related resourcesHome page
> About
the Commission > Public
Service Commissioner > Media archive > Speech
‹ Previous page
'Trends in the Australian Public Service: 1953-2003'
Address Institute of Public Administration of Australia (ACT Branch): Fiftieth Anniversary
Conference
Wednesday 24 September 2003
A. S. Podger
Public Service Commissioner
(with thanks to Helen Williams, the previous Commissioner, and Jill Adams whose historical research I have drawn on extensively, and to Bob Minns for his valuable recollections of the CPS in the 1950s, and Derek Drinkwater for helping me pull the material together)
Introduction
In the time available to me this afternoon I intend to illustrate some of the major changes to Commonwealth (from 1973, the Australian) Public Service over the life of the IPAA's Canberra branch. So much has happened over this half-century that a proper survey would be akin to summarising the Bible on a postage stamp.
But as a former colleague once advised me, the plural of 'anecdote' is 'data'. Similarly, simple illustrations and examples can effectively demonstrate the enormous changes since 1953.
I am also going to make some tentative forecasts about the future of the APS. First, let me give you some idea of what Canberra and the public service were like in the mid 1950s.
Canberra in 1953 was a sleepy country city of approximately 27 000 people. One foreign government was in the habit of referring to it unofficially (and disparagingly) as 'the village'.
Despite some post-war expansion, it remained confined to its original 1927 boundaries (Presentation Illus. 1) Residents went from north to south via the rickety wooden bridge over the Molongo River (Presentation Illus. 2). Impressive sealed roads often petered out into dirt tracks. Sheep and cattle grazed freely, and had to be chased off sports grounds prior to events.
Politicians spent as little time in the bush capital as possible, though Federal Cabinet met mostly in Canberra during both sitting and non-sitting periods. To the majority of Commonwealth public servants the thought of a permanent transfer to Canberra usually evoked thoughts of 'Siberia'.
In 1953, King George's statue was directly in front of the Parliament House (Presentation Illus. 3); he was not pushed to the side until the 1960's. IPAA was not to shake off its Royal heading until the turbulent 1970's.
Reporting on events in Australia's seat of government was the 42-member, all-male Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. The figure today is almost 300, of whom one third are women, with 11 female bureau chiefs (Presentation Illus. 4)
An important function of the IPAA has been to link 'town and gown'. In 1953, the ANU had been teaching students for just 2 years, and it was yet to be amalgamated with the Canberra University College. University House was opened in 1954. (Presentation Illus. 5)
11 portfolio departments were based in Canberra (Presentation Illus. 6) and the remaining 13 in Melbourne (Presentation Illus. 7)
Departments were housed mainly in pre-World War II buildings within the Parliamentary Triangle.
Laborious, manual record-keeping using increasingly dog-eared files was the order of the day, though some mechanisation of office procedures had begun. (Presentation Illus. 8 and 9)
Women's access to, and promotion within, the Service was still primarily through typing and machinist pools (Presentation Illus. 10)
Conservative dress standards dictated by long-serving senior public servants were usually observed, though some ex-servicemen were distinctive in their cardigans and carpet slippers.
Sectarian and other forms of favouritism were rife, with some departments being perceived as strongholds of Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry.
Structure of the Service
In some things, history keeps repeating itself. In 1953 the Service was still absorbing the 1951 Razor Gang's so-called 'Retrenchment Action'. This led to a reduction in CPS employee numbers from 163 387 in May 1951 to 147 851 in June 1953.
But the Service was very different to today's.
Fifty years ago, 7365 (5%) public servants were based in Canberra. Today, 37 817 (33.7%) work in Canberra. Willingly, but more often unwillingly, some 5000 State-based public servants made the move to Canberra between 1958 and 1972. As recently as the 1980s, officers chose to be surplus to requirements rather than to move from Melbourne.
The Service was still dominated by the PMG, though less so than in the pre World War II period (Illus. 11). The PMG had 72 289 employees, about half the Service. Works was the second largest agency with 13 823 staff.
A high proportion of the staff were temporary or exempt public servants. (Presentation Illus. 12)
Temporary and exempt staff have always existed as a feature of the Service (exempt staff being those exempt from the full provisions of the Public Service Act).
But they had become a major feature of the Service since before the War, and were still nearly 50% of the Service in 1953.
Most exempt staff were employed in non-official post offices. Others included cleaners, charwomen, watchmen and line repairers and included Indigenous Australians.
