Hamish, Hilary and Mark do it… but Col’s crew is still not connected

My 40-something year old sister is in Phuket with her family at the moment (I wouldn’t usually disclose a lady’s age like that, but it’s important to the message). They arrived at their coastal resort a day before last week’s undersea earthquake off Sumatra. As we know, that event triggered a tsunami warning for the whole Indian Ocean area but fortunately didn’t cause any damaging waves.

Anyway, the relevance of this is that after unsuccessfully trying to telephone them on both their mobile phones and hotel landline for 6 hours, my first communication with my sister was when she sent a Facebook message. It consisted of only a few words to let us know that “everything is ok” – but the accompanying grainy picture showing hundreds of people huddling together on the edge of a dark hillside, was worth a thousand more.

The point is, for many everyday Australians speaking to a friend or relative is now a lot less common than sending a Facebook message, SMSing or Tweeting them - regardless of where they are at the time. Social networking applications provide a fast, relatively unobtrusive method of providing or retrieving information from one or many people simultaneously – and that makes it very powerful.

Indeed the winner of last night’s Golden Logie award, radio comedian Hamish Blake, is reported to have won the prize ahead of two of Australia’s most visible daily television personalities only due to a strategic social networking campaign.

You might ask why these two facts relate to the world of a political commentator - easy;

1. It’s not just young people using social media as their primary communication and information source (my sister is 40-something), and
2. The Logies are decided by a popular vote – just like our governments.

No doubt you now see the point – but sadly, the Western Australian State government still doesn’t.

US President Barack Obama often personally uses Twitter to make a political point, Federal Liberal Leader Tony Abbott takes questions without notice via social media whenever he has a free 15 minutes and many members of the Western Australian opposition are gaining both confidence and skill in using the propinquity offered by social media to score political points and build positive relationships with their stakeholders – including the growing number of journalists who spend much of their day sharing their insights via their mobile phones, oops devices.

And yet, computers and mobile phones issued to Ministers and their staff are to this day fitted standard with filters that block access to all social media applications. Consequently, other than a couple of eager backbench members who have been instructed to limit their use, there is only one Government member using social media regularly – and this Minister’s messages are far from strategic, providing much greater insight to the man than any policies or plans of his government.

This obvious lack of enthusiasm (or perhaps even understanding) for social media within the government will be a distinct disadvantage to the government between now and the March 2013 election – not only because Mark McGowan’s opposition will be speaking to a growing number of voters only accessible through this medium, but also because those voters are likely to be speaking exclusively back.

* Previous blog posts mention this issue, but after a Radio personality surprised everyone by winning TV’s biggest award last night, I thought I’d dedicate a post to it.

McGowan’s ‘New Labor’ kicking goals (and heads)

As a key mentor to Mark McGowan and friend of former British UK PM Tony Blair, ex-Premier Geoff Gallop would undoubtedly be proud of the ‘New Labor’ that is the current Western Australian Opposition.

I know it’s a cliché but a lot can happen in a short period of politics and in Western Australia, indeed it has. In fact, I would go as far as proclaiming the last few weeks a watershed period for the future of the Barnett Government.

During that time the New Labor Opposition proved that its decision to replace their nice guy Leader Eric Ripper with the much more politically ambitious Mark McGowan will serve them well in the lead up to next year’s election. Today’s Newspoll results show Mr McGowan has secured a massive 12 point increase in the “preferred Premier” stakes.

But even worse for Premier Barnett, for the first time since the ALP’s messy and demoralising 2008 defeat, the Opposition has inflicted a 16 point drop in Colin Barnett’s preferred Premier status through the use of genuine political strategy, planning and teamwork.

Having worked in the Office of two Leaders of the Opposition, I know it’s not easy to achieve what Mr McGowan has done since he took the job a couple of months ago.

Indeed in politics, the Opposition is a tough animal for anyone to tame. The Leader has a relatively small staff of only 10 or so, hardly any access to non-public information, no warning of upcoming government announcements and he is typically criticised for not wanting to release details of opposition policy this far out from an election. And all that happens while he tries to keep a handle on a bunch of ambitious backbenchers who are all running their own races at top speed – often in very different directions.

