There’s plenty of secret squirrel stuff about the 2020 Summit, reports Bernard Keane.
Departmental secretaries
Rudd’s failure to clean out the public service has Canberra angry
Since its arrival in office two months ago, the Rudd Government has signed five-year job contracts with two departmental secretaries noted for their enthusiastic links to the Howard administration. It hasn’t gone down well in Canberra, the seat of power. Here’s why, writes Alex Mitchell.
Tips and rumours
Mark Paterson survived under the Rudd amnesty for political appointees among departmental secretaries in Canberra. He’s been busy since, shoring up the industry portfolio and outfoxing foreign affairs and trade by retaining investment promotion, protecting his industry welfare empire and avoiding efficiency cuts by jettisoning the Global Opportunities program he’d nicked from DFAT under the […]
Tips and rumours
Rudds’s promo posters at his after party were cheerfully souvenired — not by party faithful but members of the media pack.
Hi guys, my wife and I voted at Nelson Bay in the electorate of Paterson. We got our two voting papers and it wasn’t till later in the day that I realized our papers had not been initialed. […]
Yes, Prime Minister: the public service sells its soul
Australia’s constitution makes no mention of a prime minister. Yet John Howard is no legal fiction. He selects Liberal Party ministers, appoints the head of his own department, and approves the choices for all the others. Those arrangements leave Departmental Secretaries doubly dependent on his favour.
Volunteer call for Canberra’s fat cats
The Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) is putting the altruism of Canberra’s fat cat public servants to the test with an appeal for volunteers to spend up to a year living in a tent on the aboriginal lands the Commonwealth Government is about to take over.
