The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet is fairly clear in its guidelines on caretaker conventions applying to the public service once Parliament is dissolved. “Officials need to exercise judgment if they are scheduled to speak at public functions during the caretaker period. In the case of controversial issues, officials should decline invitations to speak.”
The head of NBN Co, Ziggy Switkowski, most certainly “spoke” on a controversial issue when he published a piece in the Fairfax press defending NBN Co’s pursuit, using the Australian Federal Police, of whistleblowers who had revealed major failings by the company. That pursuit resulted on extraordinary raids by the AFP on Labor’s Stephen Conroy and Labor staff.
Switkowski’s justification for his pursuit of whistleblowers is part of what Crikey has previously shown to be a dedicated campaign by governments — and especially the current Coalition government — against whistleblowers, often using national security as an excuse. But his article was no simple breach of caretaker conventions. PM&C notes about the rules “their application in individual cases requires judgment and common sense. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) is able to provide information and advice to agencies, but responsibility for observing the conventions ultimately rests with agency heads.”
That is, Switkowski is specifically charged with responsibility for observing the conventions. As chair of NBN Co, he, along with his CEO, is required to enforce the conventions. He is required to set the standard for his staff. He is required to be the exemplar and to apply his judgement to ensure that his staff observe the rules. Nor is Switkowski a public service neophyte. He was CEO of Telstra while it was a majority-owned government company, for five years.
Instead, Switkowski deliberately breached the conventions. We know it was deliberate because the head of PM&C, Dr Martin Parkinson, investigated the circumstances in which the article was published and learnt that NBN Co’s portfolio department, Communications, had expressly told him that the article would breach caretaker conventions. Communications complied fully with the conventions — the department contacted PM&C and asked for advice on the article. PM&C said that the article breached the conventions. Communications “strongly” conveyed those views to NBN Co, and noted they applied to the chairman every bit as much as anyone else in the agency.
The word “strongly” in Parkinson’s letter is significant. Such adverbs aren’t included randomly by senior public servants; their inclusion is meant to convey a message. The word suggests that Communications bureaucrats repeatedly, or forcefully, or both, advised NBN Co they were breaching caretaker. Still, Switkowski went ahead and deliberately breached the conventions.
It’s by far the most egregious breach of caretaker I can recall, notwithstanding Switkowski’s laughable “staff morale” excuse. I’ve seen junior officers overly excitedly respond to requests from minister’s offices during campaigns and get chipped for it. I’ve seen departmental secretaries regretfully ring the shadow minister to explain that someone screwed up and might have inadvertently committed a minor breach of the conventions. I’ve never heard of an agency head deliberately ignoring a PM&C warning and breaching them.
The conventions, however, have no legal force. They “are neither legally binding nor hard and fast rules,” PM&C tells agencies. There are no repercussions for Switkowski. That’s exactly why he has to resign, or be dismissed by the government. If there are not serious consequences for deliberately breaching caretaker conventions, they become a dead letter. In future, agency heads will be able to rely on the precedent of Switkowski deliberately and egregiously breaching conventions to justify assisting one side or another during an election campaign.
The return of Parkinson to the public service was meant to be, in part, a signal by Malcolm Turnbull that the relentless politicisation of the public service under the Abbott government was over. A failure to punish Switkowski would not merely undo that, it would enable partisanship and politicisation at the highest levels of the APS, and take us ever closer to a wholly political Washington-style public service. Unless anyone think that’s a good outcome, Switkowski needs to go, and go now.
It is interesting to research Ziggy’s career. After a brief, but commendable 6-year stint as a post-doctoral theoretical nuclear astrophysicist (yep! real stardust!), he embarked on a commercial career that could only be described as a catalog of failures due to personal over-reach.
He was a senior executive in Kodak in the US and Australia over the period in the ’80s and ’90s of its decline due to not seizing its opportunities in digital technology. His stints at Optus and Telstra were similarly undistinguished, after which, under Howard’s tutelage, he went on to strenuously advocate a 50-station nuclear-powered Australia (note his research area which has nothing to do with nuclear power). He rushed into the media the day after Fukushima to declare that there was nothing to worry about.
