A HOW TO on advising/manipulating a Miniscule - 
Via the Mandarin:
The art of advising a minister and other department secretary duties
![[Image: Parliament-house.jpg]](https://www.themandarin.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Parliament-house.jpg)
Dr Don Russell shares his tips for helping ministers serve the Australian people. (Image: Adobe/Rafael Ben-Ari)
![[Image: DonRussell_size400x600-200x300.jpg]](https://www.themandarin.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/DonRussell_size400x600-200x300.jpg)
Dr Don Russell’s book ‘Leadership’ was published in May.
Speaking about his new book ‘Leadership’, which offers insights into the evolving machination of government and its relationship with the public sector, Dr Don Russell shares his tips for those senior public servants committed to helping ministers serve the Australian people.
In terms of the public sector, Dr Don Russell has been around the block. Over a long and varied career as a mandarin, spanning back to the Hawke-Keating years (a time he refers to as the ‘golden age of public policy’) and then again during the 2000s when leading mega-departments at the federal and state level, he understands the unique political and structural pressures modern-day secretaries face.
Russell observes that compared to ministers of today, politicians of the 1980s and 90s, had a very different attitude towards the public sector and notions about how the APS could be used to advance their vision for reform or other significant public interest agenda. As a result, there is not only a different sentiment in Canberra towards the APS (which can be described as a ‘general level of antagonism’ and perception that the APS is a problem to be addressed) but the structure of ministerial offices has also transformed.
Today rank and file ministerial advisers pad out senior positions in a ministerial office, often with ambitions of one day sitting in the hot seat themselves. Russell says these factionally aligned staffers can do good work, but they also focus on tending to the immediate issues with specialties in political tactics, communications or speechwriting .
Many are well networked and useful to their minister. The best of them are trusted and can anticipate problems. Few of them are capable of harnessing the strengths of the public service to benefit the minister — that’s what public servants seconded to ministerial offices used to provide in the public policy golden era.
Russell adds, even those former public servants who find themselves working in a ministerial office today ‘often carry scares from times when they have felt misled or betrayed’.
This is the climate that today’s department secretaries face and here are Russell’s tips on how those secretaries can survive and shine through it.
The policy wonk and the political warrior
Conflict is the nature of politics and any department secretary worth their salt will understand this harsh reality for their political bosses – the ministers who find themselves leading and oftentimes sharing a department secretary with other ministers.
Russell says if a secretary can understand the unkind and cut-throat world of the elected official, this is the first step in gaining a minister’s trust.
Should a secretary be afforded the opportunity to build a trusting relationship with the minister and their advisers, then they can introduce thinking about the border contexts of the department and help the minister proactively control their legacy (in policy terms).
“An office overly staffed with people experienced in conflict, crisis management and short-term political responsiveness will tend to approach everything from that perspective,” Russell says.
“Building a network of advice around ministers that restricts their capacity to think beyond the immediate does them no favours. It also weakens governments and certainly undermines the political process in delivering for the community.”
Trust is also an essential ingredient for secretaries in their relationship with a minister because it creates space for robust and honest disagreement with the decision-maker, Russell says.
He describes a strong desire to avoid adversarial relationships with the public service as one of the defining features of the Hawke-Keating years, where the level of trust and openness extended to sharing ‘where the bodies were buried’ in the department.
Be unafraid of big departments
The trend of mega-departments, certainly at the federal level, has occurred over successive governments both NLP and Labor. Under the Morrison government, 18 departments were merged into 14 entities in 2019, which resulted in the heads of five secretaries rolling.
When Russell was asked by the Gillard government to take on the role of secretary of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in 2011, that department would transform another two times to take on additional portfolios covering tertiary education and then climate change.
Even state governments have followed suit, with Russell handpicked by former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill to head the premier’s department in 2017. In that capacity he chaired the Senior Management Council and the State Emergency Management Committee, as well as playing an active performance assessment role of his chief executive peers.
“There are important scale economics with large departments which partly explains mergers,” Russell says.
“The more significant reason is that all bureaucracies tend to form silos, and those silos become citadels when they are located in different departments protected by separate ministers.”
Another important function of merging departments, Russell says, is stamping out turf battles and dispelling the notion that intransigence can be rewarded.
He adds that the opportunity secretaries have leading mammoth bureaucracies gives them more authority than they realise.
“The attraction to a prime minister or premier of merging departments is that it gives them a powerful apparatus to link those parts of the government that need to cooperate to achieve goals,” Russell says.
“If the prime minister or premier has high confidence in the secretary who is chosen to lead the merged department, then this is an additional attraction.”
Work well with PM&C or be prepared to fall on your sword
According to Russell, being capable of working effectively with the head of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) is essential to surviving as a secretary.
“The prime minister’s power to hire and fire creates an implied dotted line from [the head of PM&C] to all secretaries,” he says.
Russell says that the current government’s 2019 response to the Thodey Review, which laid out its APS reform agenda, shifted focus to APS accountability and service delivery. One of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s signature solutions was to put ‘great store’ in the Secretaries Board and provide it with funding to execute his reforms.
Front of mind for politicians is that secretaries wear responsibility for the blunders of their department, and that none of the blowback comes to them. Russell says this can be daunting for a lifetime public servant who has spent their career reporting to somebody else.
“Taking on the role of secretary means that, for the first time in their career, public servants can find themselves entirely responsible for any position they take,” he says.
“It is true that in a world with high expectations concerning the performance of secretaries, and where success is highly subjective and linked to a secretary’s ability to work effectively with ministers, prime ministers and the secretary of the PM&C, it is inevitable that there are going to be casualties often in situations where the secretary has no real understanding of why their services are no longer required.”