Needless to say with all these challenges facing opposition parties, ‘strategy’ and ‘teamwork’ are words that rarely get used to describe a fortnight of their work. However in this case, those words are most appropriate.

During the last month the Labor Opposition actively targeted disaffected conservative voters by announcing a myriad of right-of-centre policies. Mr McGowan pledged to implement harsher penalties for knife crimes, abolish the Potato Marketing Corporation and promised to streamline planning and housing approvals if they are elected in March. Some commentators dismissed these announcements as merely ‘stunts’, but by making these statements Mr McGowan has committed to substantive policy changes designed to strategically broaden his Party’s voter-base – and encroach on the Liberal-National Government’s core constituency.

And while he was busy aggressively stretching the New Labor net to the right, he didn’t forget his more traditional friends on the left.

McGowan’s team continued its union-supported strong anti-privatisation campaign and in doing so, successfully smeared the brand of the Water Corporation, New Children’s Hospital and Department of Housing. He also stoked a fire under the traditionally left-leaning social services sector by casting doubt over the Government’s critical Mental Health agenda and reminded the Arts sector they were still close by slamming the Royalties for Regions process for not funding a proposal for the Goldfields Arts Centre.

But the Opposition didn’t stop there – proving they are willing to fight the forthcoming election campaign on all fronts, Mark McGowan’s New Labor even threw some bait to those backing their current Parliamentary partners. Green voters might have noticed the Labor Party starting debates on the likely demise of Carnaby's Black Cockatoos under the Government’s plan to extend the Roe Highway and the definition of free-range eggs, as well as promising to ban clear felling of native forests and plastic bags in the future.

However, it wasn’t only the content of the announcements that should be seen as sign of things to come. New Labor also touted its wares in a new way - to a new constituency that is very foreign to this Government and its slow-moving elders.

While Minister Buswell was taunting the Opposition in Parliament for their 'Stop Perth's Sardine Trains' social media campaign, MPs sitting on the comfy couches opposite were busily squirreling away on their mobile phones and ipads strategically Tweeting and Facebooking their way into the hearts and minds of a new generation of voters. The problem for the Government is that apart from one guy who spends a lot of time Facebooking about his cat, no Government Minister is engaging with these very mobile voters – many of whom already resent being told by a fuddy-duddy old Premier they should buy smaller houses and consider air-conditioning a luxury.

As proven by the incredible global response to the Kony 2012 campaign, these voters are not only mobile, they can become spontaneous and potent activists with one click of the “Like” button on a Facebook page or “RT” of a controversial Tweet.  As I disclosed in Cantankerous Col Pot and his nervous nannies, the Premier has only owned a mobile phone since he became Premier and sent his first email just a year before that. The Luddite-like mentality of the Premier and his leadership team is in stark contrast to that of New Labor who have entered the void of social media electioneering with vigour.

Innovative policy and engagement methods aside, perhaps the biggest game-changing success McGowan’s New Labor appears to be closing in on is that of retribution. And if they land what they have hooked, Labor’s fishing expedition will cause serious damage to the Government and Colin Barnett’s leadership.

Mr McGowan and his team of tech-savvy tweeters have done something truly amazing – found a way to make Minister John Day look grubby.

This is indeed a miraculous feat because everyone agrees that Minister Day is one of the nicest, most ethical people in Australian politics. For anyone who has ever met Minister Day, it’s obvious that his failure to declare a potential conflict of interest regarding a planning decision near a property he owns was nothing more than an honest stuff-up.

Because of that, the Opposition’s attacks in Parliament have been fruitless, being all but shrugged off by the Minister and his boss. However, during question time on the last sitting day of the last sitting of Parliament, the Premier opened up some wiggle room and put this on the record:

Colin Barnett: If the minister erred, he erred only in failing to, I guess, question either myself or the Cabinet Secretary whether he should totally exempt himself from that issue.

Tony Buti: Which he should have.

Colin Barnett: He probably should have. It is a technical breach, but that is all it is. In my view it is not a conflict of interest, either perceived or real… It was not on his mind. Yes, he should have sought my advice on whether it was appropriate to make even that administrative decision. He did not do that; that was an error, but that is all it was.

