His government is run along command and control lines (read Cameron Stewart’s interesting piece in last Saturday’s Australian magazine).

His media strategy is a campaign strategy.

Win the day, stay in front.  Make your opponent the issue. Control the message. Make no mistakes.

This is the goldfish in a bowl approach. Every day is new day, every week is anew week.

It works for politics, it’s hopeless for government.

Government is about implementation, not just rhetoric and across-the-despatch box abuse.

The ETS (emissions trading scheme) is the focal point of Rudd’s first term as prime minister.

It’s the self-designated ‘big test’ for the Rudd Government.

It’s a sleeper, potentially much bigger than the current fuss over asylum seekers.

It is, according to government rhetoric, the biggest single economic reform ever.

Bigger than the GST.

Very few people know how it will work and if it will achieve anything.

It sounds like something straight out of the Enron playbook.

A new round of financial trickery much like the stuff that just brought the world economy close to the precipice.

Environmentalists think it is a cop out. Too many compromises with too many big polluters.

The right, Alan Jones and the rest, are screaming about ‘world government’ and ‘loss of sovereignty’.

Increasing numbers of voters are buying the Opposition line that it is just a tax and part of Rudd’s global ambitions.

Cynics are asking if Macquarie Bank (and all the other CBD law and advisory firm spivs)  think it’s a great idea why shouldn’t we be suspicious.

In the face of all this Rudd has left a vacuum.

A vacuum he tried to fill last week with 14 pointless media interviews and a bizarre rant at the Lowy Institute.

The rant has only served to convince his opponents that they are getting under his skin, and that he is according to Jones: ‘rattled’.

What is needed is a real education program, some hard facts that might help win the debate and reassure the voters.

The Rudd Government seems strangely unwilling to do the hard work of a retail communications campaign.

Two years down the track and its media and broader political strategies seem stuck in the realms of the 33 day campaign when only the the headline matters.

Time is slipping away, if Rudd et al don’t win the implementation debate this whole thing is going to blow.

And what happens if Rudd gets his ETS through the Senate and the Copenhagen conference fails to make any progress?

Doesn’t bear thinking about. But I hope Rudd’s minders have a plan B.

In Saturday’s Australian Tim Soutphommasane had a long piece on where Rudd and Labor stand in ideological terms. Part way through reading it I started to notice that there was a lot missing from his account of the ALP’s current relationship with its traditional ideology. What was missing was any references to workers, and account of unions and the ALP’s relationship with unions, there was no critque of capitalism, no sense of the employment relationship as a source of inequality or exploitation. In fact, anything that might distinguish Labor from its opponents seemed to have been airbrushed out.

(Rudd) has asked Terry Moran, secretary of his Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to put together an advisory panel which will develop a discussion paper seeking ideas for reform by the end of this month.

Unfortunately the syntax here is confusing but I guess that it means that the advisory panel will be established by the end of the month rather than the ‘ideas’.

Sounds well-meaning and worthwhile doesn’t it?

Don’t be fooled.

For a start, Rudd’s fondness for elongated processes are part of the problem (remember the 20/20 summit and the new PM crouched on the floor looking for ideas).

Rudd is also reported as saying yesterday that he wants bold ideas and courage:

“Public servants should not shy away from big ideas or be afraid to be bold,” Mr Rudd, a former public servant and diplomat, said.

“As I have said before, we cannot afford a culture where the public service only tells the government what it wants to hear.”

Unfortunately, the last few decades of reform (a word that has been leached of meaning) have pushed the public service in precisely the opposite direction.

All the emphasis on ’serving the Minister’, ‘providing mature advice’ and ‘working as a team’ (all phrases that I regularly heard when my shortcomings were being discussed and I was being ‘counselled’) has simply underscored the old LBJ maxim ‘go along to get ahead’ which is at the very heart of the ethos of the senior ranks of the Canberra bureaucracy.

And this kind of culture only re-inforces the paradoxical effects of tenure. When people build their careers around a specific set of largely non-transferable skills promotion through the ranks means they have ever more to lose and they consequently become more timid as they climb the ladder. Tenure undermines boldness and courage. The very opposite of its much touted justification.

Most senior public servants have virtually no real career experience outside the public service, and often their experience within the public service is also sharply constrained to a few Departments (with preference given to people with central agency experience e.g. treasury and prime minister and cabinet). Unsurprisingly, the range of viewpoints on basic questions (not policy details) is very narrow at the top. Which I guess is what prompts Rudd’s call for fresh thinking.

