“Achieving The Right Balance Between Responsiveness, Transparency and Accountability In Policy Advice And Implementation.” Kim Carr - Shadow Minister for Science and Research Shadow Minister for Industry and Innovation Shadow Minister for the Public Service

Speech

Transcript - 5th Annual Conference on: Developing Effective Links Between Policy Advice and Implementation, Canberra - 30 June 2003

Check Against Delivery

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to your discussion of the processes of public policy formation and their links to implementation.

Today I will address three major and inter-related aspects of public policy and public administration, with particular reference to Government expectations of the role of the public service: values, capabilities and performance.

Of course, I speak from the perspective of the alternative Government. This is both to challenge the current arrangements where they are deficient and to advance proposals for more consultative, creative and efficient procedures, and more responsive, coherent and cost-effective results.

It was almost half a century ago that one of our great political scientists, A.F. Davies, observed in his 1958 book Australian Democracy that:

"Australians have a characteristic talent for bureaucracy. We take a somewhat hesitant pride in this as it runs counter to our view of ourselves as an ungovernable … people.

"In practice our gift … is exercised on a massive scale in government, economy and social institutions.

"Of course Bureaucracy pervades most modern societies – it is the price of complex organisation … "[i]

Almost half a century ago, A.F. Davies had it right.

This "characteristic talent" is nowhere more evident than in the highly charged post-war years, when the Chifley government assembled one of the greatest generations of public servants. Their task was not simply to map Australia's recovery from six years of war, but also to create the policy settings and opportunities for building a modern industrial nation state.

In the pioneering work of Nugget Coombs, John Burton, Dick Downing and Lenox Hewitt - the "Barton Court" gang if you like - we can see the highest principles and the overarching social panorama of the Australian Public Service at work.

At work and under the direction, I may add, of a Labor Government.

It is the legacy of their work that is now at risk.

In mentioning such public servants I am not idealising them: or suggesting that they were in some way super-human or infallible.

Clearly, they were neither.

But that being said, I emphasise the need to examine and learn from their life long commitment to public service and their transformative effect on public policy in Australia.

I may also add that this influence stands in stark contrast to the carpet bagging, hit-and-run philosophy of personal advancement that has characterised some of the more recent appointments to the senior levels of the public service.

By acknowledging the work of the aforementioned senior public servants, Labor does not render itself confined by history, merely harking back to a mythical golden age.

Rather, we seek to use this history, and apply it, in order to build a strong, contemporary public service.

We also want to ensure that Australia is well served into the future with a highly capable APS, the quality of whose work underpins the best possible public policy formulation and implementation.

Values

In doing so, we seek to assert yet again a number of enduring values that provide the core around which our public service is framed: impartiality, professionalism, vision, the maintenance of high ethical standards.

The Australian Public Service continues to play a critical nation-building role in this country.

An independent judiciary, an effective Opposition and notionally independent media are not enough to sustain democracy.

Public institutions also nourish an informed citizenry, which in turn supports a genuinely participatory democracy.

But to do its job the APS must remain impartial – able to give the best advice no matter how unpalatable it may be to politicians. Under the Howard Government, many of the fundamental elements of the service have been devalued and eroded.

Confronting the politicisation challenge

There is a long debate about politicisation in the public service. However a clearer example has rarely been demonstrated than in the Children Overboard Affair.

The APS Commissioner, Andrew Podger, has noted that "the affair has provided a timely reminder of the relevance of the APS Values" and he reiterated the following:

"The APS is apolitical, performing its functions in a impartial and professional manner;

The APS is a public service in which employment decisions are based on merit;

The APS is openly accountable for its actions, within the framework of Ministerial responsibility to the Government, the Parliament of Australia and the Australian public;

The APS is responsive to the Government in providing frank, honest, comprehensive, accurate and timely advice and in implementing the Government's policies and programs". [ii]

The Labor Party regards these as core values for the APS. We are determined to rebuild trust between politicians and public servants. This is critical if we are to inspire community faith in the governing process.

Credibility also will flow from a better-informed public debate on critical policy issues. This cannot take place if this Government persists in suppressing taxpayer-funded research, often carried out by public servants or highly paid consultants. There are many examples of such official reports being buried, as I will detail later.

Governments also have responsibilities in relations to the public service and public servants. A Labor Government will show respect for public servants as people, will defend the reputation of the public service and work to improve its capacity and credibility.

