Warring tribes of Canberra have a headache on their hands
In the first week back to work since the election, one major party entered our nation’s capital as victorious winners getting down to business, while the other sparred for plum jobs and name drops, writes Dennis Atkins.
Two tribes went to Canberra this past week, one a victor, one the vanquished.
They both took decisions which told us something about what might lay ahead and what dangers might face the respective teams.
The Coalition looked pretty chuffed, which is understandable, but there were small traces of exuberance. That might pass but if it doesn’t it could become hubris down the track.
Scott Morrison is off on the first of two major overseas trips, going to the Solomon Islands, Britain and Singapore. He’ll saddle up for the G20 later in the month.
It would be wise to pack a DVD of, or digital link to the brilliant British political satire Yes, Minister. The genius of this TV show written by Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn is that suggesting the bureaucracy can bust policy congestion — as Morrison says he wants to happen — is like whistling past the graveyard.
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Episode after episode of Yes, Minister shows public service tsar Sir Humphrey Appleby cheerfully agreeing to do whatever his ministerial “boss” says and then ensuring it doesn’t happen. Maybe the “get a go, if you have a go” guy will buck more than a century of lived experience in Australian public service. We will see.
Morrison has also appointed Queenslander Stuart Robert minister for “government services”.
Robert is one of Morrison’s best political mates and this is a Prime Minister who looks after his mates. He’s a “pick and stick” fellow in the Alan Jones sense (the Sydney radio jock loves that phrase as a shorthand for loyalty).
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There are two problems that hover on the horizon for a government services minister.
First, much of the so-called service delivery in Canberra — under the umbrella of what was known as human services — has been outsourced in one way or another. Big private sector firms now manage a lot of the back office operations in portfolios like health and welfare.
The other concern is political and managerial.
Most of the delivery of public sector services in Australia resides with the tiers of government which sit below national affairs — state and local.
Morrison lifted the idea of a government services minister from the NSW Government of Gladys Berejiklian where Michael Dominello is responsible for “customer service”.
Dominello has only been in the role for a while but right now he’s best known as being in the middle of a scandal revolving around the leak of motorists’ private details to a Liberal dirt unit.
“Customer service” at a state level is a work in progress at best. Much of the work undertaken by state bureaucracies has been farmed out to labour-hire companies. Again, we will see what transpires.
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A cynic might suggest any state government will relish having a federal government “owning” service delivery, prompting a fresh round of blame and responsibility shifting with the poor “customer” left behind. Who “owns’ the ultimate responsibility is the political question hanging in the air.
In the other tribe, we see the factions back in charge — or trying to be in charge.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese is a very factional chap. He earned his stripes in the nursery and schools of the NSW Hard Left.
He has stamped his ownership on his front bench — first making sure his one serious leadership challenger Tanya Plibersek put her baton back in her knapsack after being told she didn’t have the numbers.
From there he engineered the ascension of Victorian Right-wing bloke Richard Marles as deputy and indulged the vaulting ambition of his NSW colleague — and right-wing creature — Kristina Keneally to become Senate deputy leader.
A few bodies were left on the playing field. NSW Right operator Ed Husic bowed out because he didn’t have enough support to stay and more determined veterans like Joel Fitzgibbon wouldn’t budge.
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The last remaining truly non-aligned MP who should have been in Albanese’s team is Andrew Leigh, the economics policy wonk from Canberra.
He was pushed aside by the factional bosses. He is now going to be deputy chairman of the Labor Caucus economics committee — he didn’t even get the top job there.
These two tribes are united by an inability to spot the dangers awaiting them and the fact they don’t bat far down their respective line-ups.
Dennis Atkins is The Courier-Mail’s national affairs editor and co-host of the Two Grumpy Hacks podcast. dennis.atkins@news.com.au
Originally published as Warring tribes of Canberra have a headache on their hands
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