A year ago, it was considered very likely NSW opposition leader Barry O’Farrell would do just what Jeff Kennett did when he snared the Victorian premiership in 1992: a wholesale sacking of public service mandarins.
Kennett says he rolled 16 permanent department heads before lunch on his first day and another postprandial eight. Kennett went on to retrench 50,000 public servants, close 350 schools, amalgamated councils and privatised a host of government services. Almost 20 years later, Kennett has now recommended O’Farrell sack and burn in a whirlwind of change that must be undertaken if he is to return the state of NSW to its former greatness.
Around this time last year, almost 12 months out from the 2011 NSW election, when O’Farrell had reason to feel comfortable about the prospect of being the state’s next premier, he began casting around for potential successors to departmental directors-general and other state agency CEOs. All the portfolios were looked at. Heads were destined to roll in health, education and justice, and others.
O’Farrell gathered, as Kennett now recommends, a list of “a new gang of bureaucrats” to replace Labor appointees, or just men and women who were seen to be entrenched, and weary, in their positions for a long stretch of Labor’s rule. But as the months have marched on and the polls have all but secured O’Farrell’s future as premier, the mighty task he faces has loomed larger.
In the last six months O’Farrell has quietly indicated he won’t be doing that because he’d fall flat on his face if he did a wholesale removal on the people running the state’s departments. A few will go, obvious political appointments, but not immediately. Not “before lunchtime”.
And it’s a fact that the majority of the mandarins can’t wait to see the Labor government exit — politicians and their flaks and minders have been trampling all over departmental protocol for years and the strain of having to lie and obfuscate for Labor is at breaking point. The scorched earth approach Kennett has recommended for public servants has already happened to budgets and projects under Labor.
The groundwork of do-nothing-but-keep-up-appearances established by the first premier in Labor’s 16-year tenure, Bob Carr, has deteriorated into a series of expensive stunts which have raided the state’s coffers, to little effect.
All incoming governments lament the bad work of their predecessors that must be undone, but in O’Farrell’s case the cupboards may truly be close to bare. He has come to realise that he will need the expertise of experienced public servants and department heads to keep the state from falling apart.
After assembling his list, O’Farrell has let it be known that the only certain massacre looming is that of the Labor party at the polls.
Departmental heads are lining up to prove their worth to remaining in their positions, hand steady on the tiller. And a good percentage of them, once loyal Labor men and women, have privately expressed their joy at being rid of the current administration which has ridden roughshod over protocol for years.
The traditional system of the executive arm of politicians working in concert with the advice from its departmental counterparts went out the window decades ago, but NSW Labor has made an art form of crushing the will and opinion of its “agencies”, as it calls government departments. Establishment of the 12 super departments under Nathan Rees’s premiership, a series of reshuffles under successive Labor premiers — and the revolving door of Cabinet appointments under the scandal-ridden Keneally administration — has delivered a fleet of new ministers to the departments.
These ministers knew nothing of their portfolios and, inevitably, the screw-ups have multiplied along with a keenness borne of political desperation for each mistake to be buried.
One NSW government department has had six different heads in little more than 12 months, and it’s not only the change at the top.
As the election has drawn closer, policy people, media advisers have been fleeing Governor Macquarie Tower and fresh, young Labor apparatchiks have been filling advisory roles with ever diminishing ability. Getting a coherent decision out of GMT has become so near impossible, it’s laughable.
Kennett says NSW is in dire need of radical change and an incoming government faces the prospect of going back to square one, but typically the politician is blaming the public servants. The public service can’t wait to go back to square one, administration wise.
Expect a few department heads to choose to retire (Laurie Glanfield of Justice and Attorney Generals is one), but be prepared for O’Farrell to spend the next three months sorting through the talent and the dead wood.
The danger for public servants, when O’Farrell’s honeymoon with the media comes to an inevitable end, will be the Coalition’s need to blame someone for the moribund state of NSW affairs. Then, perhaps, O’Farrell will need to do some crashing and burning himself, especially with his bright young treasurer, Mike Baird, snapping at his heels.
*Candace Sutton worked for the past six years as a NSW government media adviser, and for the past three months in the office of lord mayor Clover Moore
Lets have a good look at some of those Department’s.
Education: We have a convicted drug dealer running a department for which he had no qualifications and for which his conviction would prevent him holding a job as teacher. Perhaps the fact that he is Tanya Plibersek’s husband explains so much.
Planning: The DG there, San Haddad, was so badly conflicted and ignored by his Minister, Sartor, that the only thing holding him there must be his imminent retirement. His less than stellar performance in fromt of the McGurk inquiry means he was either asleep or looked the other way at the extent to which his department was run for developers and their mates, by developers and their mates.
Energy: Run by Mark Duffy, who was downgraded from DG to Deputy DG when his Department of Water and Energy was broken up. Now he runs the Minerals and Energy department within Industry and Investment. Was very close to Michael Costa and may be considered to close to Labour.
That’s before you get to the plethora of Labour staffers that have parachuted into the Public Service at senior levels.
Many of these people may be good at their jobs, however a new government will be taking a good hard look at their loyalties, especially if they have to make hard decisions to bring the State’s finances back onto even keel.
As a new Education Minister, how much would you trust the incumbent, a political apointee married to a federal ALP minister, to enact the reforms and changes you deem necessary?
Kennett had it right.
The house is rotten. Time to fumigate.
Many Victorians still smirk at “Have you had a Kennett of a day?”
At least Barry O’F has had the good sense to realise the folly of the slash and burn approach. That bodes well for the future.
As a Victorian public servant at the time of Kennett. He was not very popular at the time but he did force departments to drop staff who were not productive and positions that were considered unnecessary. He made departments work on core business and get rid of paper shufflers. When departments have to rethink what their core business is and who they need to keep on (and who they can afford to lose) they can achieve some remarkable efficiencies. Victoria bore the pain but then enjoyed quite a long period of financial benefit. Lots of needless red tape disappeared. If ever there was a state that needed to reassess where it is going and to get rid of thousands of public servants who are paper shufflers and red tape creators it is NSW. Things cost more because of inefficient bureaucracies and everyone pays more for everything. When you come from another state and see how expensive things like motor registration and building permits are you realise how inefficient NSW really is. His timing will have to be impeccable but if Barry O’F wants to get this state moving again instead of sliding to the bottom then somewhere along the line he is going to have to pull a “Kennett Day”.