The 24 portfolio departments and the six Public Service agencies attached to them* employed, across their four divisions (Presentation Illus. 13):
64 698 permanent full-time male officers and 14 337 permanent full-time female officers.
51 998 male and 16 818 female temporary and exempt employees.
A total of 2993 part-time staff (2% of all employees) were also on the Public Service payroll.
While we lack details of the classification of all the temporary and exempt employees, it seems that at least two thirds of the Service were in the Fourth Division - most of these, along with the base grade clerks in the Third Division, were in jobs now classified no higher than our APS 1's. Today, APS 1's represent around 1½% of the Service.
The First Division comprised 29 men but no women. The second contained 289 men but, again, no women. 3.8% of the Third Division and 26% of the Fourth Division were women. Today, just over half the Service are women, with nearly 30% of the SES and nearly 40% of Executive level staff being women. But there are still only two female Departmental Secretaries from a cohort of 17.
By the 1950s, the cumulative impact on merit employment of four decades of institutionalised preference for ex-servicemen was distorting the age structure of the CPS and resulting in a shortage of suitably qualified officers for promotion. Following the recommendations of the Boyer Committee of Inquiry into Public Service Recruitment in 1958, these difficulties were steadily and successfully addressed throughout the 1960s.
Service leadership
At the epicentre of the Service were the permanent heads. This was the age of the Seven Dwarfs. All were men. All were short or shortish in stature. All came from relatively humble backgrounds. They were a distinguished and legendary group of public service mandarins (Presentation Illus. 14) Five headed a department at this time-Henry 'Hatchet' Bland, Allen 'His Brown Eminence' Brown, John Crawford, Sir Frederick Shedden, and Roland Wilson. Dr H.C. 'Nugget' Coombs had been a permanent head and was now Governor of the Reserve Bank. Richard Randall's time was yet to come. All (except Coombs) would accept knighthoods - indeed, 22 of the 24 portfolio heads in 1953 had already been, or would be, appointed CBE. Their camaraderie was yet to be strengthened by membership of the Commonwealth Club, founded in 1954.
Wilson, Coombs and Crawford were almost certainly the most intellectually gifted and highly regarded of this coterie, not only in Australia, but overseas. Coombs and Crawford were the sons of railway station-masters and Wilson's father was a builder. Crawford was one of 12 children, Coombs one of six and Wilson one of five. Each achieved significant positions in government in their thirties, as did Brown, who, as Head of Prime Minister's, was behind the creation of a Cabinet Secretariat and initiated the practice of the department head attending cabinet meetings to record proceedings.
Wilson was the doyen of the Service, and was very clear about his role as policy adviser, not policy maker
I hope I shall never be guilty of ignoring the voice of the people. In fact, I feel … that some of our Public Service administrators have been altogether too much infatuated with their own crack-pot views and the sooner I subject my own thinking to the supervision of my political masters the better we shall get on (as reported by Cornish 2003: 30). (Presentation Illus. 15)
He and Coombs differed however on the issue of alternative sources of advice, and the exclusive role of the Service, particularly Treasury.
For Wilson [as Head of Treasury] there existed no grounds for creating new sources of policy advice, since the Treasury itself evaluated different possibilities. Furthermore, the Treasury was not the only public agency advising the Commonwealth Government. 'The problem', rather, was 'not how to get advice but how to evaluate it. To set up competitive evaluations still leaves the task of evaluating the evaluators'. (Cornish 2003: 36) (Presentation Illus. 16)
Coombs' view flowed on to the Vernon Report in the 1960's, which was successfully challenged by Treasury, and again to debates in the 1970's that led in part to the splitting of Treasury in the Fraser years. Today we all accept that we live in an era of competing advice. In a sense, Ministers' offices have now taken over much of the role of evaluating the evaluators, yet Wilson's view still strikes a chord. There remains a critical, professional task to help Ministers assess the different advice they receive, very little of which is disinterested.
Coombs, of course, remained a player as an adviser to governments for more than 20 years after 1953, and was frequently the gadfly. (Presentation Illus. 17) The Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration (1974-76), he chaired marked a watershed in administrative thinking and reform. It recommended far-reaching changes to the structures and direction of public administration which stressed:
- increased responsiveness to the elected government;
- improved efficiency and effectiveness, with devolution and stronger emphasis on results; and
- greater community participation in government.
The Report was never taken up explicitly by the Government (Presentation Illus. 18), but it did influence greatly the reforms of the 1980's and beyond.
Brown and Randall were the last of the Seven Dwarfs to retire (in 1971). (Coombs and Crawford, of course, had become major players at the ANU.