Bold ideas and courage come from a breadth of experience and confidence, and that takes careers that span senior roles in a number of fields. The senior public service is practically devoid of people with real experience in business, media, academia, the NGO sector, and so on. So without this internal diversity and cross-fertilisation, where will the ideas come from? Outside consultants? Summits? And like their parliamentary masters, senior public servants are still overwhelmingly white males. A bit more noticeable in the age of Obama.

So Rudd’s panels, discussion papers and what all won’t make a bit of difference unless he finds a way of breaking open the cloistered world inhabited by his loyal but unimaginative and fearful advisers. Stale minds and dull cultures don’t just suddenly become bold and creative.

As time goes by, and given the legalistic approach we take to these things, our award system starts to take on some of the characteristics of an archeological dig with layers of regulation piled on top of each other. Faced with this growing pile, governments routinely hit upon the idea of a thorough-going overhaul. Root and branch stuff.

Award modernisation (or simplification) is a highly desirable and worthwhile exercise. That’s why the Hawke Government had a go at it and why the Rudd Government is also having a go. But it’s not easy, as today’s angst ridden stories demonstrate.

As awards grow in number, and matters covered, the worse it is for business from an administrative perspective. The fewer awards the better. But fewer awards mean that more employers, and employees, are squeezed into a strait jacket of conditions and wage rates that might not be commercially viable in many circumstances. Simpler awards can mean less flexible awards, and that’s not good for business either.

But there’s no obvious or easy way out of the problem that awards pose for a modern, flexible, competitive economy. If there was, awards would not have to be modernised every decade or two. John Howard hoped that awards would just wither away and be replaced by a set of minimum conditions underpinning individual and enterprise bargaining. That solution was rejected as too ‘extreme’ by the Australian electorate. So we are back with trying to make ‘capitalist wage setting with Australian characteristics’ work as well as possible.

Awards may be a great way of protecting workers, but they do not fit easily into today’s world and its demands for some magical pudding of simple and flexible regulation. And award modernisation will be with us for as long as there are awards. In another 20 years, another ALP government will launch upon the task of making awards work.

Annabel Crabb wrote it up in the SMH Thursday (In Gough we Trust) which prompted the Australian to ask me to do an op-ed for Friday’s paper (Whitlam’s Grandkids“)

Gerard Henderson also gave it a mention on Insiders this morning (Sunday).

Changes of government typically result in a flood of new members into the House of Representatives, especially, of course, on the winner’s side. After winning the election in 2007, 32 ALP members sat, and spoke, in the House of Representatives, for the first time, 39 per cent of Labor’s representation in the lower house. The last time Labor had been returned to office, in 1983, 27 new ALP members (36 per cent of Labor’s lower house contingent) entered the House for the first time. Comparing these two cohorts of new members can provide some interesting insights into the evolution of Australia’s longest-living political party. (The full draft study - Download Rudd’s class of 2007)

In 1998, ANU historian Paul Pickering published a comparison of the intakes of new members from the Liberal National Party coalition after its two big election wins in 1975 and 1996, including a detailed examination of the first speeches of incoming government MPs. Pickering argued that these first speeches were valuable because they showed us how these members chose to reveal themselves to the world. How they chose to reveal themselves provided, in turn, valuable insights into the changing face and composition of the Liberal and National parties. These new members represented the seats won with the help of the “Howard battlers”, outer suburban bluecollar workers who deserted the ALP, much like the Reagan Democrat phenomenon in the USA a decade and a half earlier. The new LNP members were far more likely to have attended government-run schools then their predecessors and they were loud champions of small business and family values. They were loyal to their own champion, John Howard, to the last.

The central argument of this paper is that the new ALP MPs of 2007 are the beneficiaries and bearers of the Whitlam legacy. In their first speeches there is the occasional, and mostly desultory, acknowledgement of the importance of good economic management, but what really motivates the new MPs in terms of ideology and policy is a continuing passion for the agenda that Whitlam largely created for the national parliament: health, education, community-building and social justice. There is virtually no signs of a passion for a further instalment of the economic reforms that were the dominant feature of the Hawke / Keating years.

Nor is there any talk of socialism or democratic socialism. In 1983, Gerry Hand, a leader of the left, future Cabinet minister and new member for the safe ALP seat of Melbourne, used his first speech to tell the Parliament that capitalism was an “immoral” and “corrupt” system. Several new MPs also opined that Australians had voted for “socialism”, ““democratic socialism” or “socialist solutions” at the 1983 election. Similar pronouncements in 2007 are simply unimaginable.