Under Labor there would be no ‘night of the long knives' for APS Secretaries. To quote my predecessor Senator John Faulkner, who advised a similar audience two years ago:

"Secretaries need have nothing to fear…for having worked loyally and well for a Howard Government. That is their job. That is what we expect."[iii]

We do, however, believe that it is reasonable for Ministers and their Department Heads to have an effective working relationship, and to that end would allow at least three months for that to develop.

Addressing the ethical challenge

There is a need to boost to the powers of the Public Service Commission, and its Commissioner.

For too long this critical body has been a toothless tiger.

If ever a body was needed that can safeguard APS values, and work to solve workforce problems like:

• plummeting graduate retention rates, and;
• ageing of the service;

it is now.

Under Labor, the Commission will have expanded powers and responsibilities.

For example, firstly we will provide for greater coordination in "whole-of-service issues", such work force planning and recruitment and secondly also ensure greater in-service training.

Developing and communicating shared values

Securing a responsive and responsible public service entails effective governance of the public service as a whole.

In Australia today, however, the public service is becoming more and more fragmented.

• The role of the Public Service Commission and Commissioner has been degraded;
• core functions are being outsourced at a great rate, with some departments unable to do the basic work that keeps the Department running;
• contractors are being used for more and more services without any clear indication that this might be a better way to go.

The diminished role of the Public Service Commission and Commissioner was clearly outlined by the Commissioner, Dr Podger, when he appeared before the Senate Estimates Committee hearing this month.

In addressing pressures on the service and specifically the results of the recent Organisational Renewal survey, which outlines the very serious problems of an ageing workforce and the massive leakage of the best and brightest young public servants, Dr Podger made it clear that the APSC had really very little clout, in these matters and employment conditions generally.

Agencies themselves acted as employers, not the Commission, and consequently left him with little power to address critical "whole-of-service" problems.

He said:

"We can encourage and exhort but it is up to the agencies – they are the employers and they are the ones who negotiate the agreements, not us. [iv]

"But our role is to draw attention to good practice, which we do."[v]

The Commissioner outlined a bewildering array of courses and training programs being run to try and redress the problems, but eventually conceded that not nearly enough senior staff attended them.

In 1901, during debate on the original Public Service Bill, Sir William McMillan argued that in establishing the office of PSC, 'we do not want … to have a man who … will be merely the creature of the minister.' [vi]

While McMillan's vision of a "person who will do practically everything connected with the public service"[vii] has necessarily been modified by experience, the Commission must be able to do more than simply carry out Dr Podger's formula of "encouraging and exhorting."

This model is simply not effective.

As is so often the case with this Government, ideological obsession (in this case devolution) subverts efficient practice and plain common sense.

Human and financial resources are wasted, and critical issues for the future of a healthy public sector are left unaddressed.

The Canadian example

Fundamental review of the public service is the subject of a Bill before the Canadian Parliament.

This review is pushing for a continuing strong role for such central agencies as Employment, the Public Service Commission and the Treasury Board, which employs all federal public servants.

In terms of employment policy, they do not believe that fully-fledged devolution is the way to go and are proposing to introduce two-tier bargaining.

This would allow for:

"service-wide bargaining to set the broad parameters for terms and conditions of employment in a bargaining unit, while permitting precise details to be negotiated in departments, if the employer, bargaining agent and deputy head jointly agree."[viii]

Under this kind of arrangement, some terms and conditions, such as salary at a given level of appointment, could be determined centrally, either through an award determination process (as in NSW) or through a public service-wide enterprise agreement, while others would be negotiated at the enterprise level.

Like the ALP, the Canadians believe it is futile forcing agencies to fight for resources and staff, while the Government takes no concrete steps to plan for the future across the whole of the service.

Labor will monitor the Canadian experiment carefully.

Capability

Responding to the demographic challenge

In the last couple of years the Australian Public Service has started to grow again, yet the Service faces the continuing problem of attrition of some of its most experienced and capable officers. This is a problem involving more than public servants retiring at 55 for superannuation reasons. The Commonwealth Public Service has long been a source of recruitment for the private sector. The problem of poaching will never be addressed while the public service fails to meet its obligations as a model employer.

The Commonwealth needs to find flexible ways of retraining people within the service, and that includes re-employing older staff part time in a variety of roles, including the mentoring of younger staff.

