Analysis: A culture of protecting politicians at all costs

The integrity review’s interim report warns that organisations are at risk when “compliant” or “fear-based behaviour” becomes entrenched, writes Jessica Marszalek.

Perhaps the Queensland Government’s problems are the very reason it didn’t think it had any.

That is certainly one of the potential likelihoods raised in professor Peter Coaldrake’s much-needed review of the culture and integrity of the government.

The review’s interim report warns that organisations are at risk when “compliant” or “fear-based behaviour” becomes entrenched.

“In the case of a government, it reduces the range of views available in decision-making, excludes the opportunity to truly engage the community being served, and can leave that government with a false sense of the quality of its own performance,” the report says.

For years, Queensland’s political reporters have been frustrated by a feeling their jobs are being curtailed by a bureaucracy and ministerial staffers who didn’t seem to know their roles anymore.

Media requests are routinely met with suspicious questions about why we’re asking, responses are vague, Right to Information requests are futile.

Some ministerial staffers leak exclusive stories to other journalists to try to temper the run a damaging story gets.

Some public servants respond with curt emails and won’t give out a phone number to contact them on.

Others quietly confide to you on the phone that they can’t answer you on the record, but your information is right.

Seasoned reporters complain about a culture that doesn’t understand its accountability to the people, and of ministerial staffers ignorant of the functions of democracy, devoid of life experience and slaves to an ideology rather than servants of the people.

The questions journalists ask may be embarrassing, but accountability is how you keep good governments from going bad.

And sometimes when you screw up, you just have to wear it, and learn, and do better.