Once again, the problem isn’t Minister Day. No one thinks he has done anything wrong, other than accidentally create a situation that doesn’t look great.

And that is the problem for the Premier.

As a grumpy backbencher planning his retirement while Alan Carpenter presided over the last Government, Colin Barnett watched the Labor Party brand get decimated by claim after claim of Ministerial corruption and mismanagement. The rest is history and Mr Barnett was thrust into Government with the unenviable task of having to reassure Western Australian tax-payers that he would have a zero tolerance to anything that even remotely smelled dodgy. He sacked Treasurer Troy Buswell for actions that were eventually proven to be above-board and he sacked one of his senior media advisers for doing something the Public Sector Commissioner recently said shouldn’t have led to a dismissal.

Deep down, the Premier knows that Minister Day’s actions look just as bad, if not worse, than those that led to a number of others being demoted or sacked. John Day is a good Minister and will be a sad loss to the State if he loses his position but given the Premier’s predicament in the precedents he has set, his choice of words in Parliament last Thursday were truly prophetic. The Premier has form in using language like this to back away when he sees the writing on the wall and I’m certain I wasn’t the only one to notice his change in terminology. New Labor must be very excited to smell the same odour that plagued them in their final years of Government.

I’m no fan of Mark McGowan. But even as a biased political commentator, it’s clear from his first couple of months in the job that the Labor Party has made the right decision and the Barnett Government has a difficult 11 months ahead of them.

Labor call spells end to cordial Lib-Nat relations

Daniel Emerson’s report in the West Australian Newspaper (McGowan vows no deal with the Nats) marks the beginning of the end for the Royalties for Regions scheme as we know it. Today’s publication of Labor leader Mark McGowan’s pledge that he “would not govern with the Nationals under any circumstance” will kick off a very ugly feud between the WA Liberals and their current “partners” in Government, the Nationals.

Mr McGowan’s courageous declaration will be music to the ears of many Liberal MP’s who have quietly cursed and muttered obscenities under their breath since their leader signed an unconventional partnership agreement with the Nationals in 2008. A number of senior Liberals firmly believe that Colin Barnett conceded far too much in agreeing to the quantum and autonomous nature of the Royalties for Regions scheme.

Basically, Liberal Ministers and backbenchers alike have spent the last three years trying to sell the difficult message that they can’t afford to spend money in their local electorates because of our burgeoning state debt liability. Meanwhile their Nationals colleagues have been traversing the State in the comfy leather seats of the Government jet, handing out RfR branded t-shirts and balloons and granting wishes to anyone who was prepared to hail King Brendon and his royal guard.

Now that Mr McGowan has publicly doused the bridge to the Nationals with fuel and thrown a lit match, the Premier will come under extremely strong pressure from his parched Liberal subordinates to radically reduce the RfR commitment and loosen the purse strings for some Liberal-led initiatives.

At the same time, the Nationals’ bargaining power has been all but decimated by Mr McGowan’s promise to not negotiate with them to form a Government. The guts of it is that the Nationals’ Leader Brendan Grylls had everyone over a barrel at the last election – no one could form a Government without the support of the Nationals and under Mr Grylls’ leadership, no one was going to get their support without agreeing to the currently unsustainable and somewhat irresponsible partisan political cash-cow known as Royalties for Regions. This time around, he won't have the ability to coax the Liberals into a bidding war against Labor - the Nationals will have no alternative but to agree to whatever is offered.

So what will happen now?

Metropolitan Liberal MP’s will think this is a golden opportunity to claw back some money for election promises in their local areas and as of today, start vigorously vocalising that view to the Premier and his bumbling bureaucratic office.

The brash and brave Mr Grylls I described in a previous blog (Pilbara play proof Lib-Nat partnership a mistake) will be loudly banging his RfR drum in the Pilbara using any suggestion by Colin Barnett to change the scheme as the principal reason country voters - including those in the other Labor-held seats of Kimberley, Albany and Collie-Preston  - have only one choice in 2013 if they want the regional spending spree to continue. And for those country voters, it’s a compelling case.