The APS in its devolved state doesn't have the capacity for systematic career planning and skills development. It is failing in succession planning and appears to have no serious recruitment or self-marketing strategy.

The ageing of the Australian Public Service has received public attention recently. The publication of this year's State of the Service report highlighted the demographic challenge. The APS is older than the Australian workforce generally. Some agencies – the ABS, the ATO, Defence and DFAT - all have forty per cent of their staff 45 years of age or older.[ix] These agencies, along with many others, will face seriously personnel planning problems within a few years.

What has been given less attention is the fact that the APS employs very few young people. The number of employees under 25 years of age throughout the entire public service, is around 6,000 or about 4.6% of the service. And this number is falling. Job opportunities for young people in the APS are not good.

Engagement of ongoing staff declined last year. Recruitment of graduate trainees fell by almost half last year from 942 to 508. And the retention rates continue to decline. The continued fall in recruitment to the lower classifications places further restrictions on career opportunities for young people. The State of the Service Report remarks, perhaps laconically, that "there is every indication that agents will have to adopt a more strategic approach to succession planning. . . some agencies are not approaching graduate recruitment or retention systematically."

Dealing with the competence challenge

The Australian Public Service has to do more to retain the skills that it has and to strengthen recruitment from outside the service. The Australian Public Service Commissioner has a role to perform to ensure fair performance management and new programs of skill development for rapid risers. It has a particular responsibility to ensure that we build a public service that we are proud of, to rebuild public confidence and celebrate successes.

Further work is required to advance these objectives.

For instance, the APSC could do more to ensure greater professional accreditation to the APS. One model may be that of the Certified Practicing Accountants. The Commonwealth Government spends millions promoting accredited training; it could lead more by example in promoting professional development of its own employees. The APSC could do more to change the culture of the APS through training, including training on dealing with Parliamentary Committees. A recent Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee Inquiry into APS training attracted submissions from only a small minority of agencies. Neither, DEST nor DEWR thought it worth their while to make a submission.

This year the APSC will survey APS staff to measure levels of satisfaction. I trust this survey will also examine staff expectations.

The APSC might also consider a survey of community expectations of and levels of satisfactions with APS agencies

On page one of the State of the Service Report Dr. Podger notes that "`the APSC is conscious of the potential risks to the APS values if pay ranges across classifications overlap too far." Given this assertion the APSC might also consider reviewing the variation of conditions of service across agencies and classifications.

Overwork and fear undermining APS values

The APS has shrunk significantly in size since the mid-1990s, but the size of the budget the public sector is responsible for has not.

View higher resolution image - 22Kb

Source: Data from Budget Paper no 1, 200/03, statement 13, table 4, Final Budget Outcome Appendix C, Table C5; Australian Public Service Commission.

In other words, there are fewer public servants to administer the same sized public sector. Sooner or later, this has to have detrimental effects.

David Marr, speaking at the National Press Club, was asked about what was happening in the public service during the Tampa crisis. He remarked:

"I've spoken to civilian bureaucrats who said, 'Look, we were working flat out in all of this. We were appalled. We kept wondering when would a line come that we would not cross.' "[x]

One of the factors contributing to the failures that occurred during the Children Overboard affair was crushing work loads.

Overwork was not the only problem.

Fear was a critical element also. Public servants were afraid of telling the truth; afraid of speaking up about breaches of values and ethics.

And it was no wonder given the abuse the service has suffered under the Howard Government.

In concede that some of the origins of the problem go back to before 1996, but the rot really set in when the Howard Government axed over 30,000 public service jobs in its first year in office, having foreshadowed cuts of around 2,500 before the election.

Six departmental heads were given their marching orders as soon as the Government took office. Later it made a comprehensive shambles of sacking former Defence Department Secretary Paul Barratt.

The pervasive influence of overwork makes the life of a "responsible and responsive" public servant close to impossible.

At the top they live in fear of being sacked or moved sideways because a Minister doesn't like them.

The contracts under which Departmental Secretaries are employed have changed dramatically. They used to be for five years - now they are for periods up to five years.

The length of the term of employment is the prize for winning a popularity contest. The more the Government likes you, the longer your term!

This is no way to build a confident, independent public service.

