Tag: The Public Service

LNP Corruption

‘Merit’ is the forgotten fundamental APS value – Pearls and Irritations

Core values,corporate values concept.

The LNP strategy has been to edge toward a Unitary Executive as much as it can and couple it with the increased use of their preferred rather than independent consultancies. It became increasingly self-evident over a decade ago when the LNP refused to have their opposition and government budgets audited by Treasury but rather by “consultants” of their own choice. From thereon the rot simply set in and accelerated.

It seems that the APS leadership, advising the Government on amending the PS Act, is yet to recognise just how important ‘merit’ is to a Westminster-based public service. It was at the core of the 1854 Northcote Trevelyan Report that began the development of a professional civil service. It is critical to not only fairness, non-partisanship and constraining corruption, but also to efficiency, effectiveness and overall civil service capability. Yet over the last decade the APS has lost sight of its central importance.

Source: ‘Merit’ is the forgotten fundamental APS value – Pearls and Irritations

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Presidents are Paid Public Servants, Not Aristocrats above the Law: Lessons from Rousseau, Jefferson and Tang China

Repeatedly, professionals in the intelligence agencies, the Office of Management and Budget, and more recently election officials, have fought to hold the line. Just this week, 16 assistant US attorneys wrote a letter reported in The Washington Post, challenging Attorney General William Barr’s attempt to thrust “career prosecutors into partisan politics” so as to buttress the president’s fantasies. Trump seems to grasp that it’s the career administrators he needs to worry about. Maybe that is why his administration is frantically replacing professionals with loyal yes-men and Trump donors. Recent purges include a senior climate scientist, two top Homeland Security officials and a senior cybersecurity official whose agency refuted Trump’s claims of election fraud. If he continues in this vein, he will have compromised the last, and most effective check we have, bringing us that much closer to the 17th century.

Presidents are Paid Public Servants, Not Aristocrats above the Law: Lessons from Rousseau, Jefferson and Tang China