12 September 2000

Hon Mr Peter Beattie, MLA
Premier of Queensland

Re: Merit in Public Service Appointments

Thank you for your letter of 8/9/00 which confirms your government's support for persons being "appointed to public service vacancies on the basis of merit .. (so as to) ensure that a professional public service exists to effectively deliver services to the people of Queensland".

Unfortunately such worthy goals are easy to say, but hard to achieve. And the evidence available to me places a large credibility gap in the path of accepting your claim. In particular:

• your goal could never be achieved without a comprehensive 'renewal' of the Public Service. In 1998 your government inherited a Service built on a foundation of ineptitude and injustice resulting from a poorly conceived and incompetently managed 'reform' process in the early 1990s (as I pointed out in many prior letters). Renewal was vital because: a firm basis of professional merit was required if further appointees were to be selected on merit and; no organization built on unresolved injustices could ever command respect. However neither your government, nor its predecessor, undertook such renewal;
• both you and the Leader of the Opposition are on the record as endorsing the politicisation of chief executive appointments (see Franklin M. 'Only four survive Beattie reshuffle', Courier Mail, 17/4/99), and politicisation at that level necessarily affects the professional quality and orientation of the entire Public Service - because of the influence chief executives can exert over more junior appointments;
• despite what you may be told by interested parties, the grass roots of the Public Service does not currently appear to believe that vacancies are filled on the basis of merit; and
• your government seems to be encountering serious difficulties many of which appear to reflect Public Service fumbles. They include: ineffectual administration (eg see letters of 28/5/99, 23/7/99 and 20/4/00 and a letter to Mr Gralton of 28/8/00); lack of practical relevance in program proposals which could none-the-less result in the expenditure of large amounts of public money (eg see my letters of 5/11/99 and 9/8/00); and budget problems.

However the real problem with pretended commitment to Public Service merit is not the resulting farce. Rather it is that the real initiatives urgently needed to cope with our difficult and risky environment are not being taken. We now lack the institutional capability to develop credible and realistic proposals both in our small business / branch office community, and in our politically-focused Public Service. Queensland's people could pay a high price for this.

[Signed John Craig]