18 February 2004

Ms Madonna King,
c/- Courier Mail

Accountability of Queensland's senior public servants

Your article 'Scrutiny lacking at the top' (Courier Mail, 17/2/04) highlighted questions about how the competence of Queensland's top public servants is ensured and assessed.

My interpretation: Queensland's directors-general have more than 100,000 staff, receive lucrative pay, form a second cabinet, have immense power, and receive bonuses which are undisclosed. Unlike the private sector where scalps of CEOs are demanded when things go awry, this does not happen to DGs. The DG of Families Department, when CMC handed down a damning indictment of policy / procedures / attitudes, will now head Department of Housing. Current head of Education Department was previously head of Families - and so must also take some responsibility. What genuine assessment was made of their performances? Public sector heads hide behind elected officials. Who was responsible for blow-out in cost of Goodwill Bridge? Who advised government to plough millions into AMC? Accountability of such individuals (and employment contracts offered to public servants) should be debated. The issue is not remuneration, but transparency and accountability. An independent public review by Auditor General should be held of performance at the end of each contract.

There are strong grounds for the concerns you have expressed - as indicated in The Growing Case for a Professional Public Service on my website. I drew this case to your attention in response to an earlier article ('Another deficit: that Smarts', Courier Mail, 3/6/03), but the case has continued growing.

Your article suggests the need for transparency and public accountability to overcome these concerns.

However I should like to submit for your consideration that senior public servants (including directors-general) need to be subject to 'professional' accountability, rather than to 'public' (ie inexpert) accountability. This is because:

• the role of the senior Public Service is to complement the focus that elected representatives have on the popularity of policy, by providing advice and implementation support which ensures that policy is likely to be effective in practice;
• such support requires both a depth of knowledge and long experience - and it is very difficult / impossible for non-experts to assess how competent a senior public servant is in providing such support (see submission to chairman of then Criminal Justice Commission of October 1999). No one would try to assess the competency of a doctor or an aeronautical engineer unless they themselves have a high level of expertise in that field, and the same must apply to senior public servants; because
• government is not really like a business. A business produces and distributes specific goods and services. Governments also do this, but it is not their primary function. Their main task is 'governing' - ie creating a framework for a community's social and economic activities. And success in 'governing' requires knowledge and wisdom about the functioning of complex social, economic and environmental systems - not just about the operational effectiveness of a single organisation.

These factors are the basis of the Westminster tradition which Queensland inherited from Britain. It involved a permanent and politically independent Public Service to which appointments were based on professional assessment of competence. However:

• the Westminster tradition has been broken down over the past 15 years (eg see Towards Good Government in Queensland), and it is this which has led to the numerous symptoms which are like those that prompted your article;
• professional merit has not been a required consideration in the making of senior appointments (see Autocratic Ignorance Purges the Queensland Public Service);
• politicisation of senior appointments has had bipartisan political support (see Franklin M., 'Only four survive Beattie's reshuffle', Courier Mail, 17/4/99); and
• in practice the political system has proven singularly incapable of accurately identifying persons who combine high level knowledge balanced by practical experience (see The Effect of Politicisation). Political leaders often seem to have been 'bluffed' by persons with only one of these characteristics (eg by those who might have high level theoretical knowledge but little practical experience, or visa versa).

This problem has been repeatedly drawn to the attention of Queensland's political establishment for more than a decade - without attracting any serious response (eg see Towards a Professional Public Service for Queensland). Moreover a case was presented to the Queensland Council of Professions in September 2001. That Council seemed to agree that there is a problem, but did nothing about it. My most recent representation takes the form of a letter of 8/2/04 to the Premier about the need for government in Queensland to swap populism for 'realism'. It is a suggestion with which your article implies that you would agree.