Via Gottiboff today:
There are no simple answers as to how our corporate and government decision-making ran off the rails.
…I reckon the rot actually started in Canberra around 1999, when the Howard government changed the public service policy.
Until that time public servants, like executives, were required to give “frank, fearless and honest” advice to ministers, as executives were to boards.
That was changed to demanding that public servants conform and comply with the will of ministers.
And to ram home the change, two wonderful public servants, defence chiefs Paul Barratt and Gary Jones, were sacked for giving advice in the old fashioned way.
…At the same time, a red alert went around the public service. So over time it became deskilled, because good people saw there was limited scope in the public service, and so went elsewhere. Huge ministerial staffs were assembled – usually “yes” men and women – who became cocoons around ministers. A culture of misleading the community with spin soon developed.
That’s a nice little summary.