Instead, the first speeches of the class of 2007 are populated with ideas that strongly resonate with Whitlam’s concept of “positive equality”. These new MPs talk about their hopes for greater social justice in the sense of a ‘fair go’ and of government helping to remove barriers and create opportunities for individuals and communities. The ideology of the class of 2007 is middle class and aspirational, but it also appeals to the values and ideas that are seen as traditionally, and especially, Australian; that is, aspiration within an egalitarian ethos and policy framework.

The rhetoric in the 2007 first speeches is also strongly small ‘c’ conservative. Labor is the party of traditional Australian values (the ‘fair go’, mateship and family life) and, above all, social cohesion. The 1983 intake was often savage about the events of 1975 and the divisive role of Malcolm Fraser in Whitlam’s dismissal and the policies pursued during Fraser’s term in office. The 2007 intake has been just as savage on the perceived divisiveness of the Howard Government, and even more eloquent in seeking to position the ALP as the true protector and preserver of genuine Australian values.

A second concern of this paper is the issue of the diversity, or lack of it, of ALP MPs. In recent years, there has been growing comment and criticism about the declining diversity in the social backgrounds of Australian MPs, including those from the ALP. Arguments about lack of diversity have two main components. First, the MPs are seen as being overwhelmingly from middle class backgrounds because of their education levels and choice of occupation; and, second, it has been noted that MPs are increasingly being drawn from a newly emergent professional political class, with a growing number of ALP MPs having worked as political advisers, union officials and party officials before entering parliament. This study confirms, in general terms, the efficacy of those criticisms, but suggests that we need to look more closely at their biographies and life experiences than just fairly crude indicators like education and political experience.

This study also points to a continuing dearth of genuine business experience in the ranks of the class of 2007, and, perhaps surprisingly, a lack of significant experience in Australia’s large not-for-profit sector. Even after the ALP’s economic reforms during the Hawke and Keating Governments, and with the absence of any sense of class conflict in the party’s contemporary policies and rhetoric, Labor still seems neither to have sought nor attracted more than a handful of new MPs with any meaningful business experience and none that could claim to have had a significant career in business before entering Parliament. Similarly, even given the apparent ideological affinity with much of the not-for-profit sector, Labor does not seem to have been successful in attracting candidates with high profile involvement in this growing sector of the economy and civil society.

Finally, this paper is also concerned with what these first speeches can reveal about the relationship between the ALP and unions. A distinctive feature of these speeches in 2007 is the lavish praise and expressions of gratitude they contain for the campaign efforts of the trade union movement, and for many individual unions and unionists. This praise and gratitude is often supplemented with rhetorical efforts to position trade unions, like the ALP, as community-based organisations defending the rights of ordinary workers and protecting key Australian values like the “fair go”. The praise and gratitude is not surprising given the large investment in marginal seat campaigning made by unions in the 2007 campaign, but it is a marked departure from the first speeches of ALP members in 1983 when there was little attention paid to unions, even though the formal ALP-ACTU accord was an important part of the ALP’s election strategy and of the Hawke Government (1983 – 1991).

Turnbull’s leadership is close to being dead in the water. Turnbull has not:

• exerted authority over his side of politics, the primitive rantings of Wilson Tuckey are just the outward manifestation of a deeper problem
• offered the Australian public any strong sense of his moral character and political purpose, instead Tony Abbott has staked out this territory with his book which only served to put Turnbull’s deficiencies in this area in greater relief. Having read Annabel Crabbe’s recent Quarterly Essay on Turnbull, I’m still none the wiser about his ambitions beyond a life-long desire to succeed. Crabbe’s essay emphasises that Turnbull has been successful through taking risks (and bullying) but at the moment his leadership is characterised more by policy timidity and laziness. Turnbull’s big gamble was utegate and he lost that through a mixture of tactical impatience and lack of diligence in testing his evidence before he sallied forth and risked all.
• and, consequently, he has not been able to put forward a credible political alternative. His efforts lack a credible structure – and that makes them ineffective and makes him appear like flim flam to the electorate.

As the wasted weeks go by, Turnbull is looking more like a Peacock or a Beazley, then a Howard or a Rudd. He is plausible enough but not hungry enough to do the really hard work. Turnbull’s big problem is that once the swingers, who vote on a mix of intuition and emotion, decide you are not the real deal, then you’re always going to fall short.

Inquisitr: “The Australian Minister for Censorship has today confirmed what I’ve been reporting for nearly two years: online adult games including Second Life will be banned in Australia.”

SMH: “The Federal Government has now set its sights on gamers, promising to use its internet censorship regime to block websites hosting and selling video games that are not suitable for 15 year olds.”