The contempt with which these attributes is held by the current Government is best summed up by the former Head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Max Moore Wilton, who said:

"Frank and fearless seems to have been given some kind of particular status … I think frank and fearless in some people is a sign of hubris and stupidity …"

"… a number of people have confused frank and fearless with just being a bloody nuisance."[xi]

Further down the public service ladder, staff live in fear of the bullying tactics of ministerial staff, who demand control over information, who believe they and not the Departmental Secretary are in charge, who want things now.

Ministerial staff are powerful free agents, and they must act appropriately, otherwise they will undermine the integrity of public service advice and action.

Performance

Integrity and Transparency

It became clear during the Children Overboard affair that a lack of transparency in the channels of public sector communication can pose a grave threat to the integrity of public service actions.

Three examples culled from the Senate Report into a Certain Maritime Incident tell a sorry tale:

The Defence Signals Directorate was illegally intercepting calls between the Wilhelmsen shipping line and its lawyer in Australia (James Neill), and reporting on these conversations to the Government.

In the inter-Departmental group that became known as the People Smuggling Task force, 'notes were only intermittently taken' and 'the members often didn't see minutes'.

The use of telephones and telephone messages became critical to information flows—and information flow failures.

Labor believes these sorts of failures are only possible when public service values have been effectively compromised.

They are possible only when Ministers do not respect the professionalism and proper processes of the public service and fail to ensure that their staff behave likewise.

The role played by ministerial advisers is one of the reasons we have initiated the Senate Inquiry into Members of Parliament Staff (MOPS).

The Inquiry will look at many issues, including the means by which MOPS are accountable to government, Parliament and the public, as well as ways of enhancing that accountability.

The Select Committee report on a Certain Maritime Incident noted that in the United Kingdom a Code Of Conduct for Special Advisers had been established, as well as a complaints process if that code was breeched.

The ALP will monitor the MOPS inquiry with interest. Clearly this is an area where further policy work is required.

Cost- effectiveness

Other threats to the robustness and transparency of the public sector lie in outsourcing. The ALP has previously indicated its concerns in this area.

Labor believes that a public interest test must be satisfied before outsourcing should be considered.

This would include:

The need to maintain full public accountability and to ensure that this is not diminished by notions of "commercial confidentiality".

The need to meet the standards of customer service required by the Government.

Genuine cost savings, not at the expense of service or access to service, nor through cuts to jobs or employment conditions.

The need to maintain and develop skills and expertise within the Agency concerned to ensure the cost-effective delivery of services and, where services are put on contract, the maintenance of sound contractual arrangements, performance standards and monitoring systems.

The need to protect the rights of citizens to information affecting them and their privacy.

The overall efficiency of outside markets and the extent to which markets can effectively and quickly overcome the failure of a single provider.

Any risks of being "captured" by a single outside provider by reason of the knowledge it might gain in taking over a particular function or for any other reason.

No negative effect on the environment or industry development.

Assessment of impacts on regional, rural and remote Australian communities.

The current Government shows little interest in such public interest requirements.

Indeed it is not at all clear that it is capable, or even interested in effectively managing outsourcing processes.

It seems incapable of admitting to any level of responsibility for the growing number of the outsourcing bungles, let alone learning from them:

They include:

The dismantling of the centralised IT outsourcing initiative. This initiative was criticised by the Auditor General, and eventually modified.

The over-enthusiastic sale of Commonwealth property. The Government's aggressive program of asset sales has not been in the national interest. Its imposition of an ideologically-driven and indefensible hurdle rate of 14 to 15 per cent was roundly criticised by the Auditor-General as "overwhelmingly favouring the divestment of property over retention." After considerable resistance it was dropped to 11 per cent.

We will also guard against the threat that the current free trade negotiations, under the General Agreement on Trade in Services, could pose to the Public Service.

These negotiations have a long way to go, but Labor will insist the right to have such work done in Australia, by the provider of choice.

Labor's policy is to, in principle, support the liberalisation of trade in services. Labor is opposed to relinquishing control of the nation's public institutions, such as our health and education services, in the GATS negotiations.

Labor will not support changes that undermine affordable access to essential public services or Government's rights to regulate services.

Nor will Labor support changes that require the privatisation of public assets.

Because of the Government's closed-door approach to the negotiations, Labor has initiated a Senate Inquiry into the GATS.

Among other things, this inquiry is examining the impact of the GATS on Australia's public services.

