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".

contrarian says "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."
The above is disingenuous and the reactionary view of politicians. The thrust of the argurement is the public servants belong to the politicians and they have uncontrolled might and right, must toe the line and shutup: No longer any system of checks and balances. No longer a service to the public. The politicians and their appologists fraudulently claim the public servants cannot be principled and report in the interest of society the every day opportunist acts with criminal overtones of parliamentary practise.
2. The latest attacks on the public rail service explain so clearly what the governments are about whilst putting the prices up on behalf of the petrol companies they reduce trains, cut maintenance and lengthen running times. After 25 years of cuts to rail services and safety, as if the service was not bad enough. According to the reactionaries proper safety and an excellent railservice is a luxury the public can well do without. The railway service is very deliberately kept crude, backward and crippled.
3. If anyone is trying to cripple the public service along with the social infrastructure it is the government who have destroyed one job in three. A part of the government's plan is to hamstring and whip the public servants into line, teach them their place, and create an atmosphere of everlasting instability. Now the Rudd Budget seeks to destroy another 4100 jobs, many in essential services.
None of the respondants mention how 'big money', the media moguls and the petrol oil cartels dictate government policy. Why should the public servants be hostage to the whims and dealings of 'big money'? Nor is the politics of the rightwing mentioned "you voted for us and now we are going to make you pay"

I am horrified by the concept that to some the PS belongs to the government of the day. Under our democratic system the PS takes direction from the government of the day within the PS Acts but answers to the parliament and that belongs to the people. Ergo it serves the people by facilitating the directions of the current government as an expression of the public will. This may be a pedantic point but it is none the less an important one. It is part of the Checks and Balances of democratic government.
The PS is charted to be unbiased, fearless (?) and independent in its advice to the Government. The PS DOESN'T Dictate/filter or alter policy that is the province of the parliament and then the Government of the day.
If this weren’t the case one wonders why dept heads have to report to various Parliamentary oversight committees.
Legal action against leakers would be on behalf of the Liberal or Labor parties as the injured party not the Commonwealth (unless charged under the crimes act eg theft). In the case of leaking of government material the C.o A is the plaintiff not the government of the day.
I’m sure political party devotees might wish it otherwise.
I am not advocating Leaking as it is a breach of the will of the people. On the other hand I acknowleged that people have the right (under our democracy) to challenge authority if they wish but for every right there is a consequence/responsibility. I suggested that “whistle blowing" should be the last option and then only if the person is resolved to accept full responsibility and consequences.
I also alluded to a need to strengthen the laws against taming the PS. The clear flip side of this is tightened against malicious undermining of the government while allowing for the exception for REAL whistle blowing. The latter could/should be handled by the appropriate level of the judiciary again another linking check and balance. However I am open to references that show my understanding inaccurate or flawed.

Remember all, when referring to the series "Yes Minister", that it was fallaciously referred to as a comedy. It is, in fact, a documentary.

I just wish they had leaked useful documents instead of that drivel.

It should be acknowledged that whistleblowing does not only involve spilling the secrets of the government of the day which in my view would be only considered where there is great public interest. Fuelwatch was not in the public interest as most of the public think that focussing on petrol prices and fuelwatch is just a distaction from the real issues. Who cares if Ferguson was against fuelwatch? Most reasonable adults would be aware that Cabinet won't all agree on every issue all the time. This type of leaking would indeed appear to be political or sour grapes on someone's part.

However, whistleblowing more often involves the management of some PS agencies. Sometimes the politicians can be quite oblivious to the workings and goings on in their own departments. Their failure sometimes comes when becoming aware of a situation, in sweeping it under the carpet lest they might be tainted with it.

Whistleblowing on other public servants for mismanagement, issues of confidentiality/privacy, fraud, misrepresenations to Senate Estimates - just to name a few - is equally fraught with danger.

There are oversight agencies to deal with complaints 'from within' and even protection via whistleblower legislation but that only applies when complaints or revelations are kept in-house, usually recommended to be channelled via the relevant Secretary of a department. These oversight agencies are sometimes restricted by problems of jurisdictional relevance and on occasions there is a tendency to be suspicious of the whistleblower first until a full investigation is made.

To be fair, whistleblowers are not always saints, and can often have their own agendas but it is a shame that the 'revealer' is often viewed as the guilty party in the first instance.

The challenge for these oversight agencies is to see through the veneers to get to the truth while not being tempted to whitewash the findings in lieu of other perceived interests or when seeking to protect the reputation of the APS. The APS reputation is better served when corruption is acknowledged and removed - to think otherwise is a danger to democracy.

Pelican,

When it comes to whistleblowing, everything you say can be boiled down to one issue: the relative size of the complainant compared with what he's complaining against. As long as you are one individual (or even one lobby group), you will (almost) never make a difference when taking on the bureaucracy. As you say, they have procedures so long as the problem is kept in-house. Unfortunately, the procedures also ensure that the problem never leaves the house and sees the light of day (I think we could call this the Fritzl syndrome).

On the other hand, if you go public - I wouldn't recommend this to any APS worker as it is so dangerous to one's career - the management will call in the AFP to do an investigation. So, whistleblowing is really in name only. In the end, the only way things get fixed is when someone with more power than those being complained about does something about the situation. Not ideal I know, but pretty much the way things have worked up till now.

You are right though that the APS will be better served when its problems are "acknowledged and removed"; it is better that APS agencies voluntarily front up to their errors and shortcomings. This is better than a forced reform because of a scandal (eg Immigration) or possibly even abolition because of irrelevance (eg the former Department of Administrative Services). Eventually, one of these 3 things will happen to an ill-functioning APS agency or department.

I had the impression at the time that the government was making extroardinary demands on the work/life balance of some public servants and that was seen as a possible cause for the "leak".

A government that came to power in part due to a strong campaign by the unions on the workers rights/work life balance issue that in it's own dealings with workers appears to have little or no regard for workers is likely to spark some resentment. Rudd's comments on the issue appeared to confirm the impression that workers work/life balance was of little concern to him.

The governments handling of the fuel watch debate in the lead up to the leak was hardly open in it's representation of the advice recieved. Nothing new there for government but maybe it's about time cabinet papers were only secret where the national interest was at stake rather than political interest. As I suggested on an earlier thread perhaps protection from FOI should only apply where the both the leader of the government and leader of the opposition (or their nominated representatives) agree that the issue needs to be confidential.

R0bert

RobP
I agree with all you have written. One public servant or even a small group is powerless against the bureaucracy. A David and Goliath type scenario is possible but unlikely.

For a potential whistleblower there is also the issue of trust and perhaps an even bigger issue is access. Who can you tell without breaching your own legal obligations whether it be a security clearance, various PS Acts or the Crimes Act? Will you be able to access someone that could offer assistance without meeting the usual fob offs, referrals and bureaucratic brick walls?

Even if you are able to access a likely advocate, will they believe you, what will you need to convince them and will they be willing to instigate an investigation or to 'represent' you in confidence? Will your job be at risk? What are the potential repercussions?

You are right in suggesting the media is out of the question. It would be emotionally too difficult and there is the risk of going to jail. Ideally it would be better for agencies to have an opportunity to deal with problems in the first instance. I can understand the strong temptation to go outside the inner sanctum, because in truth this is probably the most effective way to invite scrutiny into a potentially corrupt or mismanaged agency. But it is also the scariest and most whistleblowers suffer from emotional problems due to their actions - there are usually no heroes only another victim of the system that precipitated the problem.

The trouble is in the APS most senior public servants don't want to hear about problems especially the serious ones as they might have to do something about it, much easier to diminish the complainant or the complaint by various means