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New rules for
exiled heads
PUBLIC SERVICE
Jack Waterford
QUIETLY slipping through the sys-
tem one Friday night nine days
ago was a major Commonwealth
statement on what happens to perma-
nent heads who fall out of favour. (Fri-
day, incidentally, with the major
broadsheet newspapers having big clas-
sified-advertising runs, is the favoured
day for dropping, late, press statements
not wanted to get much of a run.)
Ostensibly, the statement addresses
the problems of big pay-outs to Secretar-
ies who for one reason or another are
redundant, or the alternative problem of
retaining them, virtually unused but on
full pay, on an unattached list.
"It is not satisfactory for the Gov-
ernment or the individuals concerned,"
the statement intones, "for there to be
long periods of salary retention without
duties commensurate with the officer's
abilities and the pay received. This ap-
proach will no longer be permitted.
"Early retirement will continue to be
suitable in some cases but it suffers from
the disadvantages of being expensive
and of severing connections with the
Commonwealth. The new arrangements
will make it possible for displaced heads
of public-service departments and for
public servants who held appointment
as heads authorities at Secretary level
to take leave, for up to five years, to
engage in other employment, including
in the private sector. During that time
they will be entitled to an allowance at
deputy-secretary level which will be re-
duced depending upon the amount of
private income earned.
"As suitable alternative full-time
Commonwealth appointments arise, of
ficers on this mobility allowance can be
recalled to take up appointments.
"The new scheme will be available for
unattached Secretaries using existing
powers in the Public Service Act pend-
ing the passage of legislation covering
the specific details of the new arrange-
ments. The new scheme combines the
advantages of enabling the Common
wealth to retain access to the services of
highly qualified and talented senior
staff, while providing them the opportu-
nity to gain valuable experience of alter-
native employment".
The cynic will not fail to note that a
few other advantages are also combined.
When any government is near the end of
its term, with the Government only 4-6
to win the next election, such a new
arrangement may well prove advanta-
geous to someone not likely to survive a
change of government. Indeed, it could
enable such a person to comfortably see
out the best part of two terms of (hostile)
government.
Hostile for permanent heads? Surely
they arc neutral and indifferent to a
change of government? By my guess at
least half the permanent heads not only
expect a change of government but are
positively looking forward to it. But at
least four or five have some reason (not
necessarily bad conscience) for trepida-
tion. The new arrangements could pro-
vide for a quite satisfactory period of
exile. Exile could well be more comfort
able than for many former underlings-
without the protection of such cushy
arrangements who may simply have to
make do on redundancy payouts.
The special protections also raise a
potential problem of conflict of interest.
Not one that people who attain perma-
nent-head rank could not, in theory,
handle, but undesirable in the sense that
any Secretary with the reasonable ex-
pectation that he (there are no shes)
might prove unpalatable to government
in a future leading up to retiring age
might think it wise to have a few private
sector irons in the fire. One might re-
member that even Sir Humphrey Apple-
by did that.
The decision underlines a more fun-
damental problem. Labor's supposed re-
forms to the permanent-head process
have never worked. Appointments have
been as ad hoc as ever, terminations
usually as bloody (and often as jolly
unfair) as ever. The principle of rotation
after five years has only ever occurred by
accident. There has rarely been any
horses-for-courses system: more than
half the appointments made after, say,
1985, have been simple shuffles of the
pack caused either by chance vacancy or
the domino effect of one minister want-
ing a particular change. The whimsicali-
ty of the selection, transfer and
retrenchment system has not been en-
tirely ministerial either.
It is not yet time to declare a caretaker
Keating Government. None the less,
with Labor looking down the barrel
changes at this stage of their term are to
be regarded with some suspicion.
To be fair, the new. system would not
necessarily be a boon to the most mar-
ketable public servants who for one rea-
son or another, not necessarily good, are
unacceptable to new political masters.
Some would much rather take the mon-
ey than endure the humiliation of reduc-
tion in the ranks (a status matter far
more important than salary). The
pro-rata reduction in tax-funded salary
should they get an outside job is a joke:
the Tony Ayers, Derek Volkers, Mike
Keatings and Steve Sedgwicks of this
world could earn far more in private
industry than where they are. But they
might be less attractive objccts if they
had to confess at a job interview that
they were subject to recall to a
public-service headship on a minute's
notice.
■ ON a quite different note, two of the
Westpac directors who have fallen on
their swords. Sir Neil Currie and Jim
Scully, are former Commonwealth pub-
lic-service heads. Though both, as pub-
lic servants, worked in industry-oriented
departments and were no strangers to
private enterprise, it is not easy to asso-
ciate them with the gung-ho excess
which saw Westpac reduced. Perhaps it
»vor simply a sense of responsibility, a
recognition that when things go wrong
there must be a few suicides at the top.
■ DR Mike Keating, Secretary of the
Prime Minister's Department, is con-
ducting a small seminar on Wednesday
to moot changes to the draft paper on
accountability in the Public Service, is
sued by the Public Service Management
Advisory Board and Management Im-
provement Advisory Committee last
year, and which drew a lot of flak for the
narrowness of its vision. The core of the
criticism was the narrowness of the ac-
countability framework envisaged by
the paper — essentially one of doing
what one's immediate superior says —
and the unfortunately dismissive use of
the word "adjunct" to describe a host of
mechanisms — such as Parliament and
its committees, the Ombudsman and
the administrative law regime, and the
Auditor-General, as not fundamental to
principles of accountability.
Wednesday's 22-person invitation
only seminar brings together some, but
not all, of the critics, with a number of
Secretaries and others involved in the
draft paper. The cheekiest paper will
probably be by Russell Higgins, a first
assistant secretary in Finance, who
damns a December 1991 dying declara-
tion by Mike Codd that the final paper
would be accompanied by case studies.
What, he asks, would be the utility of
pursuing such studies? "Is there case
study overload"?
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