{"id":24337,"date":"2016-01-25T06:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T19:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=24337"},"modified":"2016-01-22T15:42:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T04:42:05","slug":"the-canberra-minder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-canberra-minder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canberra Minder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"14939856526_1d08e91fef_z\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Canberra ministerial adviser\u2014the Minder\u2014is 43 years young. The Minder is the strongest new creation of Oz politics, often more important than the public service in the way policy and politics gets done.<\/p>\n

The idea of the political staffer in the ministerial office as more powerful than the public service at key moments is striking. Yet in a couple of decades it has become the reality.<\/p>\n

Ponder that claim: the 400-plus ministerial staffers in the executive wing of Parliament throw more weight than the massed ranks of public servants in Canberra and all across Oz.<\/p>\n

The public service runs the show but the Minders do a lot of steering. That\u2019s a power shift that has changed the system and how it works.<\/p>\n

Those who administer don\u2019t admire those who convey the minister\u2019s orders. Little wonder that a Treasury Mandarin, John Stone, attacked the Minders as \u2018meretricious players\u2019.<\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s fellow Mandarins have used many worse epithets. The Minders occupy space that once was the exclusive terrain of Mandarins.<\/p>\n

The Minders have shifted power in Canberra in ways that greatly hurt the public service. And greatly helped the Minders\u2019 political masters. That\u2019s why the political staffer quickly settled close to the heart of the Canberra system. If this is a transplant rather than a Westminster evolution, then the operation worked.<\/p>\n

The Minder sits at the intersection where politics meets power, the Parliament meets the Executive. The presidential pretensions<\/a> of the prime ministership are fuelled and carried by the Minders who throng the ministerial wing.<\/p>\n

The Minders are the creation and creatures of the Executive; they live and die at the Minister\u2019s pleasure. They have few rights but great privileges. Access to power comes by standing on a permanent trap door. The Minister can hire anyone (as long as the PM\u2019s office gives a tick) and can dismiss in an instant.<\/p>\n

This column launches a series on the Minders. It will be based on five Canberra facts.<\/p>\n

The first two facts are so intertwined they reflect one reality:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Minder is a shadowy eminence, operating beneath the cloak of ministerial power.<\/li>\n
  2. The Minder is untouchable, accountable neither to Parliament nor the public service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The third point is contested and controversial, varying across ministers and issues, but it\u2019s the fact stated at the head of this column.<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. The Minder is often more important than the public service in the way policy and politics gets done.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Facts four and five are conclusions to be drawn from the consistent actions of different governments over 43 years. The political consensus decrees:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. The Minders are a permanent feature of the system.<\/li>\n
      2. Minders are essential to ministers and the functioning of the executive.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Taking those facts as the reality, this series will come neither to praise nor bury, merely to acknowledge a significant element of the way Australia does government.<\/p>\n

        Any praise would be atypical. Minders may be essential but usually they are dragged from the shadows to be blamed and whipped.<\/p>\n

        The Minders are seldom mentioned publicly without being spat upon. Paul Keating scorned those around Bob Hawke as the \u2018Manchu Court\u2019. Keating, who had his own set of Minders, was putting his finger on what matters about courtiers\u2014the power they sit close to and the power they can guide.<\/p>\n

        The spleen and spite directed at staffers over the decades should be read as a backhanded acknowledgement of their significance.<\/p>\n

        To give the flavour, here\u2019s Keating<\/a> on his 1986 battle with Hawke\u2019s Manchu Court, consisting of Peter Barron, Bob Hogg and Ross Garnaut.<\/p>\n

        \u2018They would sit like courtiers around him, and I would come to Bob\u2019s office and he\u2019d be hunched at his desk, and he\u2019d be saying \u201cRoss says…\u201d or \u201cPeter says…\u201d and he\u2019d never finish a sentence and they\u2019d pipe up. And on one occasion I spun on them and said, \u201cYou speak when you\u2019re spoken to.\u201d One of them said to Hawke, \u201cAre you going to let him speak to us like that?\u201d and Bob says, \u201cOh, don\u2019t be like that. Don\u2019t be like that.\u201d I\u2019d be brought before them knowing they\u2019d be passing on opinion to Bob after I\u2019d left, and they\u2019d intersperse my comments with their own. They always sat in the same position in that narrow office of Bob\u2019s in the old Parliament House. I\u2019d be sitting in front of his desk, and their three chairs would be set a little off the wall. You were appearing before the court and the courtiers would say what they thought of you, usually after you\u2019d left.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

        Draw a few key facts from this vignette.<\/p>\n

        Staffers have influence because of the intimate relationship with their political masters. Proximity equates to power. Proximity gives the staffer the ability to shape their master\u2019s thinking and often to have the last word on a debate or decision.<\/p>\n

        The minders are political <\/em>staffers.<\/p>\n

        A later piece in this series will define some differences between what I call Political Minders and Policy Minders. The Policy\/Political is a useful distinction yet deeply artificial because Minders must dance to both drums. While characteristics and demands differ across and within offices, Minders are all the same species and all carry political stripes.<\/p>\n

        The Minders are the small animals inside the political cage with the politicians.<\/p>\n

        The public service also serves in the zoo\u2014theoretically standing just outside the cage. Bureaucrats are often a few steps away from the action in the cage when the claws fly and the meat is killed.<\/p>\n

        The scene Keating describes when a Prime Minister, a Treasurer and three Minders argued the toss is something many senior public servants have witnessed. And top public servants have always argued their case with great vigour\u2014this is Australia, after all.<\/p>\n

        Yet even the most confident and combat-hardened public servant rarely needs to be told, \u2018You speak when you\u2019re spoken to\u2019.<\/p>\n

        The public service understands there are things done and said inside the cage where it isn\u2019t their place to go. That shadowy place is where Minders have stood since their creation by the Whitlam government in December 1972. To be continued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        The Canberra ministerial adviser\u2014the Minder\u2014is 43 years young. The Minder is the strongest new creation of Oz politics, often more important than the public service in the way policy and politics gets done. The idea …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":24338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[137,399,376],"class_list":["post-24337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-ministerial-staffing","tag-parliament","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Canberra Minder | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-canberra-minder\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Canberra Minder | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Canberra ministerial adviser\u2014the Minder\u2014is 43 years young. 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