Our more recent leaders may not yet have the aura of the Seven Dwarves, yet each decade has seen leaders of great capacity. In the 1970s, for instance, there were Sir John Bunting (Prime Minister's Department, and recently recognised by Mr Howard in naming the new ANZSOG Chair at the ANU); Sir Frederick Wheeler (the Public Service Board, and Treasury) (Presentation Illus. 19); Sir Arthur Tange (Defence); and Sir William Cole (Finance, Defence and the Public Service Board).
Some of the main characters - and contributors - of the 1980's were captured in the famous Pryor cartoon that followed the abolition of the Public Service Board in the 1980's (Presentation Illus. 20).
Apart from Tony Ayers, Mike Codd, Derek Volker and Bernie Fraser included here, were leaders such as Alan Woods, Sir Geoffrey Yeend, Graham Evans, Graham Glenn, Rae Taylor and, of course, Tony Blunn.
Peter Wilenski, Chairman of the Board and absent overseas when its abolition was announced, was clearly one of the characters in the Service at that time, and indeed since his first Secretary appointment under Whitlam (Presentation Illus. 21).
We must also not forget the influence of the economists in the 1980's: apart from Bernie Fraser, Mike Keating, and Eddie Visbord in the Pryor cartoon, there was Ian Castles, Vince FitzGerald and David Charles. Like Wilson, Crawford and Coombs in the 1950's, these economists had an enormous impact on the nation.
The 1990's, are far too close for any serious assessment, but surely we will in future recognise the leadership of Tony Ayers and Mike Keating, and the too brief but superb contribution of Chris Higgins, and Helen Williams as our first female Secretary. Max Moore-Wilton, no doubt, will remain larger than life.
Maybe I'm not in the best position to make such judgements, but despite the undoubtedly deserved standing of the Seven Dwarves, the Service - and the Australian public - has continued to be blessed with some highly talented and hugely committed leaders (Presentation Illus. 22).
Interestingly, of the 26 IPAA (Canberra Branch) Presidents since 1953, 13 served as either a permanent head, Chairman of the Public Service Board, Commonwealth Auditor-General or Australian Statistician. Twelve held one of these positions while Branch President.
Conclusion: The future
The Australian Public Service's probable future role, functions and responsibilities are set out in the review of Australian public administration, The Australian Experience of Public Sector Reform, published by the Commission, in June this year. Its authors concluded (Presentation Illus. 23) that in future:
Community expectations of [the APS] will continue to rise, commercial and financial disciplines will become ever more important and there will be an increasing focus on finding policy and service delivery solutions through greater government integration, across agencies, across jurisdictions and across nations. (The Australian Experience of Public Sector Reform 2003: 172)
The realisation of this finely drawn-but necessarily speculative-picture will depend largely, as it has done in the past, on 'the professionalism and the performance' of public servants. In the words (Illus. 24) of that distinguished denizen of government and academe, W. Macmahon Ball, 'we may have geniuses as expert advisers, and archangels as Ministers, but their efforts will be stultified by a poor quality of civil servant'. (Public Service and Merit Protection Commission, Serving the Nation 2001: 209)
I could speak for longer-perhaps this task is more like summarising the Bible on a postage stamp than I anticipated-but I will end here.
I want to acknowledge the important role played by IPAA's Canberra branch in fostering professionalism in the APS. It has always had a close relationship with the Public Service Board and the Public Service Commission, and has helped to bring together the academic experts and the public service practitioners. More recently, it has also fostered links with the many other groups who contribute to public administration today.
I am a strong supporter of the IPAA, and encourage public servants who value our profession to join the IPAA and participate in its many useful activities.
May I wish the IPAA's Canberra branch well for the years ahead, and I thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts with you this afternoon.
References
Australian Public Service Commission 2003 The Australian Experience of Public Sector Reform, APSC, Canberra.
Commonwealth of Australia 1953 Public Service Board: Annual Report 1953, Commonwealth Government Printer, Canberra.
Cornish, Selwyn 2003 Sir Roland Wilson: A Biographical Essay, The Sir Roland Wilson Foundation, The Australian National University, Canberra.
Jones, Evan 2002 'Menzies' Razor Gang: Public Service Retrenchment in 1951', Canberra Bulletin of Public Administration, no. 104, pp. 33-7.
Public Service and Merit Protection Commission 2001 Serving the Nation: 100 Years of Public Service, PSMPC, 2001.
Royal Commission on Australian Government Administration 1976, Report, AGPS, Canberra.
Start of page