Eating mandarins

HOW has it come to be that the bureaucratic class in this country has been politicised, yet the old-fashioned script that you shouldn't criticise a mandarin is being maintained?

HOW has it come to be that the bureaucratic class in this country has been politicised, yet the old-fashioned script that you shouldn't criticise a mandarin is being maintained?

That at least is the way the public service would like it to be. It is also the way the government likes it, when it suits them of course.

In opposition circles it is well-known that the leadership team and many senior shadow ministers are concerned about the way the government is using the bureaucracy and its so-called "independence" as a shield from criticism about its policy measures.

The problem for Malcolm Turnbull and his team is that combating this defensive position is very difficult.

The media jump on criticisms of senior bureaucrats as below the belt, yet because government policy is tied up with departmental advice, what else is the opposition supposed to do?

If the Coalition targets its criticism at the minister, the government does its best to draw the bureaucracy into the attack to try to distract from the substance of the criticism.

Earlier this year, Treasury Secretary Ken Henry said it was "unhelpful" for bureaucrats to be attacked for the job they were doing.

Unhelpful for Henry perhaps - entirely constructive for robust public debate and entirely appropriate if the job they are doing is not being properly fulfilled.

That's before even considering the idea that the bureaucracy might be being used to deflect attacks on government policy.

Treasurer Wayne Swan described opposition criticism of Henry (which they denied making because politics required them to) as "unacceptable". But when bureaucratic bungling hits the news pages, such as the failure of Aboriginal housing allotments attached to the Northern Territory intervention, the government is quick to blame the department so that the politicians can live to fight another day.

When the Labor Party was in opposition it was quick to target certain bureaucrats as too political during John Howard's prime ministership. That was fair comment.

The difficulty for Liberals, however, is that to get a sympathetic ear in the public service they generally need to bring in supporters from business or political offices to run departments. Labor can cherry-pick candidates from within the existing public service and get the same effect.

After all, federal electorates in Canberra (dominated by public service personnel) are safe Labor-voting constituencies.

It doesn't take much to join the dots.

We are living through heady times and the advice our top public servants are offering the political elite needs to be closely looked at, as long as the test for doing so is applied consistently.

We are led by an inexperienced government with an uncertain Treasurer running the economy right at a time when global economic pressures are stronger than they have been for a generation.

In that environment if a minister is weak it stands to reason that he or she is not just listening to departmental advice, they are depending on it. Henry is therefore at the centre of policy decision-making over how best to combat the global downturn and navigate Australia through any recovery. As such, he must be held to a higher-than-usual test as a public servant who borders on the political in some of his economic commentary.

Just like the rest of us - journalists, academics, business people and politicians - bureaucrats should be open to public criticism when their decisions don't deliver.

This is all the more the case when the bureaucrat in question happily enters the public debate.

Henry may like to criticise the media - like he did earlier this year when he said the budget "exceeded the reading age of many" - but he clearly enjoys the attention judging by the number of public lectures he gives. The posturing of the new government, and the Labor-voting tendencies of bureaucrats, are not the only reasons for casting a critical eye over the public service and the advice it gives to government. The power of the independent Reserve Bank (a form of public service to be sure) means that an unelected arm of government is entirely responsible for setting the nation's monetary policy.

The prudence of this approach is largely uncontested, and I am certainly not in a position to take issue with it. But politicians must be allowed to criticise Reserve Bank board decisions to lift and lower interest rates, as occurred yesterday, without being condemned for attacking the "independent arbiter of our economic future".

After all, the current Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, was putting rates up as quickly ahead of the last federal election (and in the process killing off any chance of Howard's re-election) as he was lowering them after misreading the economic indicators that caused the GFC.

In contrast, former treasurer Peter Costello saw what was coming, and said so, but couldn't take Stevens to task for fear of being labelled an aggressor against an independent bureaucrat.

Stevens is independent, and Henry might be as well. But that doesn't always make them right and it certainly shouldn't put them beyond criticism.