The departure of the chief executive of ACTION will be a major loss for the ACT. It will be a loss of opportunity. The flatness of his departure is instructive. He said, “There is nothing to say you have to finish the contract.”” And there was no statement from the Government that it would continue the contract. The result is that Mr Wasworth will take up a better offer from Perth.
The general manager of Woden Valley Hospital, Sue Belsham, also resigned last week, adding to the recent resignation of the head of ACT Health, Gillian Biscoe.
All have been circumspect about why they have taken up other offers. They have clouded the reasons with cliches about new challenges, moving on, done all they could do in the ACT etc. None has been willing to tell of real reasons from the heart — they cannot work with this ideologically driven government.
The malaise goes beyond the buses and the health system. ACT Electricity and Water and the TAB have similar difficulties. The heads of those bodies will not admit it publicly, in the best bureaucratic tradition, but they, too, are peeved for the same reason as Wadworth, Belsham and Biscoe. The essential problem is an ideologically driven government will not permit heads of government service providers to do their job.
The bus service is the worst example. If Mike Wadsworth had been permitted to run a corporatised bus service free of the internecine factional brawls of the Labor Party, the people of the ACT would be better off. If Gillian Biscoe and Sue Belsham had been free to run a health service free of the ideological idiosyncrasies of the Minister for Health, the people of the ACT would be cable to get more of their health treatment in the ACT rather than having to go interstate.
The ACT TAB is in a similar bind. Philip Neck, a man of considerable expertise, came from interstate to take up an interesting challenge in a new environment. Suddenly, he finds his organisation is going backwards. It is brought back from independence to the be under the public-service and the Minister’s direct control.
ACT Electricity and Water finds its efforts at creating an efficient workforce are also stymied by the dead hand of political deal-making. Every time it gets an efficiency arrangement with its workforce, the imperative of a government-wide accord sets it aside. The phlegmatic Mike Sargeant who heads ACTEW does his damnedest to give the best result for the people of the ACT, but he must shake his head in despair from time to time.
The ACT public sector is at a critical point. It has advertised for the head of the Chief Minister’s Department and Chief Executive of the Department of Public Sector Management as part of setting up its own service, independent of the Commonwealth Service. The Government can impose uniformity, ideology and inefficiency, as it seems hell bent on doing. Or it can do what public sectors elsewhere are doing: corporatising and privatising some areas and delivering efficiency through managerial independence in other areas. As the ACT sets up and independent Public Service, it has a great opportunity to deliver better services more cheaply to the ACT public. All the signs are, however, that it will give in to union mates, ideology and inefficiency and rid itself of meddlesome mangers who have their eye on the main game of excellent service and the best price.
Mobility between the ACT and Commonwealth services is important. However, the ACT should sort out the position of heads of key areas. Are they to be on contract? Are they to be subject to approval by the Assembly? If not, are they to be pure political appointments subject to termination upon a change of government?
Unfortunately, the track record should that the ACT Government will ignore the brain drain of talented people from elsewhere; employ tired internal people it can rely on to do the right ideological thing for the tow most important positions; and do nothing imaginative or innovative to create a first class public-service that serves the long-term interest of the people of the ACT over the short-term interest of the incumbent MLAs.