In this first article in our Secretary Series Reflections, Carolyn Holbrook, Associate Professor at the University of Deakin, unpacks Treasury Secretary Jenny Wilkinson’s lessons on becoming an effective public servant, focusing on the dire consequences  of overlooking or entirely bypassing public service advice.

In a recent IPAA ACT Secretary Series speech , Treasury Secretary Jennifer Wilkinson described how her work on climate policy in PM&C in the 2000s rapidly disabused  her of the concept that good policy-making was as simple as coming up with good ideas. In a crucible of contested science, complex economics, highly motivated stakeholders and ideological polarisation, Wilkinson discerned lessons about the range of skills required to be an effective public servant.

Wilkinson emphasised the need for public servants to respond to rapidly changing and unforeseen circumstances, and to the broader political environment in which they work: ‘There is no prize for producing technically elegant reform proposals that have no prospect of being adopted’. She implored her colleagues to be more than policy experts and stakeholder managers, but to always be thinking about reform; when the opportunity arises to make genuine change, they must be ready to pull their ideas from the drawer.

It is clear from Wilkinson’s reflections that policy-making at its best requires a trusting and deeply collaborative relationship between government and the public service. It needs a government that respects the expertise and independence of the public service and a public service that is steeped in policy expertise, awake to the possibilities of reform and aware that policy is made within a complex fiscal and political environment.

As an historian of public policy, I can think of many examples where these conditions have been met. When Bob Hawke became prime minister in March 1983, he was delighted to discover the quality of expertise at his disposal in the Australian Public Service. The Hawke government’s capacity to harness this resource was integral to its enduring policy achievements in areas including healthcare, child support, family payments, gender equality and school retention.[1] Indeed, the fruitful collaboration between the Hawke government and public service accounts in no small part for the oft-made claim that the Hawke government represents the ‘gold standard’ of governance in Australia.

I can also think of many examples of where government has failed to work collaboratively with the public service. Often, these instances arise in policy domains that are deeply politicised, and where decisions are made under immense pressure from opposing politicians and hostile media. When politicians are operating in a climate of suspicion and distrust, they tend to narrow their sources of information and advice, at their peril.

One of the most egregious examples of policy dysfunction occurred in the Rudd and Gillard’s government’s handling of asylum seeker policy. The Rudd government had been elected in 2007 with a promise to close off-shore processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru and abolish Temporary Protection Visas. These changes saw the number of boat arrivals begin to climb.

In mid-October 2009, Prime Minister Rudd was informed that a vessel carrying seventy-eight Sri Lankan asylum seekers was in danger of sinking in Indonesian waters. Without consulting Immigration Minister Chris Evans, Rudd negotiated directly with the Indonesian president .[2] He decided to dispatch a Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, to rescue the asylum seekers and return them to Indonesia.

Evans first heard of the plan when he received a phone call from Rudd’s chief of staff, Alister Jordan, informing him a decision that had already been taken. Evans rang his departmental secretary, Andrew Metcalfe, who told him that the plan would not work because the asylum seekers would refuse to disembark.[3]

Metcalfe was proved right. The asylum seekers refused to leave the Australian boat at Bintan, and Australian voice surveillance revealed that there was talk of mass suicide. The stand-off lasted for four weeks until a deal was struck that saw the Sri Lankans resettled in countries including New Zealand.

The Immigration Department was similarly left in the dark about new prime minister Julia Gillard’s attempt in 2010 to establish a refugee processing centre in East Timor. The plan was made via back channels, but fizzled when Gillard announced it publicly, before the East Timorese president had consulted his own government.

As the number of boat arrivals continued to increase, and the government sustained immense pressure from the Opposition leader Tony Abbott, the Immigration Department worked away on a multi-lateral solution, which would include the UNHCR and refugee stakeholders in Australia. [4] The new Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, eschewed this process, however, in favour of a uni-lateral refugee processing deal with Malaysia, announced in July 2011.

Aggrieved refugee organisations who had not been consulted about the Malaysian deal, took the so-called Malaysia Solution to the High Court. The government was taken by surprise when the court struck down the agreement for breaching the Migration Act.

Fast running out of options, Gillard re-introduced off-shore processing. When Rudd took the prime ministership again in June 2013, he announced that asylum seekers who arrived by boat would never be able to settle in Australia.

This period of policy ineptitude coincided with around 1200 asylum seekers drowning at sea. It greatly damaged the reputation of the Labor government, which ended up implementing a harsher policy than the one it inherited, before losing the 2013 election.

The value of the public service is demonstrated not merely by the key role it has played in implementing major reform, but also by its absence; by the calamities that unfold when the public service is ignored or by-passed altogether. If their expertise had been properly utilised when Rudd and Gillard were attempting to reform refugee policy in an atmosphere of crisis, expert and politically astute public servants could have steered Rudd away from the Oceanic Viking debacle, avoided the embarrassment and anger caused by Gillard’s botched dealings with East Timor, and guided Bowen to an enduring, multi-lateral solution for assessing refugee claims.

Secretary Wilkinson argues that there is no template or ‘single model’ for successful policy reform: ‘Different reforms in different contexts call for different approaches’. But a partnership between government and public service is a necessary constituent. Lasting reform is one of the hardest things a democratic system attempts, but as Jennifer Wilkinson says, ‘the public service has an irreplaceable role in making it possible’.

The Secretary Series Reflections are produced in collaboration with ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.