Godwin Creeppo should be in jail or on his way and I am not sure that a few in the liberal party should not be in the same queue.

We elect politicians to serve the people and public servants are emplyed to do exactly the same thing. I am not sure that the community is getting value for its money when politics, greed and power comes before public service. The system is there to serve the public not itself or those within it.

I suppose I’ve grown up with the popular notion that public servants can become inefficient/ineffective (read slack) and get away with it forever, especially if they are active within their particular union.

It’s sometimes said within management that if somebody quits and leaves that can be a good thing, but when they quit and stay you’ve got a real problem.

I know it sounds wet but you get better value by working through people’s performance problems than by sacking them. There’s a lot of money invested in people as a resource and you will almost always do better from a straight cost point of view to use another option. I got lots of options.

As an aside, it’s nice to have a difference of view that doesn’t descend into name calling as seems to happen so often in these comments.

Bear in mind that the public service is part of the executive government and has a role in shaping and directing policy. My experience is that in most cases public servants political beliefs don’t interfere with the performance of their duties just as a catholic doctor would treat an atheist patient (jeez at least I hope so). We all have views but to let them rule our judgments would be grossly unprofessional as well as a breach of our statutory obligations to be impartial. It this normal professional behaviour that makes Grech all the more amazing and Briggs’ statement so necessary.

I’ve got to say that public servants seem to trip over themselves to accommodate incoming governments, probably because change is an opportunity and by the time a government is toss out the punters aren’t the only ones sick of it. That being said, a DIR secretary fought tooth and nail to stop the Hawke/Keating governments from advancing same sex partners superannuation rights.

As for the lower levels, it’s news to me that public service permanency has been rescinded. I am aware that public servants can be dismissed for misconduct, but I wasn’t aware that they were performance reviewed for continuity year on year.

As for lower levels, we never had the same type of tenure as heads of department’s and can be dismissed the same as any worker.

Indeed, and in the meantime taxi drivers should be on their guard.

It just might occur to the average viewer of the 7.30 Report that the whole silly saga was the result of Turnbull playing the most childish game of ‘gotcha’ politics over what would have been, had it in fact occurred, a fairly minor bit of assistance to someone fully entitled to apply for it.

As for Rudd’s attacks over the AWB scandal, well, that was actually about something of consequence, and it fully deserved investigation. So for Turnbull to compare the two is a bit of ‘coming the raw prawn’, as Kev might say.

The new Mark Latham of Australian politics will have a spectacular demise, it’s just a matter of when.

This is a man who still refuses to apologise for his demands to the PM and the Treasurer to resign after calling them liars, plus other now proven to be wrong accusations. Despite Abetz publically doing so. To save his own skin maybe, at best he apologised.

This man Turnbull, would be Prime Minister. This disgrace to the proud tradition of political life in Australia.

That statement of the obvious ought to made into a sign and nailed up all over the APS’s offices.