Churchill and Parkinson have an answer for the Senate inquiry into ministerial staffers.
The inquiry is looking at these “mavericks and cowboys”, to use the words of former Keating adviser Don Russell.
The inquiry stemmed from the earlier parliamentary inquiry into the children overboard incident. During that inquiry two ministerial staffers refused to give evidence and successfully evaded any compulsion to do so. Similar concerns have been raised during other allegations of ministerial errors — the Reith mobile phone incident and the dogs on the wharves incident.
Ordinarily there would be nothing wrong with an immunity for ministerial staffers being required to answer questions – provided the minister and the department are prepared to answer, and neither attempts to hide behind actions of a staffer.
At present, ministers want it both ways. They want to say to the committee, “It wasn’t me, it was my staffer acting beyond authority” and then refuse to surrender up the staffer for questioning.
Ministers have to either accept full responsibility for all staffers’ actions before parliamentary committees or accept that the staffers are open to questioning. If not, there is an accountability gap.
And the accountability gap is growing. There are now 372 ministerial staffers. It is an astonishing number of people – especially given that ministers have departments. How did happen?
The answer lies in a quote from Churchill and an adaptation of Parkinson’s Law.
Churchill said, “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.”
This is true of Parliament House. The committee is meeting in one of 19 committee rooms. Those are 19 rooms among 4500 rooms. The building has an undercover carpark for more than 2000 cars. Another 1000 or so can park outside the building.
Old Parliament House had a total area of 7700 square metres when built. Even if you add 40 per cent for additions, new Parliament House has nearly 20 times the area.
Parliament House has a gross floor area of 193,379 square metres. Even if you exclude the corridors, stairs, service areas, toilets and the like, you still have 90,347 square metres of lettable space to use the jargon. If you include the verandah and car park it comes to 287,780 square metres.
In 1988 when the 2000 or so occupants of the old building went to the new building they had about 144 square metres of space each – a small suburban house each (with verandah and carpark).
Enter Parkinson’s Law.
Parkinson wrote, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”
Similarly, the number of government workers in a building will expand to fill the space available to them.
In the past 15 years, the cavernous Parliament House has filled. A backbencher’s office is the same size as a minister’s office in the old House. A minister’s office is bigger than the Prime Minister’s office in the old House. A minister now has as many staff as the PM had in the old House.
Incidentally, Parkinson’s Law is a book written by a real person, a British professor – Professor Cyril Northcote Parkinson. Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, London, John Murray (1958). It is one of the funniest and most incisive books you’ll ever read. Some swine has borrowed my copy and not returned it — so the following explanation of the law is a bit rough.
Take a public servant or ministerial staffer. After a while he or she (maybe Don Russell should have included cowgirls) will complain about overwork. He will not quit because the job is too much. Nor can the solution be the appointment of one more staffer to share the work. That would result in a rival. No; two new people must be appointed. And in turn they will get overworked and the original overworked staffer will recommend that they each get two assistants. This will ensure the promotion of the original staffer who is now the supervisor of six staff members who create work for each other because they have to be co-ordinated and have to check each other’s work and pass it up for approval.
This is exactly what has happened at Parliament House. Notice how each ministerial office has a “Chief of Staff”.
The Prime Minister’s office has 40 staffers. And this is a Prime Minister who promised leaner Government.
On accountability, Churchill got it right. The building is big enough to hide malfeasance, disloyalty and skullduggery. In the old House no-one could move from one office to another without questions being asked. The media, the Government, the Opposition and their respective backbenches worked cheek by jowl.
The media which is supposed to watch the politicians has not been well-treated. They can be kept at a distance. They do not even share in the space bonanza. Media outlets are charged a licence fee. Note, it is not described as rent because rent gives the payer occupancy rights. The fee means that proprietors are not keen to seek more space. Besides, Parkinson’s Law does not apply to the private sector.
The building is so large it can absorb a huge number of staffers, so the growth in numbers has gone unnoticed. In the old House there was simply not enough room to accommodate any more staffers.
The staffer has one boss: the Minister. A public servant has two bosses: the Minister and the public. What little accounting the staffer has is personal loyalty – it is a partial reversion to pre-democratic forms of government. This new building has helped allow the accommodation of a virtually unaccountable arm of government – an unfortunate consequence for a building that is supposed to symbolise democracy.