Whatever happened to frank and fearless?

The former head of evaluation for the Australian Public Service Commission considers the tension between the public service’s role in providing ‘frank and fearless’ advice to government and its role in development and implementation of government policy

Glass walls: Australia's highly gender-segregated workforce

Workplaces lacking gender balance employ 60% of Australian workers, the same as 20 years ago - comments by Alison Sheridan and Kathy MacDermot

Whatever Happened to Frank and Fearless? The impact of new public management on the Australian Public Service

In this evidence-based and closely argued work, Kathy MacDermott plots the changes in the culture of the Australian Public Service that have led many contemporary commentators to lament the purported loss of traditional public service values of impartiality, intellectual rigour and — most importantly — the willingness of public servants at all levels to offer frank and fearless advice to their superiors and their ministers. MacDermott brings to her analysis an insider’s sensibility and a thorough forensic analysis of the impact of some 20 years of relentless administrative ‘reform’ on the values and behaviour of the APS. Although this story has its beginnings in the Hawke-Keating eras, MacDermott convincingly argues that structural and cultural change compromising the integrity of the public service reached its apogee towards the end of the eleven years of the Howard government. This is a ‘must read’ for students of Australian political and administrative history. MacDermott offers cautionary observations that the new national government might do well to heed

Whatever Happened to Frank and Fearless?

In this evidence-based and closely argued work, Kathy MacDermott plots the changes in the culture of the Australian Public Service that have led many contemporary commentators to lament the purported loss of traditional public service values of impartiality, intellectual rigour and — most importantly — the willingness of public servants at all levels to offer frank and fearless advice to their superiors and their ministers. MacDermott brings to her analysis an insider’s sensibility and a thorough forensic analysis of the impact of some 20 years of relentless administrative ‘reform’ on the values and behaviour of the APS. Although this story has its beginnings in the Hawke-Keating eras, MacDermott convincingly argues that structural and cultural change compromising the integrity of the public service reached its apogee towards the end of the eleven years of the Howard government. This is a ‘must read’ for students of Australian political and administrative history. MacDermott offers cautionary observations that the new national government might do well to heed

Whatever happened to frank and fearless? The impact of new public management on the Australian Public Service

In this evidence-based and closely argued work, Kathy MacDermott plots the changes in the culture of the Australian Public Service that have led many contemporary commentators to lament the purported loss of traditional public service values of impartiality, intellectual rigour and — most importantly — the willingness of public servants at all levels to offer frank and fearless advice to their superiors and their ministers. MacDermott brings to her analysis an insider’s sensibility and a thorough forensic analysis of the impact of some 20 years of relentless administrative ‘reform’ on the values and behaviour of the APS. Although this story has its beginnings in the Hawke-Keating eras, MacDermott convincingly argues that structural and cultural change compromising the integrity of the public service reached its apogee towards the end of the eleven years of the Howard government. MacDermott offers cautionary observations that the new national government might do well to heed

Whatever Happened to Frank and Fearless?

In this evidence-based and closely argued work, Kathy MacDermott plots the changes in the culture of the Australian Public Service that have led many contemporary commentators to lament the purported loss of traditional public service values of impartiality, intellectual rigour and — most importantly — the willingness of public servants at all levels to offer frank and fearless advice to their superiors and their ministers. MacDermott brings to her analysis an insider’s sensibility and a thorough forensic analysis of the impact of some 20 years of relentless administrative ‘reform’ on the values and behaviour of the APS. Although this story has its beginnings in the Hawke-Keating eras, MacDermott convincingly argues that structural and cultural change compromising the integrity of the public service reached its apogee towards the end of the eleven years of the Howard government. This is a ‘must read’ for students of Australian political and administrative history. MacDermott offers cautionary observations that the new national government might do well to heed

Going by the book: Academic guides for public servants

  Over the course of the Howard Government, the Australian Public Service was accused with increasing frequency of failing to strike a balance between telling the government what it wants to know and telling the government what it needs to know. Is there a toolkit that can help public servants do their job better? And how, if at all, can academics help

Strengthening democracy

The principle of political equality has always been central to democracy and to the way democracy was understood by the democratic reformers of mid-19th Century Australia. The Australasian colonies were regarded as being in the vanguard of democratic innovation and at the end of the 19th Century such innovations became part of the federal compact. The new Constitution expressly precluded plural voting (provisions for property owners to have extra votes), and the Senate was to be directly elected on a popular franchise, unlike any other upper house of the time. There were to be no privileges based on property, and in the words of the first commentator on the Australian Constitution, University of Melbourne Dean of Law Harrison Moore: “The predominant feature of the Australian Constitution is the prevalence of the democratic principle, in its most modern guise”. He believed that this underlying principle meant that rights were protected not through a Bill of Rights, but through ensuring as far as possible that individuals had an equal share in political power. During the 20th Century, progress in this area continued. For example, property qualifications for State upper houses were finally abolished. Later, the malapportionment which made the votes of rural property holders worth more than the votes of urban residents was gradually removed, except for in the Western Australian Legislative Council. However, the last quarter of the 20th Century saw the influence of property again assume a major role in electoral politics. The dependence of political parties on corporate donations has served to undermine fair electoral competition and hence the principle of political equality