Public servants must not sleep with the enemy

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Recently we saw Treasury Secretary John Fraser stroll casually out of the role and straight into a board position at the beleaguered AMP, a firm that is currently being sued for, among things, charging fees for no service as well as to dead people.

That is his decision. But it does not reflect well upon the Treasury. Effectively Fraser will carry the Treasury’s brand value with him onto the AMP board which is obviously inappropriate at such a juncture.

This is a more extreme example of the phenomenon known widely across the Western world as the “revolving door” of policy-makers and business elite. It is, in part, what gives rise to descriptions such as that used by Donald Trump (another example!) in his election campaign that Washington is a “swamp” deserved of “draining”.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.