Page 2594 - Week 09 - Thursday, 8 August 1991
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
nearly 100 years now. I believe that that is inappropriate for us. We should have a different approach, and we can do that only when we create our own public service independently of the Australian Public Service.
On the question of productivity, I am sure a point of debate for a long time yet will be how you determine whether a public servant is being productive. If you look at our budget papers, there has been an attempt over several years now to define objectives of the organisational elements of our public service, and to state what those objectives are. As far as I am concerned, even now, after some years of it, we still have not quantified, we still have not stated, those organisational objectives in measurable terms, so that at the end of a year we can look back at some performance criteria and say, "Did we achieve those objectives or did we not?".
If we are not yet capable of doing it at the organisational level, how can we do it at the individual level? I submit that we have to start from the top and work down. It is a matter of some concern that we do define our organisational objectives and define our budgets, everything that we do, in measurable terms so that the people out there who are putting the money up can see what they are getting for their money. It is not an academic exercise; it is a practical one that we, as a government, have to see into effect; but I agree that it will probably take some years to achieve. So, we have a long way to go yet.
Of course, it is a good thing that the Government has specified a wages policy. We have somewhere between 18,000 and 21,000 public servants, Mr Collaery says, and I agree with him that we could never find out how many there are. It varied from day to day, week to week, month to month. All I know is that the number seemed to continually go up. I hope that the Labor Government has better luck than we did in getting it to go down. But it is a slippery thing, and we do not know what they all do, yet. I am sure we will find out in time.
There is a certain amount of bureaucratic resistance to telling the Government what they are doing, and that is healthy. I mean, there is an element of competition there between the Government and the public service and that is a bit of creative tension, I think. But it is up to government to impose its will on the bureaucracy. That takes time and it takes stable government.
That is one of the reasons why the instability in government over the last two years has been, in my view, to the detriment of good government. You hardly get to know your senior public servants and begin to establish a working relationship with them and, zap, you are down onto the first floor. I can speak from experience. So, we have a long way to go yet; but I think that this statement is one in a mosaic of things that government has to do. We have a long way to go yet; but at least it is a step, as
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .