The Role of Departmental Secretariats

Andrew Podger’s monograph, The Role of Departmental Secretaries, Personal reflections on the breadth of responsibilities today, is an important contribution to the broader public policy discourse in Australia. Andrew has been, at times, an unflinching commentator on issues of bureaucratic performance, accountability and responsiveness to government. Andrew’s reflections are drawn from his own experiences within the inner circle of Australian policy-making. In this monograph, he presents a highly nuanced portrait of the role of Commonwealth departmental secretaries. Although a ‘player’ himself at key moments in recent policy history, Andrew is a dispassionate and thoughtful observer of events. This is not merely a memoir: this work is rich in analysis and Andrew offers a number of ‘lessons learned’ to be heeded (or not) by the present and future generations of policy practitioners

The Concept of 'Merit' in Australia, China and Taiwan

The article provides a description of Australian approaches to 'merit' and an overview of the other symposium articles on the application of merit in China and Taiwan. The term 'merit' is commonly used in Australia, China, and Taiwan as an important attribute of good government service, but it means different things in different countries, reflecting both different institutional arrangements and differences in culture. Australia's current application of the merit principle is described in some detail. The principle and its application have been subject to debate throughout the last century and continue today. The debates reflect social attitudes at the time and developments in the role of government and the skills government requires, and changes in the Australian labour market. Key debates include the role of women, treatment of ex-servicemen, importance of graduate recruitment, equal employment opportunity, and staff perceptions of fairness and the application of merit in employment decisions. China has a long tradition of autocracy and a long history of competitive examinations for joining government service. It faces the challenge of whether it is possible to embrace a merit principle where politics and administration are not distinguished. Merit is also applied within a culture that gives considerable emphasis to personal relations (guanxi). Taiwan also draws on China's long experience with examinations. A key challenge now is whether it gives too much emphasis to equality and fair access to public sector employment opportunities and too little to the skills and experience different government agencies require. These different approaches and different challenges reflect differences in the three countries relating in particular to the role of government, the relationship between politics and administration and culture

Response to Mr. Batini’s comments on Davison (2018) Australas Plant Pathol 47:245–257

This reply refers to the comment available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s13313-018-0581-

Fake News: Could Self-Regulation of Media Help to Protect the Public? The Experience of the Australian Press Council

“Fake news” comes in two forms: false information intended to deceive, and deceitful description of genuine information when it does not accord with the views of the person calling it “fake.” Either way—the reality of false news or the strategy to throw doubt on genuine news and evidence—it threatens to undermine democratic processes, and the broader social fabric. Modern technology is making fake news much easier. People rely on sources that may have no commitment to truth, and groups of people can easily engage only with like-minded people and dismiss alternative perspectives. Yet, new technology is also offering wider and more direct connections, with the potential to better inform the public and provide avenues for people to express their views and engage in public discourse. The challenge is to find a workable ethical regime that supports the positive potential of technology while limiting the risks of negative use and impact. There is no easy answer, but some strengthening of self-regulation within the media and modification of government regulation are required. Each country will need to find the response most likely to work, but some international collaboration is also likely required

Federalism and Australia’s National Health and Health Insurance System

While health reform in Australia has been marked by piecemeal, incremental changes, the overall trend to increasing Commonwealth involvement has not been accidental or driven by power-hungry centralists: it has been shaped by broader national and international developments including technological change and the maturing of our nation and its place internationally, and by a widespread desire for a national universal health insurance system. In many respects the Australianhealth system performs well, but the emerging challenges demand a more integrated, patient-oriented system. This is likely to require a further shift towards the Commonwealth in terms of financial responsibility, as the national insurer. But it also requires close cooperation with the States, who could play a firmer role in service delivery and in supporting regional planning and coordination. The likelihood of sharing overall responsibility for the health system also suggests thereis a need to involve the States more fully in processes for setting national policies. This article draws heavily on a lecture presented at the Australian National University in October 2015. It includes an overview of Australia’s evolving federal arrangements and the context within which the current Federalism Review is being conducted. It suggests Australia will not return to ‘coordinate federalism’ with clearly distinct responsibilities, and that greater priority should be given to improving how we manage shared responsibilities. There is a long history of Commonwealth involvement in health, and future reform should build on that rather than try to reverse direction. While critical of the proposals from the Commission of Audit and in the 2014 Budget, the lecture welcomed the more pragmatic approaches that seemed to be emerging from the Federalism Review discussion papers and contributions from some Premiers which could promote more sensible measures to improve both the effectiveness and the financial sustainability of Australia’s health and health insurance system. The Commonwealth’s new political leadership in 2015 seemed interested in such measures and in moving away from the Abbott Government’s approach. But the legacy of that approach severely damaged the Turnbull Government in the 2016 federal election as it gave traction to Labor’s ‘Mediscare’ campaign. In addition to resetting the federalism debate as it affects health, the Turnbull Government now needs to articulate the principles of Medicare and to clarify the role of the private sector, including private health insurance, in Australia’s universal health insurance system. Labor also needs to address more honestly the role of the private sector and develop a more coherent policy itself. Abbreviations: COAG – Council of Australian Governments; NHHRC – National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission; PHI – Private Health Insurance; VFI – Vertical Fiscal Imbalance

Topological constraints in the reconnection of vortex braids

We study the relaxation of a topologically nontrivial vortex braid with zero net helicity in a barotropic fluid. The aim is to investigate the extent to which the topology of the vorticity field—characterized by braided vorticity field lines—determines the dynamics, particularly the asymptotic behavior under vortex reconnection in evolution at high Reynolds numbers (25 000). Analogous to the evolution of braided magnetic fields in plasma, we find that the relaxation of our vortex braid leads to a simplification of the topology into large-scale regions of opposite swirl, consistent with an inverse cascade of the helicity. The change of topology is facilitated by a cascade of vortex reconnection events. During this process, the existence of regions of positive and negative kinetic helicities imposes a lower bound for the kinetic energy. For the enstrophy, we derive analytically a lower bound given by the presence of unsigned kinetic helicity, which we confirm in our numerical experiments