Regardless of Colin Barnett’s newest arbitrary and bizarre morale high-ground of “not campaigning during this election year”, he is going to have to. On the back of the Labor Party’s clever declaration for all-or-nothing, the Premier will be either drawn into a head-to-head fight with Brendan Grylls on regional funding or eventually get rolled by his increasingly frustrated Party room colleagues who will be desperately hoping the new guy will listen to the concerns of Mr Barnett’s under-appreciated and repressed backbench soldiers.

The only possible way out this inevitable mess for Mr Barnett is some very unlikely charm and nimble negotiating to stitch up a formal coalition with the Nationals right now.

Senior public servants should be term of government

The Barnett Government will soon have to deal with the vexed issue of whether or not to renew the contract of one of the State’s most high profile bureaucrats – Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan - and it will cause unnecessary angst for all involved, as usual.

Mr O'Callaghan’s clever strategy to build cosy relationships with the local media has made him one of the few free-range department heads in the Government. The Premier and his Cabinet openly acknowledge that he does a pretty good job as Commissioner, but secretly would like a bit more control over his public comments without the fear of a media backlash.

However, regardless of the individual involved, the current structure and culture of our administration makes all governments vulnerable to controversy when they consider the future of any senior public servant. This is mostly because Oppositions are always hungry to invent a conspiracy theory of the betrayal of a fine public officer if the incumbent doesn’t renew a contract and just as quickly slam the Government for supporting a dud if they choose to renew. It’s largely a no-win situation for the government.

I’ll explain how this recurring ugliness could be eliminated with a fairly simple change to senior public service contracts but first, a bit of background:

In the Western Australian public service, there are fundamentally three types of employees: term of government (TOG), fixed term contract and permanent.

At present, TOG employees are very low in number and typically found only in Ministerial offices.  The people in these positions are appointed by the relevant Minister and rarely keep their jobs when a government falls. In each Ministerial office the usual roles for TOG’s include the Chief of Staff, Media Adviser, Ministerial/Parliamentary Liaison Officer and perhaps a Principal Policy Adviser or two. Importantly, the Leader of the Opposition is also afforded a number of TOG employees in his office.

The remainder of the more than 150,000 public sector employees (PSC Annual Report 2011) in Western Australia make up what is commonly referred to as the ‘bureaucracy’ and are broadly contracted as either fixed term or permanent. Regardless of their specific contract conditions, these people are usually considered “apolitical and professional” servants of the public. There is a general expectation that fixed term contracts will be renewed when they expire unless the role is redundant or the employee initiates a change.

Indeed, Premier Barnett has made a number of statements over the years that confirm his strong personal view that TOG’s are very different to their more secure cousins:

A term-of-government employee comes and goes with the government, comes and goes with the minister, and come and goes with the circumstance. A public servant cannot be moved on; that is the difference… What cannot be done under this government is the sacking of a public servant.” (Legislative Assembly, Wednesday, 19 May 2010)

While this commitment is no doubt very comforting to unionists and those employed by the public service, the Premier’s rigid  view is a double edged sword for both the Government and the tax-payers who fund the unsackable 10% of Perth’s population.

Mr Barnett’s staunch defence of the traditional “a public sector job is forever” philosophy is on balance, probably in the interest of the broader public. After all, government employees normally aren’t the highest paid in their field and high churn costs the government money in recruitment, training and lost productivity. I’ll go along with this even though the Barnett Government is currently around 20,000 public sector FTEs over its election commitment.

However, the Premier’s dogmatic implementation of this policy is problematic on two fronts – inefficiency and recalcitrance.

How do you improve the efficiency of an underperformer when they know they “cannot” be sacked? The uncomfortable truth more often than not in the public service is to promote them. Yep, you read it correctly, promote an underperformer. It is widely acknowledged that the fastest way to get a troublesome person out of your team is to move them up – clearly not ideal for the taxpayer and far from fair for those who do the right thing, work hard and don’t get promoted.

A far bigger problem caused by the no-sacking mantra occurs when a government inherits recalcitrant bureaucrats, particularly those in senior positions.

