There are now three Canberras.
For two decades Canberrans have watched the employment needle edge towards a majority in the private sector rather than the public sector. That milestone was passed, but still people see the town as having two elements: a public sector and a private sector. A lot of stereotypes and assumptions about people were made on the basis of whether they worked in the private or public sector, or came from a household where the main earnings came from those sectors. It tended to brand them.
Public-sector employees were branded as clock-watching, tea-drinking socialists with no sense of reality in their secure jobs. Private-sector employees got branded as uncaring profit-chasers and tax avoiders.
Alternatively public-sector employees were seen as selfless protectors of the broad public interest and private sector-employees seen as energetic can-do people unconcerned with needless red-tape.
In any event they were different.
And because the ACT had a majority of public-sector employees it was seen as somehow strange and different from real Australia.
Now the ACT has more private-sector employees than public-sector ones.
But this duopoly is transmogrifying into a trinity.
The most recent Canberra Times-Datacol poll has revealed a distinct body of attitudes among people in households where the main income was from the ACT Government. It was different from both Commonwealth-sector households and private-sector households.
Indeed, it shows that the differences between the ACT sector and the Commonwealth sector are now more profound than the differences between the private sector and the Commonwealth sector.
The poll was mainly aimed at gauging overall political, social and economic opinion. But the “”three Canberras” come through because test demographic questions, such as income source, are asked and can be collated.
The results of the demographic questions in the sample randomly selected for the poll can be matched with a known result in the whole population taken at census time or through Australian Bureau of Statistics figures and other samples.
The head of Datacol, Malcolm Mearns, who does much of the poll designing, always incorporates some demographic questions — such as age, sex, suburb and income source — which can test whether his sample is truly representative.
So if the age break-up, postcode and household income source of the random sample is close to those things as found by the most recent census or Australian Bureau of Statistics data, you can be confident that the sample represents the whole for the rest of the survey’s questions on things like economic and social attitudes and voting intention.
The last, of course, only gets tested every three years.
Mearns stresses that the sample taken has to be taken randomly.
“”The telephone numbers are generated by a random digit principal where the random number are added to telephone prefixes. This results in the possible selection of all numbers, silent or otherwise and new or old listings, something which cannot be done with a telephone book. The other facet to the randomisation procedure is to select the respondent from within the dialled household. This is done by requesting to speak with the person in the house with the most recent birthday.”
In the decade since self-government during which Datacol has been polling for The Canberra Times, Datacol has been remarkably accurate. Given the unusual nature of the electorate, its results are that much more impressive.
The results this time show a growing disparity of views according to the source of income.
Mearns, however, is a cautious man. He does not like jumping to conclusions in the way journalists might. He is very confident of the accuracy of his data, but lets others draw broader conclusions.
In this poll the distinct ACT-sector opinion became more marked. This was true in both pure political opinion and in opinion about economic and social issues.
ACT-sector people are more likely than Commonwealth-sector people to:
DOT Vote Labor rather than Liberal
DOT Prefer Berry than Carnell for Chief Minister
DOT Oppose privatisation
DOT Want minority government
DOT Feel insecure about their job
DOT Be dissatisfied with ACT Government services
DOT To take more care over spending patterns
DOT To feel worse off than last year
DOT To feel they are getting behind with the cost of living
DOT Say the PM should live in Canberra
DOT Support regulation of the media
DOT Oppose the heroin trial
DOT Support a republic
DOT To both have an opinion about and be in favour of Berry’s takeover from Whitecross.
It is a large list and covered nearly all questions asked in the recent poll.
However, when you compare the Commonwealth sector with the private sector, you get little or no difference of opinion on quite a few issues, though there are enough differences on significant issues to regard them as quite separate forces of opinion.
So we are looking at three Canberras.
Private sector people are more likely than Commonwealth-sector people to:
DOT Have job security
DOT Be more careful with money
DOT Feel better off than last year
DOT Vote Liberal
DOT Deregulate the media
DOT Oppose the heroin trial
DOT Oppose a Republic
However, on voting for major or minor parties, wanting minority government, satisfaction with government services, privatisation, the PM’s residence and Berry’s leadership over Whitecross or Carnell the differences between the private sector and the Commonwealth sector were not statistically significant.
Mearns says his analysis shows that the main reason for the difference in attitudes between the ACT sectors and the other two sectors is that the ACT sector is a Labor stronghold. People who describe themselves as Labor voters and people in the ACT sector have a strong concurrence of view.
Fifty-six per cent of the ACT sector describe themselves as Labor voters, compared to 39 per cent in the Commonwealth sector and 32 per cent in the private sector. So party allegiance may be a greater determinant of attitude than income source.
Even so, some questions point to a distinct set of attitudes coming from ACT-sector households.
In particular, the question about what sort of government would you like reveals that Labor voters (whatever their income source) are much more likely to be opposed to minority government than are ACT-sector people.
Indeed, 30 per cent of ACT public sector people want minority government. It seems they want a check and balance against majority power. Being close to that source of power they appear wary of it.
Only 11 per cent of Labor voters want minority government.
The separate ACT attitude appears to coalesce around employment and economic security and attitude to ACT government and governance. They are more insecure and more sceptical of the quality of service provided by the ACT Government and more suspicious of too much power being in the hands of one party in the Assembly.
