A bit old-fashioned. I’ve never got over my indoctrination 45 years ago into the ways of the traditional Westminster civil service model where public servants were seen and seldom heard. Sir Frederick Wheeler had that effect on young Public Service Board fellows and I spent much of my time chasing down errant public commenters. And what a time I would have had this morning with Treasury Secretary Ken Henry. In the old days he would already be facing a “please explain” from the Board Chairman acting in his then role as the public service’s head.

Ken Henry’s comments at the weekend when opening the Winds of Change Forum at the Weereewa (Lake George) Festival near Bungendore were clearly political and, given the views of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott about global warming, they were party political to boot. The independent and impartial public servant just does not come out and say that a ”free-rider” problem had made it virtually impossible to get governments to agree on global action to address climate change. Nor would he make comments like these:

”All my life I have heard people talking about our big brains, our capacity to learn from our mistakes and the creativity we bring to fixing them. Every day, at some point, this is what I hear. But I have to say that it’s not what I see. Frankly, it’s time we stopped kidding ourselves. If the history of our engagement with this environment has taught us anything at all, it should be that we have been blind-sided by our arrogance. It should have taught us humility.”

By straying into the political arena in this fashion the Treasury Secretary has a good as guaranteed that he would not be asked to continue as Treasury Secretary under a government led by Tony Abbott. Not that the Coalition these days has any more regard for an impartial and independent public service than Labor. It is just that the Liberals and Nationals would want their own man in the job on whom they could rely to make comments in line with their own policies and beliefs.

And who does the Reserve Bank boss think he is? While I am at it about the role of public officials, a brickbat for the Governor of the Reserve Bank. It seems to me that Glenn Stevens is going too far in giving himself a public role as an oracle. I know the Bank board has powers to act independent of government but that does not mean it should become an active participant in the political process. Going on breakfast talk shows like he did this morning to pronounce on housing prices was a step too far.

Cycling to power. If one day spent doing a bit of swimming, cycling and running has the Labor Party going tut-tut about Tony Abbott’s work ethic for his day job as a politician, imagine how they’ll be after he rides his bike from Melbourne to Sydney? What I do know is that we arm-chair sports watchers at home in front of the telly will get sick of the sight of lycra.

Hospital debate with Premiers turns inexorably to money. The bribes are coming out as the Council of Australian Government meeting to discuss Federal Labor’s health plans gets closer. This always looked to me as being in the tradition of the old Premiers Conferences where the States arrived in Canberra saying they were being screwed  by the dreaded feds before finally being bought into acquiescence and so it is proving.  Kevin Rudd I notice is now pointing out that Victoria, where John Brumby has emerged as the loudest opponent, would have extra $3.8 billion to invest in economic infrastructure over the rest of the decade if he accepts the federal plan. By the time the actual discussions are over I am sure there will be a few hundreds of millions to top that figure up.