Firstly, let me put this on the record – the vast majority of public servants are excellent people doing the best they can to manage a constant fight for resources and cyclic, back-to-the-future policy changes. But occasionally, governments are faced with a Director General or other executive (on a salary of more than $150,000) who either can’t get their head around the new policies of an incoming administration or outright doesn’t want to. Then what?

The answer is fairly obvious if you concede that very senior public sector employees have to be somewhat political. It’s clear that Premier Barnett will disagree with this notion, but I contest that while bureaucrats in these positions can not act politically, they can’t be truly apolitical either –they need to be quite uniquely multi-partisan: that is, their job is to enable the political party in power, regardless of who that might be. The uncomfortable truth is that means they are often required to perform duties that advantage the government at the disadvantage of the opposition – and in that way, it’s a no-brainer that these roles have a political aspect.

And when a head of department fails (either due to lack of ability or lack of willingness) to fully embrace the policies of a new government, departments often become dysfunctional. To be fair, it’s sometimes a hell of an ask – imagine that a Director General has built a strong, trusting and friendly relationship with the Minister they have been working with for a number of years and within weeks, a new government is elected and asks that person to turn their department around and run in the opposite direction. Not easy for either the Minister or department head involved.

My proposed solution? “Term of government plus 6 months” contracts for heads of departments.

The “term of government” aspect turns the expectation of a renewal upside down – i.e. the person who accepts the role assumes that the contract will probably end in 4 years. If it does, the separation happens without turmoil or conspiracy theories, much like they do in the private sector. However, to avoid a mass exodus of knowledge and expertise at every election, the “plus 6 month” addition allows for the new Minister to meet and work with the person before offering another contract or provides for an orderly handover if there is a change.

While I understand this proposition will scare the daylights out of life-long public servants, it is made in recognition of the fact that a lot of time and political energy is wasted trying to cajole some overly comfortable, reluctant or recalcitrant heads of department to execute changes that take some time to fully implement – such as the Barnett Government’s slow-moving environmental approvals reform.

The tangled web…

Last week’s dismissal of one of the Premier’s media advisers will cause significantly more harm than good for the average taxpayer – and the journalist who leaked the offending email should be the one to lose his or her job.

Let’s get a few things straight.

Firstly, the ugly truth is that our political system is adversarial and purposefully encourages confrontation. It sometimes gets personal and that is an important part of the process that provides insight to the character of the people who are paid to represent the public.

This age-old process delivers hardened leaders and exposes others who try to climb to a position they are not competent to manage. It’s far from a perfect system, but in the main it works in the favour of the public at large.

Next, hardened leaders don’t lead alone. They require (and demand) an enormous amount of assistance and support from their staff. Both the Premier and Leader of the Opposition have a handful of what are known as “term of government” staff who are in every sense, political appointments. They do the work required to navigate the messy political system that delivers our leaders and keeps them on their toes.

The media adviser who lost his livelihood and well-earned reputation last week was doing his job. It is an ugly job but it is one that has always been done by TOG’s and will continue to be done for generations to come. His actions weren’t explicitly approved by the Premier, but that is because neither Mr Barnett nor anyone else in his position could possibly approve everything his staff have to do to keep him on top of the messy system of politics we have. This background noise is managed by a group of hard-working, often under-appreciated and evidently disposable soldiers who do so to enable him to focus on the big issues of State.

Finally and perhaps the ugliest truth of all is that this has irrevocably damaged the public’s access to important insights into the State’s current and future political leaders.

The fact is that tips and suggestions like those in question are sent to journalists every day and play a critical role in the evolution of governments. The need for whistleblowers and political mischief-makers alike to feel safe when providing information to the media is clearly in the public’s interest. The decision to publicly name the author of these communications caused a series of events that has damaged that trust.

Ultimately this means less accountable governments and oppositions who do not receive the scrutiny they need before they rise to power. Bearing in mind that some journalists have chosen to go to prison rather than disclosing their source, it’s fairly obvious to at least some in the profession that the media’s responsibility is far greater than a 2 day cheap headline and scalp of what turns out to be just a young guy doing his job.