Fragile spoils of victory
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 3: Webs of Power
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Mungo MacCallum
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Mungo MacCallum's biography and other articles by this writer
Australia has always prided itself on its political stability, but after World War II the country quickly settled into an equilibrium that sometimes seemed dangerously close to rigidity.
The Labor states of New South Wales and Tasmania stuck with Labor and the Liberal states of Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia entrenched their conservative governments. Only in Queensland was there change and even that was a single upheaval; what had appeared to be a rock-solid Labor administration was replaced by an equally immovable dynasty in control of the then Country Party. And, of course, in Canberra, from 1949 on, the coalition under the paternal tyranny of Robert Menzies established itself as the natural – indeed, the only possible – government of Australia.
Inevitably, each of these dynasties, over time, generated its own political culture, a culture that reached well beyond the confines of Parliament House and even the warrens that housed the public service. But in the commonwealth at least, there were mercifully few serious examples of the government stacking important positions with its friends and cronies. Indeed, in the senior ranks of the public service the reverse was the case.
TO UNDERTAKE THE TASK OF POSTWAR RECONSTRUCTION Labor's Ben Chifley had assembled a formidable array of talent, including a team of vertically challenged but intellectually triumphant men, known as the seven dwarfs. Most were openly inclined to socialism and could be seen as ideological enemies of the free-enterprise system espoused by Menzies and his colleagues; but Menzies recognised their integrity and dedication as public servants and made no attempt to purge them. Indeed, Richard Randall, Roland Wilson and Nugget Coombs became his key economic advisers. It is said that whenever Menzies planned a major policy statement, he would try it on this group first. They would listen politely and then one would reply along the lines, "Prime Minister, you have just told us what you would like to do. Now let us tell you what you are able to do." And they would, and he would do it.
In those days, of course, senior public servants enjoyed the advantages of permanent tenure – they could not be sacked on a ministerial whim. But they could certainly be shifted and sidelined. To his great credit, Menzies never attempted to do so on purely political grounds. Nor did his conservative successors, although some shuffled the deck a bit to find people they considered compatible. John Gorton, for instance, took his secretary from the education portfolio, Lennox Hewitt, with him to head the Prime Minister's Department, and his successor, Bill McMahon, reinstated John Bunting. But such fiddling did nothing to disturb the bureaucratic edifice that saw itself, with some justification, as the permanent repository of wisdom on which its political masters of all colours could rely for frank and fearless advice.
Over the years its views inevitably became more and more conservative, in tune with the government it served. Many Labor politicians regarded it as in league with the enemy and it was therefore expected that when Gough Whitlam came to power after 23 years of Labor in opposition there would be a mighty purge. But this did not happen; perhaps influenced by the fact that his father had been a distinguished and impartial public servant, Whitlam kept changes to a minimum. Just two permanent heads – Hal Cook in Labour and National Service and George Warwick-Smith in Interior – were pensioned off with ambassadorial rank to posts in Geneva. The remainder stayed on and Whitlam waited for retirements to provide opportunities for his own team, which included Peter Wilenski, Jim Spigelman and John Menadue.
Malcolm Fraser followed a similarly low-key approach; despite the tumultuous nature of his accession to the Lodge, he made few changes at the top – indeed, he even retained Menadue as head of the key Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. And eight years later Bob Hawke was again reluctant to buck a system that had, to that time at least, worked pretty well.
IT WAS DURING THE HAWKE YEARS THAT THE MAJOR CRACKS APPEARED in the bastion of permanent tenure. The institution of what became known as the Senior Executive Service meant that high-flyers could be employed on contract, which may or may not be renewed. This left the way open for the service to be stacked by any prime minister to whom personal loyalty was more important than experience and insight; and John Howard, of course, was and is such a prime minister. When he came to power he sacked a full third of the existing departmental heads – a bloodbath on a totally unprecedented scale.
Their replacements were equally unconventional. The new head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Max Moore-Wilton, had last been seen in Canberra as a deputy secretary in the Trade Department and a loud-mouthed regular at the bar of the National Press Club. Having established a reputation as an equally brutal manager, he became Howard's personal confidant and axeman. Moore-Wilton did not even bother to make a pretence of impartiality; indeed, he broke the public service convention by taking part in the Liberal Party's 2001 election victory party.
