In an astonishing display of projection, Scott Morrison has blamed the public service for the “trust deficit” in politics.
He then goes on with the most contradictory set of instructions on how they will change in order to win back the respect of “the forgotten middle class”.
Morrison wants a “diversity of viewpoints” whilst warning public servants that they must be “an enabler of government policy, not an obstacle”.
Whilst claiming to respect the public service’s professionalism, he demands that they “get on and deliver” government policy and that Ministers set the agenda rather than becoming “captive of their department” – giving birth to a new three-word slogan “respect and expect”.
Replete with Morrinsonisms about “quiet Australians”, moving outside the “Canberra bubble”, and an obscure analogy about football and farm animals (?), it is hard to decipher what he is actually trying to say in this waffling diatribe.
It sounded a lot like “shut up and do as you are told”.
He wants the public service to be “more open to outsiders” yet continues to appoint the party faithful to any position going. Perhaps we will have a Voice from the Minerals Council enshrined in the public service charter.
Considering how much this government spends on consultants and outsourcing government services, it seems like they look at the public service as the typing pool.
In the most glaring example of cognitive dissonance, Morrison claims that – like the university sector – the public service risks a “trend towards conformity” and “stale conventional wisdoms and orthodoxies”.
This from the man who invites cameras to watch him pray, the man who fondled a lump of coal in parliament, the man who insists we study How good is Western Civilisation and our Judeo-Christian heritage, the man who thinks delivering a surplus is more important than anything, and the man who is so ideologically opposed to taxation that he has hamstrung us from any type of reform.
This was Morrison spin all over – it’s not our fault there is a lack of trust, it’s theirs, and I’m the man to whip them into line.
Yawn. The headline should read Inaction Man Makes Noise.
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