MTF...P2
Via the Mandarin:
The art of advising a minister and other department secretary duties
Dr Don Russell shares his tips for helping ministers serve the Australian people. (Image: Adobe/Rafael Ben-Ari)
Dr Don Russell’s book ‘Leadership’ was published in May.
Speaking about his new book ‘Leadership’, which offers insights into the evolving machination of government and its relationship with the public sector, Dr Don Russell shares his tips for those senior public servants committed to helping ministers serve the Australian people.
In terms of the public sector, Dr Don Russell has been around the block. Over a long and varied career as a mandarin, spanning back to the Hawke-Keating years (a time he refers to as the ‘golden age of public policy’) and then again during the 2000s when leading mega-departments at the federal and state level, he understands the unique political and structural pressures modern-day secretaries face.
Russell observes that compared to ministers of today, politicians of the 1980s and 90s, had a very different attitude towards the public sector and notions about how the APS could be used to advance their vision for reform or other significant public interest agenda. As a result, there is not only a different sentiment in Canberra towards the APS (which can be described as a ‘general level of antagonism’ and perception that the APS is a problem to be addressed) but the structure of ministerial offices has also transformed.
Today rank and file ministerial advisers pad out senior positions in a ministerial office, often with ambitions of one day sitting in the hot seat themselves. Russell says these factionally aligned staffers can do good work, but they also focus on tending to the immediate issues with specialties in political tactics, communications or speechwriting .
Many are well networked and useful to their minister. The best of them are trusted and can anticipate problems. Few of them are capable of harnessing the strengths of the public service to benefit the minister — that’s what public servants seconded to ministerial offices used to provide in the public policy golden era.
Russell adds, even those former public servants who find themselves working in a ministerial office today ‘often carry scares from times when they have felt misled or betrayed’.
This is the climate that today’s department secretaries face and here are Russell’s tips on how those secretaries can survive and shine through it.
The policy wonk and the political warrior
Conflict is the nature of politics and any department secretary worth their salt will understand this harsh reality for their political bosses – the ministers who find themselves leading and oftentimes sharing a department secretary with other ministers.
Russell says if a secretary can understand the unkind and cut-throat world of the elected official, this is the first step in gaining a minister’s trust.
Should a secretary be afforded the opportunity to build a trusting relationship with the minister and their advisers, then they can introduce thinking about the border contexts of the department and help the minister proactively control their legacy (in policy terms).
“An office overly staffed with people experienced in conflict, crisis management and short-term political responsiveness will tend to approach everything from that perspective,” Russell says.
“Building a network of advice around ministers that restricts their capacity to think beyond the immediate does them no favours. It also weakens governments and certainly undermines the political process in delivering for the community.”
Trust is also an essential ingredient for secretaries in their relationship with a minister because it creates space for robust and honest disagreement with the decision-maker, Russell says.
He describes a strong desire to avoid adversarial relationships with the public service as one of the defining features of the Hawke-Keating years, where the level of trust and openness extended to sharing ‘where the bodies were buried’ in the department.
Quote:“Both men were quite comfortable with departments having full access to what was going on. They were quite comfortable with the notion that they themselves could still drive the agenda because they equipped themselves with an expert office, with people in it who understood public policy and could actually work with authority with bureaucracy.
“If you’ve got an experienced public servants in the [minister’s] office who can understand what it is the department is saying and make sure that it’s properly understood, that reduces tension and uncertainty.”
Be unafraid of big departments
The trend of mega-departments, certainly at the federal level, has occurred over successive governments both NLP and Labor. Under the Morrison government, 18 departments were merged into 14 entities in 2019, which resulted in the heads of five secretaries rolling.
When Russell was asked by the Gillard government to take on the role of secretary of the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research in 2011, that department would transform another two times to take on additional portfolios covering tertiary education and then climate change.
Even state governments have followed suit, with Russell handpicked by former South Australian premier Jay Weatherill to head the premier’s department in 2017. In that capacity he chaired the Senior Management Council and the State Emergency Management Committee, as well as playing an active performance assessment role of his chief executive peers.
“There are important scale economics with large departments which partly explains mergers,” Russell says.
“The more significant reason is that all bureaucracies tend to form silos, and those silos become citadels when they are located in different departments protected by separate ministers.”
Another important function of merging departments, Russell says, is stamping out turf battles and dispelling the notion that intransigence can be rewarded.
He adds that the opportunity secretaries have leading mammoth bureaucracies gives them more authority than they realise.
“The attraction to a prime minister or premier of merging departments is that it gives them a powerful apparatus to link those parts of the government that need to cooperate to achieve goals,” Russell says.
“If the prime minister or premier has high confidence in the secretary who is chosen to lead the merged department, then this is an additional attraction.”
Work well with PM&C or be prepared to fall on your sword
According to Russell, being capable of working effectively with the head of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) is essential to surviving as a secretary.
“The prime minister’s power to hire and fire creates an implied dotted line from [the head of PM&C] to all secretaries,” he says.
Russell says that the current government’s 2019 response to the Thodey Review, which laid out its APS reform agenda, shifted focus to APS accountability and service delivery. One of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s signature solutions was to put ‘great store’ in the Secretaries Board and provide it with funding to execute his reforms.
Front of mind for politicians is that secretaries wear responsibility for the blunders of their department, and that none of the blowback comes to them. Russell says this can be daunting for a lifetime public servant who has spent their career reporting to somebody else.
“Taking on the role of secretary means that, for the first time in their career, public servants can find themselves entirely responsible for any position they take,” he says.
“It is true that in a world with high expectations concerning the performance of secretaries, and where success is highly subjective and linked to a secretary’s ability to work effectively with ministers, prime ministers and the secretary of the PM&C, it is inevitable that there are going to be casualties often in situations where the secretary has no real understanding of why their services are no longer required.”
MTF...P2