It’s hard to turn around a sinking ship, especially when you’re flat broke. But this is exactly what Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) secretary Adam Fennessy has been tasked with.
Fennessy updated the Joint Committee Public Accounts and Audit Committee on Tuesday on DAFF’s progress in responding to a series of negative reviews it has received in recent years.
The agency’s governance and accountability structures were found lacking by the Australian National Audit Office in 2023. Later the same year, the APSC Capabilities review found DAFF was severely lacking in staff needed to perform its core functions.
While this resulted in a lot of negative attention for then secretary Andrew Metcalfe, their resources were almost MoGed out of existence in a rapid series of changes under the previous government.
Metcalfe controversially struck up a partnership with PwC that cost more than $40 million, prompting a series of tense exchanges in committee hearings and estimates.
Fixing all the agency’s finance, capability, culture and image problems is a big ask for any secretary, but based on the change in tone in the committee room, the politicians are having an easier time with Fennessy.
“It’s my view areas of public administration within my department fell short of the required standards … and the standards I would expect in a department I have responsibility for,” Fennessy said.
“When I became secretary in September 2023, I immediately communicated two priorities to the whole organisation. The first was to to ensure the financial stability of the organisation, the second was to respond in full to the Australian public service commission capability review.
“On my first day in the role, I commissioned a taskforce with responsibility for organisational transformation. That taskforce is led by deputy secretary Tess Bishop.
“On my second day in the role, I proactively met with DAFF’s audit and risk committee to indicate to them directly my priorities as secretary.”
Committee members breathed a sigh of relief as he answered their questions, thanking him for his “refreshing frankness”.
Fennessy said as former ANZSOG dean and Victorian Public Service Commissioner he had an appreciation for what Gordon de Brouwer and the APSC were trying to achieve.
Noting his related experience, the committee offered Fennessy the mic to offer his advice to other secretaries on whole of department reform.
“When I was at ANZSOG, I was asked to be an independent capability reviewer of a government department, so did the capability review for the Department of Transport, Infrastructure, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts. I got to see what it actually felt like,”
“When I started at DAFF, I knew in my own view how important they were, and I knew the departments who succeeded in optimising, or learning from their capability reviews were the ones who weren’t defensive about it.
“It’s not easy when you get a review telling you in great detail that’s where you do better, and that’s where you went wrong. So the ability to be open about that, the need to engage senior executive very early on.”
Despite having worked as a consultant himself, Fennessy appears to have little appetite to use them at DAFF. When asked whether spending on consultants had fallen since he had taken leadership, he confirmed the department had tightened its rules around the use of consultants, which now require assistant secretary approval.
From 1 July 2023 to 1 December 2023, DAFF spent $1.59 million on consultants – tracking down significantly from $27.49 million in the previous financial year.
Fennessy said he was not critical of his predecessor for reliance on consultants, but said he wanted to keep as much of the department’s functions in-house as possible.
“Government policy is very clear, through the APSC reform agenda to invest in the capability of our own organisations for those services around policy reform,” he said.
“I can’t comment on decisions predecessors have made under very different circumstances and policy settings. It was raised with this committee last time that when there were staff-level caps, also known as ASL caps, and high expectations of any government of the day for delivery, departments have to turn to whatever tools and devices are available to them.
“To me, you can and should expend on external consultants when the need is there, but I think that shows the APSC reform agenda and my priority is to invest in capability and service delivery through the department.”
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