Considering that the critical issue with the NBN is the technical matter of the “future-proof” FTTP compared with the already obsolete, Kodak-like FTTN that Turnbull has foisted upon us, it is ironic that an erstwhile physicist should be its chief advocate.
It seems that long ago Ziggy switched from studying stardust to retailing bull dust. Like that boxes of old photos I’ve got in the attic, I think that his career needs a lot more exposure.
Well said. Imagine someone like Ziggy being appointed to a large business organisation in Germany or Japan. It does illustrate why we are hurtling to the bottom of the industrial world.
Let’s not smear Ziggy for thinking like a scientist. It is precisely because he did see the damage done by the hysteria over Three Mile Island, and the destruction to the local economy and communities by the overreaction at Chernobyl, that he was on track to warn us not to overreact about Fukushima. However he was shouted down by the gleeful crowds chanting, they’all gunna die, they’all gonna die!.
The malice was much louder in Japan, where Tokyo was terrorised to the point where to the point that people were dying of fear. The Japanese Prime Minister had to be seen to do something, so he ordered an unnecessary evacuation, against the advice of his experts. A thousand people died from the evacuation. Not a single soul had died from radiation, those thousand people were killed by vindictive malice.
As a scientist, Ziggy can see that any concept of baseload renewables is unachievable, so he is one of the few voices with the courage to point out how we must decarbonise: nuclear electricity.
Don’t pay any attention to those people who would chant off, y’all gunna die, y’all gonna die! We have scientists to advise us, we just have to listen, use our brains and choose between what must be done and what is nonsense.
Ziggy is not a scientist’s bootlace and if you think a few tonnes of missing nuclear fuel is a joke I do not. Nah Ziggy gets the gig because he pretends to be a nuclear expert, when he is not. His record of leadership is catastrophic and his companies fail. Only a fool would put him in charge of anything important, but then Tony Turnbull et al???
Spot on, Jedimaster.
With a CV which reads like a who’s who of corporate failure, Ziggy is the sort of CEO you get when you can’t get a real CEO- perhaps because your NBN is bullshit to the node.
By God, Ziggy Stardust’s well-connected, politically though. One of John Howard’s darlings. No consolation, however, to all those former Kodak workers who lost their jobs due to the Zig’s dud leadership.
Or to those Telstra workers whose jobs have gone offshore. But, then, the Zigmeister’s career has always been about his appeal to the right. OK, he may dazzle ’em all with his theoretical nuclear astrophysics but it’s his far right mindset that keeps him in work.
Came on here to write a comment about Ziggy’s underwhelming commercial career but there’s no point in repeating what Jedimaster has so eloquently espoused, except to say that a standard reading of the ‘Peter Principle’ suggests that a person is promoted to their level of incompetence and then dwells there forever. How on earth did this clown get promoted to such high levels on not one but 4 occasions?
I am much more cynical than you. I am sure that the relevant department, Communications, did respond strongly advising Dr Ziggy not to publish the article, which I read at the time and noted his calling whistleblowers to be thieves.
With that advice clearly on the record Communications looks to have done its duty. Dr Ziggy goes ahead and publishes and lo and behold the head of PM&C later finds that he was advised not to – even “strongly” advised. So it was all down to naughty Dr Ziggy – no collusion here!
Bernard, appreciate your scrutiny of this issue. Switkowski has clearly evidenced his considered contempt of accountability. In doing so he further weakens both parliamentary and public service practice.
Abbott and Morrison et al in Opposition began a process of normalizing like practices whereby public servants were drawn closer. In Government Morrison directly engaged public servants in political behaviours. The consequence being we the people progressively, continue to disengage and lose belief in our parliament, our nation and our leadership.
Ziggy has to go. More reason to want to see a Labor government installed. Was he the chair of Telstra when the failed Trujillo and amigos were recruited?
Ziggy is a classic example of someone getting ahead by continuing to turn up, regardless of his ineffectual work, and in this case flouting of a necessary convention.
I want to see him gone, and the Head of Treasury, political appointments to jobs far too important for politics.
A conservative stooge – not far removed from Grech.