How the PM’s promise not to sack public servants is playing out

As everyone who cares about these things knows, the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on taking office, said he wouldn’t be sacking public servants.

He didn’t need to oust the former secretary of his department, Phil Gaetjens, who evidently offered his resignation, just as heads of Prime Minister and Cabinet have done since at least the 1990s when a new PM arrives.

There is no word on how former Infrastructure secretary Simon Atkinson, another former senior coalition staffer, departed, but perhaps he took a revolver into the library.