Address by Senator John Faulkner
Cabinet Secretary
Special Minister of State
6 May 2009
First, let me acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, no-one ever argues that governments should have less integrity, that elected officials should not be accountable, or that public servants should behave unethically. Broad statements of the value of integrity, transparency, accountability and ethics gain general agreement from all sides of politics and from all participants in public debate.
But government integrity demands more than general expressions of goodwill. Enhancing transparency and accountability requires supportive structures as well as declarations of priorities. And cultivating ethical behaviour needs more than simple, sweeping statements of expectations.
That is why the Australian Labor Party went to the 2007 election with a comprehensive suite of policies to restore a high standard of integrity to Federal Government in Australia.
We have already made considerable progress in fulfilling our election promises in this area. The Government has established, among other things, merit-based selection for agency heads, new advertising guidelines, a code of conduct for ministerial advisors, and a lobbying code of conduct. We referred the issue of whistle blowing protection to the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and will develop legislation later this year that broadens and strengthens the existing scheme. We released in March this year exposure drafts of two Bills to improve freedom of information laws.
Many of our commitments to bolster government integrity directly affect the Australian Public Service.
The APS occupies a unique position in relation to the Federal Government and the Australian community. Both depend on the APS to deliver the programs and services that put government policies into practice.
This puts the public service at the heart of the public’s right to demand, and the Government’s responsibility to deliver, a high standard of stewardship of the resources—intellectual, financial, personnel, and material —granted to the public sector. That high standard is underpinned by transparency, accountability and government integrity. It is also underpinned by the high ethical standards of the APS.
The environment that Government and public servants operate in is faster paced and more inter-connected than in the past. It demands flexibility, agility and often quick decisions.
In an increasingly inter-connected environment it is necessary for the public service to develop partnerships with other Australian jurisdictions, with the private and education sectors and with community groups, in the development of policy and in the delivery of programmes.
This means that public servants will be increasingly working with diverse organisational cultures and facing ethical problems of a different nature from those faced by public servants in the past. When quick decisions are demanded, there can be higher administrative risks, and those ethical risks can blind-side a decision maker.
Advances in technology have also delivered new challenges—it has led to pressures from the community for faster response times from Government and public servants.
Meeting these challenges demands a high level of ethical awareness, in an ever-shifting environment where past decisions may not always be the surest guide.
Providing ethics advice to all Australian Public Service employees, departments and agencies as part of the Public Service Commissioner’s functions was an election commitment we made in 2007.
This commitment was not made because we believed there was an ethical deficit in the APS. But it is important never to be complacent. It is fair to say that at the time of that commitment we had some concerns about the pressures that were put on the Australian Public Service, and the difficult position some public servants found themselves in as a result. It is important to nurture a culture that supports the APS in ethical decision-making to ensure the long-term health of the strong traditions so important to Australia’s system of government.
As I indicated on 4 December last year when announcing the Government’s decision to establish the Ethics Advisory Service, the intention is to provide a new capability that agencies and their employees can draw on to assist with ethical decision making
The EAS won’t be telling agencies and individuals what to do. Its function is to provide an additional source of ethical advice that agencies and individual employees can apply to their particular challenges. It will have a key role in helping public servants to develop good judgement within the contemporary workplace.
I am pleased to announce that the Commission’s Ethics Advisory Service is operational from today. Its services include:
Guidance material developed to support the operation of the Service and to help raise ethical awareness across the APS is available here today. The guidance will be made available to employees, largely through their agencies, over the coming weeks, and there will be more material to follow over the coming year.
I would also like to thank those agencies that have nominated Ethics Contact Officers. The network and its agency members will play a key role in building confidence in public administration through supporting the work of the Ethics Advisory Service, as well as helping to embed other elements of the Government’s approach to strengthening integrity and trust in government. The role of Ethics Contact Officers will include:
I understand that the ECO Network (the acronym was inevitable) will be meeting for the first time here, today, after this launch. I encourage members to engage with this network as it provides a useful vehicle for the effective exchange of information that will support broader ethical decision making and ensure the ethical health of the APS. As mentioned earlier the Ethics Advisory Service is designed to support agencies, not direct agencies. This Network is a key element of this approach.
Ladies and gentlemen, some of the work of the Ethics Advisory Service will be relatively straight forward. It will be about nurturing and reinforcing understandings that are widely held about what should, or should not, be done in particular circumstances. This may be no more than a common sense application of broad community standards, or it may be the more particular application of the professional standards expected of public servants and reflected in the APS Values and the Code of Conduct.
Sometimes the Ethics Advisory Service may find itself dealing with issues closer to the margins, for example where a practice of taking liberties has gradually become entrenched over a period, and where a case might well be made for a tightening of standards.
There are areas where the issue of concern is one of degree. Ready examples can be found in the area of the private use of official facilities. You are in the office from dawn to midnight for days on end. Most would not begrudge you the one-off photocopy, the occasional private phone call or email, or even the bit of unofficial time off at the end of the rush. But that isn’t reams of paper for your local club. Nor is it hours on the phone or extended banking and shopping on the internet or the presumption of time off.
From time to time a necessary interstate meeting on a Friday with the totally incidental benefit of a weekend away is quite legitimate. But as the wartime poster said: “Is your journey really necessary?” These ‘slippery slope’ questions are not susceptible to easy, black and white answers - yet people will seek consistency.
And I am sure the Ethics Advisory Service will, on occasions, find itself at the sharp end. What to do when unwittingly caught up in conflict between a Minister and a Secretary. What to do with the information provided in strict confidence for one purpose which has suddenly become crucial in a quite different context. What level of certainty is required before deciding to report events which might be considered misconduct? Is the provision of precisely and only the information requested always sufficient? Or do circumstances sometimes require the provision of more information than was sought in order to avoid conveying a false or misleading impression?
Ladies and gentlemen, ethical dilemmas are called ‘dilemmas’ precisely because they often fall into so-called ‘grey’ areas where hard-and-fast rules provide inadequate guidance. They are, as the Merit Protection Commissioner Annwyn Godwin has pointed out, often not ‘right vs wrong’ questions, but ones that demand the negotiation of ‘right vs right’.
While it is the Government’s responsibility to create integrity structures and support mechanisms to make these dilemmas easier to resolve, we are well aware that in the ever-changing modern environment, Australia’s public servants will often be called upon to negotiate complex ethical issues.
The Ethics Advisory Service will, by providing a forum and focus for the discussion and the accumulation of knowledge – even wisdom - about these difficult questions, be a very positive and significant initiative. It will provide valuable assistance for those faced with ethical problems as they arise, and will enhance the strong ethical traditions of the Australian Public Service.
Ladies and gentlemen, I thank all the members of the APSC who worked hard in developing this Ethics Service, and I am delighted to be the minister responsible for the Australian Public Service on this important day – the day the Ethics Advisory Service for the Australian Public Service has become operational.
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