NATIONAL PRESIDENT
Embodying the spirit
of public service
What does ‘public service’ mean to you? IPAA national president Terry Moran recently presented the
Sir Edward ‘Weary’ Dunlop Asialink Lecture. It gave him ‘pause to reflect’.
Weary Dunlop was an Australian
surgeon renowned for his leadership in
Australia Asia relations. An extraordinary
individual, his suffering, strength and
bravery in Japanese prisoner of war
camps during the Second World War, his
post-war work with returned POWs and
in reconciliation with Japan, is almost
inconceivable in its scale.
Strikingly, the public sector – among the
largest employers in Australia – has been
largely absent from that discussion. The
capabilities for Asia engagement need to
be spread far wider than the important
but relatively narrow confines of the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Weary Dunlop embodies the ideal of
public service. An aspect of the malaise
currently afflicting our nation reflects the
willingness of some to relegate this ideal
of public service to less prominence –
despite community attitudes.
We know from surveys that citizens
admire and trust, above all other groups,
those at the front line who live a life
of public service – nurses, teachers,
doctors, fire fighters, police and others
like them. The problem is our broad
senior leadership group is losing sight of
something Australians see clearly.
So the challenge for those who occupy –
or seek to occupy – those senior positions
is to explore how they might recapture
the spirit of public service in many of
our institutions.
How could we rebuild that sense of
public service in Australia? Service on the
heroic scale of Weary Dunlop is probably
to some extent a product of nature – as
much as nurture. But here are four that
could ensure the ground for public
service is made more fertile.
First, we could act to bridge the gulf that
seems to be growing between the public
and private sectors. We should welcome
the head of the Business Council of
Australia Catherine Livingstone’s plan to
‘close the gap between what government
thinks and what business knows’.
Secondly, we could develop closer
public sector engagement with Asia.
EXTRAORDINARY LEADER Sir Edward ‘Weary’
Dunlop embodies the ideal of public service
My third suggestion is we could rebuild the
concept of public service by re-thinking
the way our public services interact with
Indigenous Australia. As Noel Pearson has so
eloquently described – formal recognition
in the Constitution is one way to begin that
re-thinking. But it also means recognising
that – since the arrival of that 18th century
public servant Arthur Phillip – my profession
has singularly failed to respond to the needs
of Indigenous Australians and at times in
the past has been complicit in their murder,
dispossession and criminal neglect.Tragically,
this has happened despite a series of prime
ministers, most particularly from Harold
Holt onwards, wishing to achieve major
reforms and rapid improvement.The success
of the reforms on Cape York suggests Noel
Pearson’s diagnosis of the need to radically
reshape the way public administration and
governments work with Indigenous Australia
is correct. And given the challenges of welfare
reform in the broader community, the
work in Cape York may also point to the
future of wider welfare reform.
My final observation is about the need for
better political leadership. There has been
a growing trend for Australian political
leaders, on both sides of politics, to
portray themselves as effective managers.
In doing so – they do themselves and
the nation a disservice. Much of the
dysfunction in the relationship between
ministers and their departments comes
from quite a few ministers seeing their role
as micro-managing their departments. Not
surprisingly, given their usual pre-political
backgrounds, most ministers are lousy CEO’s.
One example of the problems emerging
is a tendency for balanced professional
advice from public servants to be
interrupted in transmission before it is
properly considered. The short term near
sightedness of governments and the lack of
a credible strategic approach to reform is
one consequence. It is becoming apparent
the public recognises this and does not
reward governments that operate in this
way, as evidenced by opinion polls and the
trend for average time in office to decline.
The real focus of our political leaders
should be, and in the case of the good
ones is, on their ability to touch the
ground and build coalitions of support
for new ideas and reforms. By this means
the public can be taken on a journey as
support for reform is built.
None of these suggestions would be
easy or risk free, for our public sector,
political leadership, private sector and
the community because they challenge
self-interest, complacency and tradition.
In essence they demand courage and an
ability to overcome what Edmund Burke
called ‘false, reptile prudence, the result
not of caution but of fear’.
It is surely a chance worth taking. None of
it will be easy but if we ignore the value
of public service it will expand the hole
that currently sits in our national heart.
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION
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