadlines are so tight, or matters are so sensitive, that departments are only given a few hours to prepare a comment. But it’s not an opportunity to undertake a detailed analysis of the proposal – that’s the job of the originating department. I prepared a few coord comments in my time as a pencil-pusher and they’re frequently finger-in-the-wind stuff.
Even under the previous Government, which hated receiving advice it didn’t want to hear and in the end demanded that coord comments be signed off by Ministers rather than bureaucrats, submissions would go to Cabinet with negative – sometimes aggressively negative – comments from other departments. The Department of Finance, in particular, preferred to disagree with just about everything involving extra expenditure, which meant that in the last term of the Howard Government, there would’ve been virtually no Cabinet submissions that got the tick from Finance except their own.
So the mere notion that bureaucrats disagreed with a proposal is neither here nor there. It’s also interesting that, apparently, there’s only one page available. The views of other departments – in particular the Infrastructure/Transport/Regional Services department – have either not been reported by Laurie Oakes, or were on a page he didn’t get. Quite possibly other departments thought the ACCC’s argument in favour of FuelWatch compelling.
So who leaked, and why? It was either a Minister – there are 20 Cabinet Ministers who would’ve received the submission, so take your pick – or a bureaucrat. Oakes told Neil Mitchell this morning that he got it from a bureaucrat, and that’s the worse scenario for the Government because it points to a problem that is far more difficult to control.
Oakes said the leak reflected bureaucratic anger at the non-stop nature of Rudd and his failure to follow their advice. Based on their experience under the previous Government, it’d be astonishing if someone had leaked because the Government had failed to follow the bureaucracy’s advice. If they were prone to doing that, the Press Gallery would’ve been awash with Howard Government Cabinet submissions.
The less complicated scenario is that the Government’s failure to clean out the Howard loyalists from the upper echelons of the Public Service has yielded its first fruit. This might prompt Rudd to now do what many of his MPs and Ministers thought he should’ve done back in December – purge the APS thoroughly. Rudd has adopted a Mr Nice Guy stance about the bureaucrats he inherited from the previous Government, above petty political revenge and ready to give people the benefit of the doubt. Now he might have to get his hands wet with some public service blood.
More likely, the new head of PM&C, Terry Moran, is on the phone to every Department head telling them to tighten security and await a call from the Federal police, who will inevitably turn up nothing. Either way, leaks always have a chilling effect on relations between Governments and the public service. Ministers and their staff start keeping things to themselves and being less tolerant of slip-ups. It can make for an uncomfortable time for everyone.
Then again, what would I know – it was at about 4pm yesterday that I opined to Christian Kerr that the Ferguson leak was unusual and there was unlikely to be another one – and especially not from the bureaucracy. Ah well.
Let’s not forget that there is a propensity for leaks from the shadow cabinet also. Quite frankly the Oakes and Milnes of the Canberra press gallery are way too powerful and unfortunately, patently, they see themselves as such. The relationship between the media and politicians in that isolated city is, I suggest, unhealthy (at least for the rest of us)!.
What’s interesting is that Rudd ‘blinked’ when having to stare down Nelson and now he’s in a knock down drag out political brawl and I dont think he has the experience or the temperament for this. Howard would have handled this very differently and., I think, more astutely. Swan and Rudd give me the impression they are making policy on the run. Having chastised Nelson for his “populism” they have cut and run. The reason these leaks are so interesting is that they reveal the ‘populism” of Swan and Rudd. If 6 monyhs into their first, and maybe last, term of government, they have been unable to hold their ground, the government is headed for a debacle. The sad thing is Australia will be the loser.
On the matter of ACCC advice, last year I read a proposal from the ACCC justifying their takeover of a state function and it was just terrible. They had a new recruit draw it together who looked at information sometimes years old and obtained off websites. When senior officials were asks to explain the rationale of the proposal, they couldn’t. The arguments and evidence cited made no snese to anyone and yet the ACCC put it forward and it was agreed to. Why anyone thinks this agency knows more than anyone else is laughable. Could be why Rudd keeps mentioning that he has taken their advice
You know, the leaking is bad. Rudd should be worried. It’s not good. But there is a really significant ray of sunshine here, and that’s that four government departments advised the government its policy was bad. I know it sounds mad to say that. But I was a senior bureaucrat in the Howard government and no one was allowed or game to tell the government when it’s policy was bad. I finally left the APS after a Deputy Secretary told me to pull material from a brief because it was critical of an idea from the PM’s office. The idea hadn’t been anounced, wasn’t an election commitment, and had not been remotely thught through. It was an unbelievably poor piece of policy, and I felt that it was imprtant that the government not proceed with it unless it was fully informed of the considerable risks. But the Dep Sec said “We know the PM’s office is keen on this and they won’t want to hear it”, and demanded I pull the material. He agreed to sign the brief as I didn’t want my name on it. This wasn’t the first instance of this. At the Department of Finance it was much, much worse. So if there is any consolation to be taken from this fiasco, it is that at least the APS seems once again to be ready to provide frank and fearless advice to the government of the day.
When I heard about the leak on the ABC news last night I wondered whether the PM regretted not flicking senior bureaucrats when elected so I’m glad Bernard made the point. There’s a reason for ritual bureaucratic blood letting, unpleasant as it is. The independent public service disappeared with the establishment of performance-based contracts for senior bureaucrats. It tied their futures to the success of their political masters. Consequently, the bureaucracy is a political animal and has been for at least 15 years. The real issue is the massive pea and thimble trick being played by the Opposition and, disappointingly, the Government. As if two cents or 3.8 cents or five cents per litre will make any diference to working families anyway – on a 50 litre refill a five cent reduction provides a $2.50 discount. If working families are that close to the edge, that reduction won’t help them for long. The sheer cynicism of this debate is startling. The complicity of the media in gee-ing the whole thing up is, as usual, just depressing.