tip off

Tips and rumours

Another law firm brings in pay freeze … the moveable feast of budget-night watering holes … public servants respond to senior job cuts …

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Public service: $600m in savings, but they won’t feel the pinch

The public service has been asked to find $600 million in their budgets over the next four years. But job losses have been kept at a minimum, governance expert Stephen Bartos reports.

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A public service that’s too top-heavy — now the hard part

Yes, the senior ranks of our public service are swelling, and yes, something could be done about it. But cutting willy-nilly will do more harm than good. Public policy expert Stephen Bartos explains.

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The tax office, ‘hired assassins’ and how to gag dissent

The nation’s tax office has been accused of hiring psychiatrists to diagnose and even coerce complainants during legal disputes. Crikey’s freedom of information requests and interviews reveal a worrying culture.

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Don’t mention the war, urges public service boss

The public service continues to grow, despite many departments instituting a hiring freeze, the latest report on the bureaucracy shows. And there’s some helpful advice for tweeting pen-pushers.

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Coalition on APS politicisation: more front than …

Liberal claims about the politicisation of Treasury are rich coming from a party that politicised the entire public service when in government. But is there anything wrong with that?

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Gendernomics: more women needed in key policy agencies

Women are missing from some of our most important policy-making agencies, with real consequences for economic policy. Treasury, at least, is trying to improve.

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Banks come to the rescue of beleaguered old blokes’ media

The banks have handed some ad revenue to the national newspapers but things still look grim for them on the revenue front.

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Government turns its back on newspaper job ads

The federal government has severed its job advertising relationship with newspapers, moving recruitment ads fully online. It could cost media companies dearly.

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Button to APS: ‘I’ve revealed no government secrets’

James Button has responded to criticism from the Public Service Commissioner, insisting his book on life in the Prime Minister’s Office was “written with ethical considerations in mind”.

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BCA nostalgic for a bureaucratic past it helped to destroy

The Business Council’s proposals for rpublic sector reform are a bizarre throwback to the “Rip Van Winkle” years. Perhaps Jennifer Westacott is annoyed the reform she wants isn’t being taken up.

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APS increasingly stranded on social media

The public service’s response to the emergence of social media is stranded in an analog era. James Button’s new book throws new light on the issue.

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Public servants, are you ready for a brave new world?

Despite the doom and gloom, some see a bright future for public servants — if they’re prepared to embrace new ways of doing business.

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James Button and APS
confidentiality

James Button’s account of his time working in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is set to further strain the public service’s rigid insistence on complete confidentiality. He talks to Crikey.

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ABS data shows things are getting better for women in the public service

This morning the Australian Bureau of Statistics released the third edition of a statistical collection of gender indicators.

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Public service cuts: where the axe has fallen

A Crikey analysis had found 38,000 public service job cuts have been announced at the federal and state levels over the past few years. Here’s where the axe has fallen, state-by-state …

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Is Labor’s ‘poor relationship with business’ such a bad thing?

Labor apparently has a bad relationship with business. But what exactly does that mean, and why do voters not have a problem with it?

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Time-honoured rituals of regulation live on

Tony Abbott’s promise to slash red tape is a time-honoured Canberra ritual, but it’s a hollow promise. And he should shake up his front bench to inject more policy nous into the mix.

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Public servants: invisible heroes or easy targets?

Since 1990, the Australian Public Service has become more top-heavy, with a growing and male-dominated senior executive service and a corresponding reduction in the lower employment bands, writes Dr James Whelan, the public service program research director at the Centre for Policy Development

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Mitch’s new public policy paradigm is just the old one continued

The public policy process has changed significantly in recent years, but not in the way our most prominent rentseeker claims.

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Measuring Moran’s legacy inside and outside the public service

Terry Moran leaves behind a healthier, more independent public service — but the GFC was his key test.

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Productivity, public servants and … that other P word

Robert Gottliebsen recently suggested public servants had the power to significantly improve national productivity if they so desire. Anyone who wants to improve public sector productivity needs to find better politicians first.

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Public service ‘docile and unassertive’

A senior public servant has called for the public service to stop being so “docile” and start asserting itself more in the national interest — and given a backhander to ministerial staff along the way.

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Green Loans: the monumental stuff up

The ANAO’s report on the Green Loans program is as bad as it gets and raises significant questions for the Public Service.

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The whys and wherefores of bureaucratic blogging

The first was a fundamental rule that every public servant must live and breathe: that your personal views must be strictly separate from your professional conduct.

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Womens Agenda

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