Reporting and Accountability

Winston Churchill, that great military genius that gave the British Empire its "advantage" at Gallipoli and Singapore, commenting on the loss of Singapore in 1942, and the weakness of Allied defences, said:

"I did not know, I was not told, I should have asked."

Australia's best known public sector academic Patrick Weller used this quote to end his 2002 book, Don't Tell the Prime Minister.

He said:

"That's accountability. It accepts that public servants should check and tell. It accepts that minister should ask. I'd like to see that."[xii]

So would the Australian Labor Party, and we will fight to see it.

A critical part of public service accountability is their reporting obligations.

Such a commitment to accountability is now also under threat from the emergence of a particular form of public policy outsourcing- one in which research, advice and ultimately responsibility itself is privatised.

In the words of the nation's top public servant, Prime Minster and Cabinet head, Peter Shergold:

"There is increasing competition for the delivery of services to government or on behalf of government. Benchmarking, market testing and contract management have become a staple of public administration. The provision of policy advice has become contestable. The delivery of public policy has been outsourced. Such developments are now the standard fare of public service commentary."[xiii]

This is a trend that uses the rubric of "democratising public administration" in Australia, but which, in fact, undermines the concepts of public service ethics and collective memory that it purports to support.

External policy proposals and advice is no new thing in Australia - it predates Federation itself.

In our Federal story, the most influential group driving policy was not politicians or even public servants but a private lobby group- the Australian Natives Association.

But what is new are the "democratic" clothes now being used to privatise public advice, to reduce the capacity of departments to perform their own tasks and, importantly, to monitor and correct policy failures.

In June 2001 a Senate Estimates Committee examined the failure of the then Department of Work Place Relations and

Small Business' contract management arrangements. It became evident that the senior management of the Department were unaware that the largest of the 200 Job Net providers and Chair of the Departments Industry Consultative Committee was not meeting contractual obligations.

The Departmental annual report for 2000/01 pointed out:

"It remains the public servant who must be accountable for the expenditure of public funds".[xiv]

The Estimates committee had uncovered significant inappropriate payments to a leading Job Network member.

He Secretary established a new integrity committee but said the

"The more profound challenge that remains is to develop systems which can alert the department to inappropriate or fraudulent practices without undermining a highly effective partnering approach … "[xv]

This acknowledgement highlighted a failure of the "risk management" regulatory approach to contract management, and was welcome, but the attitudes that led the problem in the first place, in my judgement have not changed. From my side of this Estimates Committee, this incident was a direct product of the changed power relationship between a government department and a commercial provider.

This instance also highlighted, as in so many others these days, that it took parliamentary intervention to achieve what the department was finding too difficult.

The same might be said in relation to endemic problems

in the Department of Education Science and Training, which

has over a number of years displayed that it lacks sufficient authority to rein in unscrupulous education providers whose tricks threaten the integrity of a major Australian export industry.

I return to the question of balance.

Independent, external advice is, and will continue to be a feature of our political culture.

But the context in which such advice is most effective must not be compromised by the incapacity of relevant departments to manage that process.

We need to ensure that multiple sources of advice do not degenerate into a system whereby public policy, like milk, is simply a commodity to be bought "off the shelf" and for the lowest price.

It is also clear that the progression between outsourcing of public policy and the transparency of accountability is not proven.

Policy Coherence

Good public policy should be guided by clear objectives, which are evidence base and established by genuine, inclusive consultation.

There should be an integrated and internally consistent approach to implementation. Policy should ideally be developed on a "whole of government" basis. Policy works best where there is a genuine partnership with the communities who receive services. Policy research is critical to both the establishment of policy objectives and also program evaluation.

To successful realise these objectives governments need to be open with citizens. This is particularly important when it comes to "the right to know" principles. We cannot have effective partnerships between Government and communities when basic information, vital to policy formulation and evaluation, is suppressed by government.

As I mentioned earlier the suppression of taxpayer-funded reports and studies, whether prepared inside departments, or by outside consultancies, has become commonplace under this Government.

I will cite but two examples - the tip of the iceberg - but characteristic of the broader atmosphere of censorship and suppression of anything the Government does not see as being in its political interests.

It was revealed in the recent estimates hearings that for at least 14 months, the Education Minister has been sitting on a critical, 600-page report, which provides a snapshot of higher education.

Prepared in 2001, we understand that the report contains data showing worrying declines in enrolments from disadvantaged students following increases in Higher Education Contribution charges brought in by this Government in 1996.

