Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
Departmental secretaries should get a pay cut in exchange for job security to safeguard the provision of frank and fearless advice, according to former top bureaucrat Andrew Podger.
"My strong suspicion is that most current secretaries would prefer such an arrangement," the former Australian Public Service commissioner said, suggesting a 20 per cent reduction in compensation and loss of office arrangements.
Professor Andrew Podger argues that secretary pay is too high. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong
In a submission to the Remuneration Tribunal's review of APS bosses' circa-million-dollar pay packets, Professor Podger said wide public confidence in the remuneration of senior public servants "needs to be regained".
"The system must also achieve its fundamental purpose of attracting and retaining the skills and calibre needed," he wrote, saying the review was an opportunity to "give closer consideration to public service motivation" outside of financial factors.
The Remuneration Tribunal, which sets pay for secretaries and other top bureaucrats, is looking at "whether the current arrangements remain appropriate, effective and fit for purpose".
The current system, under which secretaries are appointed for five-year terms at the prime minister's discretion, was "diminishing integrity at the top of the public service," Professor Podger told The Canberra Times.
He said tenure was a contributor to "failures at the top of the public service" exposed by the Robodebt royal commission and Virginia Bell's inquiry into former prime minister Scott Morrison's appointment to multiple ministries.
With many secretaries - most of whom are paid more than $900,000 a year - recruited from within the public service, he said private sector salaries like those of top executives in ASX top 100-ranked companies were not the appropriate comparator.
Professor Podger said his experience served as an example of how many senior public servants moved through the APS.
"I moved from the small Housing and Regional Development Department to the huge Health and Family Services Department in 1996, continuing in the slightly smaller Department of Health and Aged Care in 1998," he said.
Secretary jobs 'not subject to competition': Rex Patrick
Former independent South Australian senator Rex Patrick said in a submission to the tribunal that secretaries' salaries needed a "reset" and should be benchmarked to "comparable positions in state bureaucracies [or] overseas".
"Secretaries' roles cannot be compared with the CEO of a company, as some like to suggest," Mr Patrick wrote.
"When the man running the country, the Prime Minister, gets a salary of $622,000 and departmental secretaries get much more, something is wrong.
"The tribunal ought not pretend that government need to attract the right people to secretary roles. The reality is that secretaries' jobs are not subject to competition."
He pointed to the many examples of career public servants in top roles, from Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary Steven Kennedy - "plucked from his role as Treasury Secretary" - to Home Affairs Secretary Stephanie Foster, Attorney-General's Kathryn Jones, Defence's Megan Quinn and DFAT's Jan Adams.
The US had "got it right" with salaries of about $403,000 to head up "much larger agencies with much bigger budgets," he wrote.
Professor Podger acknowledged that remuneration needed to be "sufficient to attract and retain the high calibre required."
"I suggest that most secretaries be classified at the same level of responsibility (and remuneration), based on their having portfolio responsibilities and serving Cabinet ministers.
"This would also avoid the current complexity of special remuneration arrangements when a secretary is transferred from one portfolio to another with a lower classification."
This would also remove the need for the PM&C secretary and APS commissioner to assign pay points within two classification levels.
Professor Podger said a "clear and consistent framework for the remuneration of deputy secretaries and other senior executives", from whom most departmental secretaries are appointed, was also needed to ensure that remuneration arrangements were "appropriate, effective and fit for purpose" across the APS.
Labor and the Coalition have rejected a "blunt" cap on secretaries' remuneration, as proposed by Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie in a private senator's bill examined by a parliamentary committee.
The Faceless War: How Artificial Intelligence Rewrote the Map of Power
Small Wars Journal: “A small number of private technology firms now build the infrastructure on which both military power and the public’s perception of reality depend.
Drawing on a 2025 wargaming experiment at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and on the documented information war of the June 2025 Israel-Iran conflict, this essay argues that simulated combat and cognitive warfare increasingly depend on the same technological ecosystem — shared firms, infrastructure, and supply chains — with direct implications for doctrine, training, and mid-sized powers such as Brazil. A Hegemony Written in Code – Power has historically followed infrastructure: control of sea lanes defined the nineteenth century, control of oil and industry defined the twentieth.
In this century, the decisive axis has shifted to digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI). This is not a future possibility; it is a present condition. Whoever controls information systems can shape more than data: that control increasingly influences perception, behavior, and how populations interpret events. Every advanced AI model depends on a physical layer of semiconductors, data centers, and satellite links, which makes that physical layer, rather than any single algorithm, the true strategic terrain.
Washington has increasingly treated China’s technological rise as a hegemonic challenge rather than mere commercial competition, since military capability, industrial autonomy, and normative leadership now converge on control of computing, data, and networks.
Between the United States and China — and between the private companies that supply both — lies the central contest of contemporary geopolitics: a competition over semiconductors, advanced computing, and autonomous systems in which the winner sets the terms for every nation that depends on that infrastructure…”
