Robodebt and PwC show dangers of APS power imbalance

It has removed the crippling constraint of staff caps, it has committed to a program of reforms recommended by a review that includes newly-appointed Australia Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer and it has embarked on reducing reliance on external consultants and contractors and bringing more functions back within the APS.

"Our approach towards the public service..is very different," the prime minister says, including "proper, orderly processes".

But the biggest test of how sincere it is about strengthening the public service will be how it responds to the findings of the robodebt royal commission.

In her 990-page report, commissioner Catherine Holmes has exposed the toxic consequences of a badly unbalanced relationship between politicians and public servants.

Page 107 of her report includes a damning account of how senior executives in the Department of Human Services ditched proper processes and withheld from giving full and frank advice because of pressure to deliver on a decision by then-social services minister Scott Morrison.

In December 2014, Mr Morrison told then-department secretary Kathryn Campbell he was interested in the department's management of integrity in the welfare system. Within six weeks she produced an executive minute "responsive" to the Mr Morrison's "policy direction" of ensuring welfare integrity, which was coupled with a drive to achieve savings. This would eventually morph into the robodebt scheme

Mr Morrison told the commission his view as minister was that, having set the policy direction, it was the department's job to "get on and deliver it".

This is where the consequences of the power imbalance between minister and department started to come into play, and things began to go awry.

"Members of the senior executive of both DSS and DHS were acutely aware of Mr Morrison's policy direction, and the drive for savings," the commission found.

"There was a resulting sense of pressure which filtered through the management of both departments."

Former senior DHS official Sam Britton told the commission there was pressure to "... get on with it. Just get on with it ... And we collectively got on with it."

"The failure of DSS and DHS to give Mr Morrison frank and full advice before and after the development of the [policy proposal] is explained by the pressure to deliver the budget expectations of the government and by Mr Morrison...communicating the direction to develop the [proposal] through the executive minute.

On the face of it, there seems nothing wrong with Mr Morrison's expectation that the public service implement the decisions of government. After all, people elect politicians, not bureaucrats.

But what if those decisions are ill-informed, ill-advised or, as in the case of robodebt, illegal? Should the public service meekly go along even if it knows things are not right?

Commissioner Holmes clearly thinks not.

In her report, she calls out robodebt (and the damage it has caused to thousands) as an instance of the failure of the public service, individually and collectively, to give government advice that at times might be unwelcome.

In order to help achieve this, the commissioner wants all public servants to be schooled in their roles and responsibilities in the system of government - including their duty to serve interests of the Australian people.

But she also wants department secretaries to be restored to some measure of the independence they once once enjoyed.

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Over decades the position and influence of the public service has been steadily eroded. It began under Whitlam with the decision to equip ministers with a staff of advisers. During the Hawke, Keating and Howard years department secretaries then lost their tenure and were put on fixed term contracts.

Politicians have also increasingly turned to other sources of advice and expertise, from academics and think-tanks to external consultants.

Robodebt and the PwC scandal show where some of these changes can lead.

Commissioner Holmes and, before her, the Thodey Review, are not calling for the reinstatement of tenure for department secretaries. The mandarin is not going to make a come-back.

But they want the recruitment and dismissal of department secretaries to be the subject of robust processes overseen by the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the APS Commissioner.

The challenge facing the Albanese government is, is it willing to give up some of the power and influence ministers now wield and lend some substance to its talk about restoring the public service.

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