At Senate estimates hearings on friday, it was obvious that Grech had decided to take the path less travelled and tell the Parliament and the public the truth as he understood it. His demeanour spoke of stress, intense discomfort, because he knew that he was about to break the unspoken public service code of silence and acquiesence.

Government senators and a senior Treasury official, all obviously well-briefed that Grech was a bomb ready to explode, tried desperately to protect Rudd and Swan from this rare, and very inconvenient, display of public service integrity.

Grech is a hero, or he ought to be, and an unlikely martyr. His career has been shredded, let’s hope his health and personal well-being do not suffer too much.

The Grech episode points again to the reality that there is something rotten, and delusional, at the heart of our political system.

Update (13.53pm): It’s got murkier and bizarre – ABC & the Punch.

Update (15.20pm): Gretch’s ‘more complicated role’

The Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty is expected to make a statement this afternoon concerning dramatic developments in the Utegate affair.

It follows a raid this morning on the home of the Treasury official at the heart of the controversy, Godwin Grech.

Mr Grech has been questioned by the federal police about a fake email which linked Kevin Rudd to attempts to help a Brisbane car dealer, John Grant, obtain finance.

Senior sources believe that Mr Grech’s role in the affair is more complicated than previously thought.

Update (16.20pm): The latest suggestion / rumour is that Grech faked the email himself – which just seems so bizarre. But it has been a weird day (in a genuine Hunter S. Thompson) sort of a way. People who have worked with Grech say that he is a straight up and down, can do sort of public servant – yet, he is at the centre of a truly mind bogglingly absurd episode.

Update: Tues 6.41am From Michelle Grattan: “The emotional Grech looked extremely convincing when he appeared before a Senate committee last week”. He put in, what we may see as, an extraordinary acting performance.

Update 24 June 8.52am: Godwin Gretch man of mystery and more

Update 25 June: Here is the editorial from the Australian which covers the point I was trying to make in this post (only in a much better and more comprehensive way) and it is one of the few sensible, and useful, things to appear in the media on this ‘affair’ so far:

IT will come as little surprise to learn that The Australian is in favour of public service leaks. The more the better. Whistleblowing serves the public interest, increasing transparency, enforcing accountability and protecting democracy. More often, however, it is senior politicians from both sides, and not bureaucrats, who would have most to lose from leak inquiries. Sir Humphrey Appleby’s view that the ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top is as true in the real world as in the fictitious corridors of Yes Minister.

It remains to be seen what the Australian Federal Police inquiry into Godwin Grech and the infamous faked email uncovers. As a matter of principle, charged as they are with responsibility to advise governments impartially, it is not the role of public servants to serve as operatives for either side of politics.

Such conduct, however, is a separate matter from legitimate whistleblowing. Leaks to journalists or opposition politicians drawing attention to corruption, gross incompetence, abuse of powers or other conduct against the public interest are important in the functioning of a vigorous democracy. Public servants have been passing sensitive information to trusted journalists and parliamentarians for generations. In fact, it would be difficult to believe that Kevin Rudd himself did not benefit from leaks in opposition, notably in relation to the AWB kickbacks scandal.

Unfortunately, political witch-hunts are nothing new either. One of the most disgraceful examples in the Howard years concerned former Customs officer Allan Kessing, who was accused of leaking details of security weaknesses at Sydney airport to this newspaper. Mr Kessing was hunted down by the Australian Federal Police, charged and convicted under Section 70 of the Commonwealth Crimes Act. He has continually asserted his innocence. Section 70, which carries a maximum penalty of two years’ jail, prohibits unauthorised disclosures by current or former federal public servants. Its repressiveness would test the courage of any whistleblower.

The Rudd government was elected on a welcome promise of “cultural change across the bureaucracy to promote a pro-disclosure attitude”. It is yet to make good, despite some progress, and the proposed whistleblower laws it is considering are disappointing. Instead of protecting those who approach the media in the public interest, they would only protect whistleblowers who approach the public sector hierarchy, unless exposing an immediate, serious threat to public health or safety.

As the investigation into the fake memo proceeds, the government and the AFP need to avoid any appearance of political interference. After just a few days, it is notable that the degree of information about the investigation contrasts with the blanket of secrecy about the deaths of five people after an explosion on a boat off Ashmore Reef in April. Mr Turnbull must of course co-operate with legitimate AFP inquiries but he also must be scrupulous about protecting any sources who may have assisted the Coalition.

At least 300 federal and state laws contain secrecy provisions for no good reason other than the Orwellian excuse that the laws provide for secrecy. Judicious leaks that expose vital information in the public interest are essential to avoid the encroachment of the secret state, to which too many authorities aspire.