One former very senior ACT public servant said the discrepancy in attitudes revealed by the poll highlighted a serious crisis of confidence among ACT public servants.
He said the pace of recent reforms had left many employees feeling insecure about their jobs and pessimistic about the future.
The service could learn much from the private sector, which was much better at dealing with personnel issues.
“”The private sector know that good management is the management of people – they know you can’t ignore people,” he said.
The new breed of “”can-do” public service managers had caused a backlash among ACT bureaucrats because they had not taken the interests and needs of their employees into account. They were not sensitive to people and had little feeling for the consequences of their “”single-minded” reforming zeal.
Commonwealth public servants living in Canberra were not “”casualties” of the ACT reform process and would therefore have a different perspective. They would be more likely to view the Carnell administration as simply trying to “”achieve results.”
Frank Cassidy, editor of Public Eye, said part of the reason for the difference in attitudes was the fact that Commonwealth public servants living in Canberra and ACT public servants tended to have different kinds of qualifications and be performing different kinds of tasks. For example, there would be higher proportion of ACT public servants dealing directly with the public than would be involved in policy making.
“”Local public services attract different sorts of people . . . They are people-type-people [and] you don’t have so many boffins siting around in government think tanks,” he said.
Different backgrounds and education might explain the divergence in opinion on social issues such as the heroin trial but that still leaves the question of why ACT public servants seem so much more dissatisfied both with their own fortunes and the performance the current ACT government.
Cassidy agreed that recent reforms in the service had probably effected morale. The ACT Public Service had once had the reputation of being one of the most complacent bureaucracies in the country but it was now considered one of the most dynamic.
For example it had recently introduced accrual accounting — a more sophisticated form of book-keeping used extensively in the private sector but still staunchly resisted by many public services, including the Commonwealth.
“”The ACT government is far more get up and go. People like [Chief Minister’s Department head] John Walker are taking genuine risks,” Cassidy said.
However that increased dynamism has its costs. In the relatively brief period since self government, the ACT has undergone significant structural changes and that is bound to leave some of its employees feeling a little shell-shocked.
Jenny Stuart, senior lecturer in public administration at the University of Canberra, expressed surprise at the greater feelings of job insecurity among ACT public servants given there had not been the same level of “”overt bloodletting” in the ACT service as in the Commonwealth.
She said Kate Carnell’s government had been careful to minimise downsizing, limiting job losses to about 5 per cent of its public service as opposed to the loss of about 15 per of Commonwealth Canberra-based positions.
“”It may be an indication that the management is sending signals that are being interpreted as putting jobs in danger,” she said.
Dr Stuart said senior management in the ACT service may disappointed to learn that the standard of ACT government services is considered low by those who actually deliver them.
“”There would appear to be a gap between rhetoric and reality suggesting that the messages from senior management are not percolating down the line — or perhaps they are and people are a little sceptical about the managerial jargon,” she said.
The view of the Commonwealth sector is different. Garth Trengove, who has been a Commonwealth public servant for 13 years, expresses a fairly typical view.
He described his level of satisfaction with ACT government services as “”quite good” and, despite being a swinging voter, he was relatively supportive of the current Liberal ACT Government.
He did not have a strong opinion about Wayne Berry’s takeover from Andrew Whitecross and described Wayne Berry as “”uninspiring”. Whereas Dr Stuart said ACT-sector people would see Berry as a fighter for the ACT.
Trengove wanted to see an Australian republic but, unlike many ACT public servants, he was also strongly in favour of the heroin trial and was “”extremely disappointed” it did not go ahead.
He did not feel worse off than last year and described himself as “”happy” with his current circumstances.
Perhaps most significantly, Mr Trengove was also optimistic about his future and saw his employment prospects as relatively secure.
“”I feel reasonably secure in my job . . . there are no great threats to me on the immediate horizon.
“”Whilst I realise there are [public sector] cutbacks . . . I feel that even if I was packaged out I would have the resources to find something else.”
Trengove said he was tentatively in favour of privatisation, saying would “”certainly work in some areas.”
Opinions about privatising ACT government services, while general against, falls into two groups. Opinion is more in favour of privatising ACTION, the Laundry service and EPIC (the showground) than privatising the more fundamental services to society like electricity, water and health.
Males, Liberals and swinging voters are more in favour of privatisation.
On the difference between private sector and the other two sectors, Christopher Peters, chief executive officer of the Canberra Chamber of Commerce, said he was not surprised by the difference.
However, the more acute sense of job insecurity among public servants was the reverse of the traditional situation.
“”There used to be much greater job security in the public sector but it has now lost that,” he said.
Kathy Kostyrko, manager of Hayes Personnel, said downsizing and outsourcing had taken its toll on the public sector, but private sector employees were more positive because they were used to dealing with uncertainty and insecurity.
One conundrum shown by the poll is that a great majority of people would prefer majority government, but every election we throw up independents and minor-party candidates who hold the balance of power.
Seventy-five per cent of people want majority government, but the 25 per cent who want minors holding the balance get their way precisely because 25 per cent of the vote is enough to put enough minors in to secure that balance.