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July 06, 2005
Accoerding to Michelle Grattan, Andrew Podger, a retired Canberra bureaucrat, observed that:
"I remain uneasy about public servants trying to hide their legal authority and responsibility and to refuse to hear requests for asylum they would have had to consider; and about senior public servants and military officers continuing to maintain in the Parliament the possibility that children were thrown overboard many weeks after Air Vice-Marshal Houston's advice (that children were not thrown overboard) was given and known to be given."
Such conduct does not imply a degree of independence by the Canberra bureaucracy with a need to be responsive to the Minister's interests. It indicates that the public interest has pushed aside in favour of protecting the partisan interest of the government of the day.
That is the old fashioned view of the bureaucracy--the one in which frank and fearless advice is offered.The contemporary view is the political one in which the bureaucracy is there to than please the government of the day.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 6, 2005 04:55 PM
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