Anyone with a complaint about the federal (and state) public services should go back 20 years or so and look at the changes that were made then by Labor governments to the way that heads of department and other top-level bureaucrats were appointed. In WA, they were short-term political appointments which seriously damaged the independence and objectivity of the public service. Anyone complaining now of how Howard used the system is just a tad hypocritical if there were happy with the same system under Hawke and Keating and, in WA, under Burke and the succession of ALP premiers who followed him.