I wonder if this issue isn’t a bit over thought. It seems that a number of issues Have been glossed over. Public service dissatisfaction is one issue but breaking their role and the law is another.
While I disagree with any government’s over use of secrecy to simply avoid scruitany I do understand the effect of internecine point scoring has become parliamentary currency and the sensationalistic Media. The effect of this can be to distract the Government and undermine public confidence in it, public service leaking facilitates this.
The duty of the Public Service is to advise the Government and to implement its polices. The Government is entitled to both seek and follow what ever advice they choose the PS doesn’t have a monopoly. Governments have this lee way because they ultimately face elections about their decisions.
The only reasonable variation to this is “whistle blowing” when it is in the public’s interest but is the last resort and has personal risks the individual must be prepared to accept. Leaking should never be allowed as part of an industrial action. The “leaker” has simply broken the law and thereby should be sacked if not prosecuted.
This should send be clear enough message. If it doesn’t it strikes me as somewhat absurd if not unreasonable to replace staff solely to make some ideological (political) point as suggested. To me this sort of tokenism would be counter productive sending the message that the PS is a political service not independent as intended. I would suggest that the fault lies with previous government policies to create a PS in its own mould. The problem is therefore not with the PS per see but with the laws/regs that allows governments to politicise/appropriate the PS as part of its party political apparatus.
Like wise a PS with its own “Sir Humphrey” style agenda is abhorrent and unacceptable

The public servants have responsibilities, firstly and foremost to the public! They are not beholding to the politicians, nor should they be, after all it is the politicians who spit on the public, abusing their trusted positions day in and day out and have done so since the 1880's. Many of the daily abuses are criminal in content.
It is the politicians who have dragged this country into a criminal war to dominate the oil rich Middle East using lies. Before the first World War the politicians using the big lie told workers "the war would be a war to end all wars".

Any objective, scientific assesment would easily see the politicians are carrying out a war on the social infrastructure including the public hospitals. And hidden in the Budget handed down last May 179 more jobs are to go from health. How many deaths have been caused by denying proper medical attention - operations or specialist access in 66 public hospitals over the last 25 years?
In their war against the public hospital system they have closed down or gutted Emergency wards. The Budget also eliminates staff in key welfare, Medicare, housing, and indigenous services with another 4100 jobs to go. Pensioners too have been left in poverty by the budget.
The public service is precisely a service to the public. Whilst the politicians are handing essential services and national treasures over to their well heeled cronies for profiteering.

I agree with the much of what the author writes and with examinator's comments.

There have been a number of examples where leaking was seen to be in the public interest (Wilkie and Kessing).

However, vexatious and malicious leaking because you don't agree with the government of the day is quite another matter. It is not the job of public servants to dictate policy to the incumbent government, only to advise and implement as instructed. The voters do not vote public servants to represent them.

The problem is that it is a fine tightrope for public servants with very real concerns but are too scared to speak out for fear of reprisals. Some portfolios, like Home Affairs,National Security (including the Attorney-Generals Department) and Health are worse than others and where there is a culture of keeping dirty laundry in-house.

Recent media exposure on the repercussions of whistleblowing in the health sector where there was very much a public interest demonstrates how difficult this can be.

See: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/27/2016842.htm
http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/shooting-the-messenger/2008/04/18/1208025467864.html

Some of these comments betray an appalling ignorance of both the theory and practice of public service. If these views were allowed to influence the way we ran the public service, we would very soon not have a public service in the best sense of the concept.

The public service does not belong to the public. It is accountable only to the government of the day. The government represents the public. Thats' how it works in the kind of democracy we enjoy in Australia.

And the imnplication in the original article that somehow public servants are entitled to leak or actively undermine the government because they judge that the government's policy agenda or performance is somehow not what they approve of is astonishing.

The idea seems to be that the Howard Government's perceived lack of policy interest or particularly controlling way of doing policy - both of which may well be true - was justification enough for public servants to start behaving badly. So, if you are a public servant and you are bored because you think the government is hopeless at policy and not doing what you consider the be the right thing, you are, by this argument, entitled to campaign, in effect, against its interests and in favour of your own conception of what is good and proper in terms of public policy.

There are some really importat issues surfacing at the moment in various jurisdictions about the role and performance of the public service. Those issues deserve some real, sustained and intelligent treatment. What they often get, instead, is the sort of stuff being peddled in this article and some of the commentary. Dangerous and distracting drivel. We can only hope it's not indicative of a more widepsread ignorance. If it is, we're are in trouble

"There are some really importat issues surfacing at the moment in various jurisdictions about the role and performance of the public service. Those issues deserve some real, sustained and intelligent treatment."

I broadly agree, Contrarian. It's good to see the Government making a public statement about the dysfunctionality at the Quarantine and Inspection Service, for example. This is but one of many examples in the APS.

The biggest problem in my view is the inertia that starts to build up in APS agencies. Through a combination of staff laziness or indifference, "learned helplessness", political interference, excessive micro-managing of staff, uninformed decision making etc, many good people in the service have slowly been marginalised and mired down. At some point the APS needs to revise its operating strategies to meet the overall needs of the country and then implement them.

“Why public servants leak”

Simple, with that classic sense of self entitlement, they confused their customary "incompetence" with "incontinence".