It is almost ritual for any in-coming government to tussle with the Public Service. The tussle can be over suspicion by the Government about the political sympathies of senior public servants; suspicion about their empire-building and empire-consolidating tendencies; or suspicion over inefficiency.
The ACT Government appears to have no difficulty on the first count. Most senior ACT public servants have worked with governments of both complexions. However, it has a determined view that the ACT Government Service is too large. That view seems to be a combination of two things: that the same job could be done with fewer people or that the ACT simply cannot afford to have a service of the present size so it must be cut and if that means fewer functions, so be it.
Ideally, a government would like to deliver the same functions and services with fewer people, or at worse deliver the same services, even if some are contracted out.
Last week the Government put a freeze on government employment. It put a wall around the present service. It means that vacancies can only be filled from within, unless there are very pressing circumstances. It seems likely that this is a prelude to a shrinking of the service. Indeed, Chief Minister Kate Carnell has already indicated that there will be redundancies, at least in health.
There are some drawbacks to this approach. It means that the merit principle is not strictly adhered to. It means that good people in the private sector or in the government sector in the federal or other state services will not be employed and instead a person of lesser talent will fill the post from within.
However, the approach is understandable for a government determined to shrink the government sector and to make it more efficient. History shows that, without stern measures, the bureaucracy keeps on growing. The drawback may worth it when measured against the other possibility _ redundancies in some part of the service while other parts are employing from outside.
One of the difficulties the Government has inherited is employment conditions and an employment culture that makes efficiency drives very difficult, if not counter-productive. The Government might find, for example, that its freeze will result in poorer appointments; that redundancy offers will be accepted by good employees or those that might be leaving anyway; that the fear and loathing created in the service by redundancies results in poorer work outputs; that contracting out does not give the efficiency yields first imagined.
A further difficulty for the Government is that it inherited the Public Service Management Act. It makes the ACT’s service the only one in Australia that does not put its Senior Executive Service on performance contracts. They are not a panacea, but without a change of culture at the top, it is difficult to see changes flowing through the service.
The most commendable thing about the Government’s freeze and warning that the service will be cut, is that at least it has not thrown its hands up in the air and said it is all too hard.
There are great pressures on the ACT to have an efficient public sector, not least competition from other states. That said, it is still a public service, answerable not only to the Government of the day, but also to the law of the territory and to its citizens. It is not a corporation answerable only to a bottom line.