APS commissioner Gordon de Brouwer believes rules around the termination of secretaries should be a “balancing act” and it is not as “straightforward as it’s made out to be”.
Speaking at the Governance Institute of Australia’s International Governance Leadership Conference on Monday, de Brouwer said it was about having a flexible system rather than an arbitrary movement of secretaries.
“Because we’re trying to trade off, on the one hand, the institutional strength of people being able to say ‘give [your] best professional advice to a minister and a leader of government,” de Brouwer said.
“At the same time, that relationship between the minister and the prime minister, and their secretaries really has to be a close relationship of trust, and professionalism.
“When those relationships break down, you have to have a mechanism for people to move on. It’s not the minister who moves, generally, it’s always the secretary who moves.”
The APS commissioner said that for him, it was about recruiting people who could provide advice and meet legal and professional requirements.
“Culture dominates all of these things,” de Brouwer said.
“If you have someone who’s not a good, frankly, psychological fit for the difficulty [of being a secretary…], there’s no silver bullet, to my mind, on these things.”
Earlier during the fireside chat, Centre for Public Integrity chair Anthony Whealy said there was a need for security of tenure for senior public servants, referencing a Thodey review recommendations for a “robust process”. De Brouwer worked on the Thodey review.
“You either have legislation or robust policy making the change [so] you couldn’t just dismiss senior public servants on a whim, because they weren’t agreeing with what the government wanted,” Whealy said.
“Of course, knowing what the government wants, and working hand in hand with the government is part of a senior public servant’s duty.
“But sometimes that process can be distorted. If we have better security of tenure, then I think that’s a good thing.”
Former NSW attorney-general Gabrielle Upton disagreed, saying a minister should be able to dismiss senior public servants with due process.
Upton said departments also need to understand the role of ministerial offices.
“This is the complexity of the Westminster system, which has served us well,” Upton said.
“But it’s that circularity of responsibility and understanding both from department to the minister and the minister to the department. They have quite different but supportive roles.
“But if you hamper some of those processes in the ministerial office, you are hampering the government that has been elected by the public to govern on their behalf.”
Upton also likened a minister to a chair of a board, and a secretary to a CEO.
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