February 1997 TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD, MP
ADDRESS TO THE INNOVATIONS EXPO DINNER
PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA
E& OE
Thank you very much. To my colleague Peter Reith, the Minister for Industrial Relations and also the
Minister that assists me in public service matters; to David Jull; Rhonda Parker from Western Australia;
Rosemary Varty; Mrs Catherine Harris, the Director of the Affirmative Action Agency; Dr Peter
Shergold; our overseas guests, ladies and gentlemen.
This is the first occasion on which these awards have been presented and it does mark a very special
night for all of those people involved in and committed to the notion of the highest possible quality and
the most professional public service that we can devise in this country. And it's an opportunity for me
as the head of the Government of Australia, as the Prime Minister of Australia, to say how much all of
us in the political arm of Government respect, admire and appreciate the aggregate contribution of
those who work in the public service.
Coming as I do of a private enterprise, small business background and bringing into to politics all of my
deeply held views about the importance of the role and the size of the private sector, I've encountered
through my political life those who make the rather outdated but automatic assumption, still in the
minds of many, that there is a natural antagonism and tension between the private and public sectors in
the governance of Australia. I think that is an outdated notion, it is antiquated and it does belong to an
age and a time that is far behind us. Because the world in which we all live and we all operate and we
all try and govern to the best of our ability our nation has changed so much over the past ten or
years. Globalisation of the economy in the economic environment in which we operate has altered
forever the sort of pressures and the sort of circumstances in which both the private and public sectors
interact with each other. It is no longer an option for any part of the governance of this country to be
inefficient. It is not possible to shield oneself from competitive pressures. It is not a question of
choosing whether or not the public sector is efficient or competitive. It is a question of really choosing
the way in which you become efficient or competitive and indeed the pace at which you become
efficient and competitive.
There are some delightfu~ l notions of the interaction between the public service and the political arms of
Government. They have been, for all of us, immortalised in that magnificent English television series
' Yes Minister' which, of course, encapsulates for so many in a humorous way those marvellous
interactions. I still remember that marvellous story that was told of one of my predecessors, Malcolm
Fraser, and the we used to then call them permanent heads, we now call them departmental
secretaries I don't know why! And it is of his departmental head or secretary, Geoffrey Yeend, may I
say one of the very finest public servants that Australia has produced in the time that I've been in
Australian politics. And it is said of Geoffrey Yeend and Malcolm Fraser that they indeed both watched
' Yes Minist' the only difference was that they laughed in different places! And in a sense that did
say it all and that's the humorous side.
The Australian Public Service has changed enormously over the last 20 years. I've been in federal
politics now, it'll be 23 years in May of this year. The public service that I first interacted with in 1976
when I was a very junior minister in a new government was a public service that was still very heavily
influenced by, I think, the traditions of the 1950s and 60s and 70s where there was a very long pattern
of very high profile public servants who stamped their own particular brand and their own particular
authority and their own particular approach. They had interacted with a government between 1972 and
1975 that had done things differently from their predecessors but there was still essentially a continuity.
The public service that I now interact with and respect and endeavour to work with and, I think,
successfuilly in a professional fashion is very different from the public service that I last remember in
1983 when the Labor Party was elected and began its very long period in office until March of last
year. When I say it's different I don't say that critically, I say that objectively because the world in
which it operates is different. I think we have changed our attitudes, I think there is a greater
willingness on the part of the public service without in any way sacrificing the essential thread of being
apolitical there's a greater desire on the part of the public service to try and implement what are the
accepted political goals and the accepted political mandate of the government of the day.
I know when I first became Prime Minister and I had a discussion with Michael Keating, who I'm
happy to say is here tonight, who'd served a previous Coalition government with great loyalty and
distinction and had also risen to the head of the Prime Minister's department under my predecessor
Paul Keating. He made the observation to me that he thought one of the great changes that had
occurred was the willingness of the public service without in any way sacrificing its essential apoliticism
to try and work effectively towards the political goals of the government of the day. It's always a
delicate balance. You do need to preserve a tradition of being apolitical. It is important to have a great
reservoir of people within the public service, no matter what their own individual political beliefs may
be, they have a professional capacity when a change of government occurs to serve the new
government, even if they may personally have not welcomed the change of government, and serve it in
a professional way. And I think it is possible to separate out those people and I think that tradition is
worth nurturing and I would hate to see that traditional disappear all together. But consistent with the
world in which we live it is natural and desirable that the political aims of a new government not be
seen as antagonistic to professionalism within the public service, but perhaps imposing upon that
professional public service an even greater obligation and discipline to provide objective advice about
both the desirability and also the pitfalls of the agenda of the new government.
I think occasions like this are very important. They're an occasion, an opportunity, to say thank you to
people, to honour the constant pursuit of excellence within our community and I'm so very happy that
people have come from the four corners of the Earth to be amongst us to contribute their ideas on
excellence in the public service. I'm delighted that there is such a representation from the State public
services of our nation and I'm also delighted at the way in which the various departments of the State
governments of Australia have participated, not only in the conference, but also in the award winning
process. My Government has embarked, under the very able stewardship of Peter Reith, my Government has
embarked upon some major changes to workplace relations in Australia. They are changes not
designed in any way to reinforce notions of division between them and us in the workplace. We have 2
quietly discarded the expression industrial relations in favour of the more contemporary and I think
more beckoning expression, workplace relations. The world of enterprise bargaining is the world of the
future. The world of the future will be very different in the workplace from what it was years ago.
Many of the old modalities of workplace relations were built upon the notion that most of the work
force, in fact almost all of it, was male. A large section of it was in the manufacturing industry. Most
people worked for large organisations and answered to the foreman. Most of the congregated in one
spot in large numbers. All of those modalities have changed in varying degrees and some of them
completely. The workplaces of the future will be smaller units. An increasing number of people will
work from home. The old idea of congregating in large numbers in one spot and answering to a
foreman is almost a thing in the distant past. And we do need a new workplace relations culture and
we've delivered a new workplace relations act. That new culture will promote trade unions that are
successful in promoting their members. The idea that efficient, effective trade unions have no role at all
in the workplace relations scheme of the fuiture is quite wrong. But survival and success will go to
those that are best able to represent their members.
The workplaces of the future, of course as we all know, will involve a far greater number of women
than they did in the not so distant past. And that impact alone will profoundly alter the character of
work and the circumstances under which it is carried out. So we do need a modern approach, a
different approach, to workplace relations and I believe that the reforms that my Government has taken
through the parliament and which will now spread through the public service will be reforms that will
be enormously to the benefit of the future of Australia. They will respect the professionalism of men
and women in the public service as they will in the private sector. They will not revive old-fashioned
antiquated antagonisms between the two sectors. I believe in an expanding private sector, I believe in a
strong private sector. I also believe that there are a core of responsibilities within our community which
can only ever be discharged for the benefit of our community by a dedicated, competitive and
professional public service. A public service that works in harmony and cooperation and in an
atmosphere of mutual respect in respect of those in the private sector. There is no enduring
antagonism, there should only be an enduring partnership for the better governance of our nation.
So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm honoured indeed to be in the presence of such a large gathering
of professional men and women in the public service our nation and in the public service of many other
nations. I congratulate all of you for the contribution you are making to the quality of government in
Australia. I particularly congratulate the winners and those that have taken out the awards. I thank
those that have organised tonight's gathering on my behalf I think it's an excellent occasion and I
hope it is the first of many such occasions in which the Prime Minister of the day and the government of
the day can honour the contribution to the better quality of government of Australia by those who work
and spend their lives in the professional public sector of Australia. Thank you.