But we, and the community, may never know. Who knows what will be left in the report when and if it is ever released?

Another suppressed report, prepared for the Health Department, was in the news earlier this month.

This report said that the Government's "Tough on Drugs" policies had helped lead to an explosion in the rate of hepatitis C infections. As many as 500,000 Australians may be infected by this debilitating virus by 2020, with its spread promoted, in part, by zero tolerance of injecting drug use.

Health Minster Kay Patterson is reported to have been sitting on the report since last November, planning to release part of it next month, as part of a hepatitis report.

This latter report is not just a matter of healthy debate, it is a matter of life and death.

Citizens have a right to know if narrow-minded or ill-directed government policy is placing their lives, and the lives of their children, at risk, especially when they have paid for that research!

Labor believes that policy debate should, with some obvious exceptions, take place in public.

But the public cannot get involved in debate if they don't know what the latest research says.

Labor will be challenging the now standard excuses for non-disclosure: "commercial-in-confidence", "advice to the Minister" and as a last resort, "executive privilege."

I have over the years spent much time in Senate Estimates hearings, which I enjoy greatly.

But I do not believe that basic facts about the way the Commonwealth dollar is being spent, should have to be winkled out via this process.

Over recent years much useful information has been taken off the public record. In the interests of accountability this situation must be reversed.

This is a not just a matter of the Opposition wanting to get its hands on official information. It is a critical issue of tax-payer funded public sector research being available to the citizens who fund it, and the promotion of healthy debate in a democracy.

Conclusion

At the recent Liberal Party Conference in Adelaide a senior Minister said:

"Now we understand the power of incumbency we have the bureaucracy making the bullets for us to fire at the Opposition."

The values of the Government and the ethical standards by which it conducts its own affairs has a powerful influence on the tone of the public service and the esteem with which the community regards it - and it regards itself.

The Government told the public more than it knew about Iraq, less than it knew about Bali, and it showed pictures of events that never happened during the Children Overboard scandal.

It embarrasses Australians and Australia in the eyes of the world through its contempt for human rights and international law.

Decent, hardworking public servants feel used by this Government, abused by this Government and ashamed by this Government.

The Prime Minister displays his disdain for the values of the public service through his own lifestyle. The Lodge is not good enough for him; he prefers the waterfront views and sandstone wine cellars of Kirribilli, or the top of the range rooms in Italian hotels.

The Howard Government's continuing contempt for the service and its values make our mission doubly important, and our resolve doubly strong.

People are attracted to work in the APS because they care about the health and well-being of our society and they want to make a difference.

Labor looks forward to working with the Public Service, indeed relying on the Public Service, in the drive to improve government services, in towns and regions that have lost so many services.

In 1998 Labor's Senate Leader John Faulkner spoke of the early effects of this government on the public service, observing that some of our best public servants (those who believed in the concept of public service) had left and that this might take a generation to fix.

Five years later Labor is more determined than ever to reinvigorate the public service; revive the concept of a career in the public service; restore skills in the public service and reaffirm the historic role of the public service in national affairs.

[i] AF Davies, Australian Democracy, second edition, 1964, Longmans, Green and Co. Victoria, pp4-5.

[ii] State of the Service report, 2001-2002, Commonwealth of Australia, p. 3.

[iii] Senator John Faulkner, Re-invigorating Commonwealth Public Administration, Presentation to the Institute of Public Administration and the National Institute for Governance seminar, 22 March 2001.

[iv] Andrew Podger, Senate Budget Estimates hearing, 29 May 2003, p. 475.

[v] Ibid, p475.

[vi] House of Representatives Debates, 25 June 1901, p1509.

[vii] Ibid, p1310.

[viii]Public Service Modernisation Act – Overview and Highlights, http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/mhrm-mgrh/ovhi-apps1_e.asp#relations

[ix] State of the Service Report, 2001-2002, pp11-12.

[x] David Marr, Speech to the National Press Club, 18 March, 2003.

[xi] David Marr and Marian Wilkinson, Dark Victory, Allen and Unwin, 2003, p39.

[xii] Patrick Weller, Don't Tell the Prime Minster, p102.

[xiii] Peter Shergold, Two Cheers for the Public Service, Australian Public Service Commission lunchtime seminar, Friday, 13, June.

[xiv] DEWR annual report, 2000-2001, p5.

[xv] Ibid.