Perspective | Morrison is perfecting the seal on his own personal Canberra bubble | 1rossgittins
It’s said to be the most dramatic overhaul of the federal public service since 1987, cutting the number of departments from 18 to 14 while creating four new mega-departments and removing five departmental secretaries, three of them women.
This is hardly the first time departmental arrangements have been changed. They’re changed after every election and often several times more. Changes are so common bureaucrats have a name for them: MoG – changes in the “machinery of government”. So why are the latest changes said to be the biggest since 1987? Because that’s when the Hawke government introduced the idea of merging departments into mega-departments. Paul Keating reversed some of those changes and John Howard undid much of the rest. Get it? It’s time to mega up again.Alex Ellinghausen
So many MoG changes involve moving functions from one department to another that McMullan has christened them “merry-go-round decisions”. “Responsibility for childcare, aged care and Indigenous affairs have all been the subject of multiple shifts in the past decade. In some cases, the functions have moved out of one department only to return to their original home a few years later,” he says.
What particular preferences and prejudices of Morrison do the latest changes reveal? I think it reveals this government’s disdain for public servants. It’s the revenge of the ministerial staffers . Who needs public servants giving ministers advice when it’s the staffers who understand the politics of the matter?
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