But under Howard, such blurring of the lines was to become common. The public service was now expected not just to administer government policy; it had the secondary job of boosting government politics. Dissenters were dealt with ruthlessly, but the rewards for the faithful were great. Jane Halton, a middle-ranker heavily involved in sustaining the government's claims in the "children overboard" myth of 2001, found herself promoted to head of the Health Department after the election that followed.
In such a culture, short-term expediency becomes the norm. There is no point in looking beyond the next election; if your political patron loses, you are automatically out of a job. If, on the other hand, your patron wins, you will share in the victory. Senior public servants under the Howard Government are now in a similar position to the CEOs of large companies, with whom they frequently compare themselves. They see their primary – indeed, only – responsibility as being to their shareholders, by which they mean not the taxpayers but the Government. The taxpayers are mere customers, valued not for themselves, but for what they can contribute to the company's bottom line: votes. As for such amorphous concepts as the good of society as a whole – forget it. If we want a visionary, we'll hire an astrologer.
IT IS TIME FOR A CHANGE OF NAME: the public service is now the government-of-the-day-service. In the past, senior bureaucrats liked to refer, with gentle irony, to the government as their political masters. There is no longer any irony involved. Using carrots and sticks, greed and fear, Howard has completed the process of subordination. The concept of a truly independent public service is probably now dead forever. All that matters is which party is in control.
Thus the takeover of the public service can now be seen as a key aim of any government that aims to monopolise control of public debate and reinvent popular culture; a hostile or even neutral bureaucracy is a major impediment to the swift and efficient implementation of policies that might otherwise be dubious or controversial, and of their enthusiastic promotion through political advertisements paid for by taxpayers' money. The executive government of the day can now exercise close to total control over the public service.
And, as a final guarantee of obedience, ministers now insist that all public service contact with the public on any matter that could conceivably be considered political must go through their offices, where a fiercely loyal republican guard of unaccountable personal staff members has the sole function of shielding the ministers from any possible embarrassment. Ministers are answerable to the parliament and public servants can be quizzed by parliamentary committees. But political staff, who pass on ministerial orders and filter the bureaucrats' replies, are answerable to nobody; they are the ultimate example of power without responsibility. And since they have assumed the authority of the minister and depend on his political success, the bureaucracy is now effectively a branch of the ruling political party and is expected not only to obey the executive government but to give it active support.
BUT, AS EACH INCOMING EXECUTIVE QUICKLY DISCOVERS, it is only one of three arms of government in the broader sense, the other two being parliament and the judiciary. The government obviously runs the agenda in the lower house, where it may or may not allow a certain amount of dissent – Howard's take-no-prisoners style allows none at all from his own side and as little as possible from the Opposition. But the Senate, where governments seldom have a majority under the proportional system, can only be kept in line through threats and bribes.
In a real sense, the Senate has now become the most serious competitor to the Government in the ongoing culture wars; while the Senate continues to resist, Howard can never have the complete victory over his ideological opponents for which he yearns. But by portraying the Senate as some kind of undemocratic, obstructionist mafia whose only aim is to thwart the will of the electorate, he can certainly minimise its credibility. All prime ministers get to loathe the Senate; Paul Keating's jibe about "unrepresentative swill" is simply the best remembered. But few have felt the need to take away its power, by one means or another, as urgently as Howard does. If he is to finish the task of remaking the country in his own image, the Senate is the greatest remaining obstacle.
The other arm of government, the judiciary, and particularly the High Court, can be equally problematic. At least since 1977, when a referendum was passed forcing judges to retire at the age of 70, most governments that serve more than a single term have been able to put at least a couple of their own appointees on the bench. This does not guarantee compliance; judges, particularly when elevated to the only court from which there is no appeal, can be both fiercely independent and totally unpredictable. But the power to hire – if not, in practical terms, to fire – gives the Government a certain edge, and one that it will always try to use.