Glyn Davis reflects on the routines, values and quiet architecture that give policymaking its legitimacy — if ethics stay in the frame.
Former Prime Minister & Cabinet (PM&C) secretary Glyn Davis has championed the ‘Spirit of the service’ exhibition for those wanting to better understand the foundational policy principles upon which the Australian government operates.
A few weeks after closing the door to his office for the last time, Davis spoke of how the work of governing is messy and continuous. He also acknowledged that the academic theory of the policy cycle can seem overly optimistic when it butts against the brutal cut and thrust of politics.
The policy cycle is illustrated on an exhibition wall at the Museum of Australian Democracy (MOAD), as part of a relatively new installation about the APS in 2023.
Davis said the conceptualisation — featuring elements including well-designed processes, the collation of evidence, room for contrary assessments and testing for unintended consequences — was a good example of the “enduring” settings of the policy world that superseded generations of politicians and governments of the day.
“A policy cycle can seem an optimistic model when the truth may be muddle, happenstance or brute politics,” Davis told an audience in Canberra.
“But with no idea of what good policy making might look like — no Platonic ideal — how can you assess experience or strive toward a better process?”
Every week in his job at PM&C, Davis said, he noticed the policy cycle embedded in routines of governing– so ubiquitous they were often taken for granted — bringing to life the institutional architecture of governing.
From inviting decision-makers and policy drafters to answer key questions — such as the template for cabinet submissions that asked what is the problem being addressed, why these policy instruments and not others, what do other agencies across government think of the proposal, what implementation schedule is proposed, how will the new initiative be evaluated? — to the sharing of information across portfolios that delivered a shared context for priorities to be determined and choices to be made.
These ways of working had become so natural, Davis added, that public servants often forgot how profoundly they shaped the work of the APS, but created routines that provided a path for authority to flow and legitimacy of actions to be accepted.
“At any one time, very few established programs — and little of the overall budget — is up for scrutiny and debate. This stability allows a policy cycle time to work.
“Policymaking can follow a cycle of problem identification, deliberation, adjustment and evaluation,” Davis said.
“When ministers and their officials meet in committee, they work from a common body of information, using well-established processes to guide the discussion.
“Routines are the standard operating procedures of government. They provide the unseen and unreported daily work of public servants — something we forget at times to include in our account of how government operates,” he said.
The nature of deciding economic policies and questions about national security all involved a combination of a sustained conversation across time between ministers, advisers, the public service and stakeholders.
Davis further suggested that protocols and processes for policymaking required decisions made in haste to be “defended and sustained”, and also allowed for bad policy decisions to disappear “when the moment passes”.
“That does not imply policy is unchanging. The world shifts, generations turn over, and the consensus about government moves slowly but remorselessly,” Davis said.
“Even climate change has gone from deeply contested to widespread acknowledgement and grudging agreement on action.”
The senior mandarin said routines and protocol together helped to infuse a level of reliability and flexibility in government systems, but they also needed to be tempered by values like stewardship and commitment to service to ensure processes did not steamroll other important features of effective government.
Things like innovation, ways to avoid “bad bureaucratic behaviour” or systems that excluded people from decision-making processes.
“When the rules clash with our ethical underpinnings, as happened in robodebt, something is terribly wrong and needs urgent attention,” Davis said.
“Effective administration … depends on public servants committed to their vocation. A capable public service needs good leaders, and seasoned administrators deeply knowledgeable about government, willing to work well together, able to provide ministers with thoughtful advice — whether wanted or not.
“A well-functioning system needs integrity,” he said.
Professor Davis said he had long been intrigued about how public policy was made, and shared a sliding door moment during his early career that would have led him to either join the public service or lecture about public administration as “an outsider looking in”.
It turns out you can do both, the former secretary quipped, revealing that on completion of his tertiary studies, he accepted a position lecturing at Griffith University over an offer to commence in a graduate role with the Department of Communications.
This saw Davis go on to teach a future treasurer, Jim Chalmers, an assistant minister, and other students who would become serious public service powerbrokers at the state and federal level.
“I worked with talented colleagues to develop undergraduate courses on policy making, and wrote the first local textbook in the field,” Davis said.
“It was a delight to teach committed students who shared our interest in the subject.”
As a lecturer, he recalled one of his former students scoffing that academics couldn’t possibly know the real-world challenges of balancing good policy and making tough choices.
Some years later, in an airport, Davis bumped into his former pupil. This student had risen to the highest echelons of power and served as a minister in the Howard government.
“‘You know that stuff you and the others taught us about cabinet and ministerial responsibility and how policies get made?’… [He] then answered his own question, with genuine astonishment: ‘It all turned out to be true!’,” Davis said.
“The feedback was gratifying, yet his original critique haunts. Can we really teach the reality of something as ever-changing, yet intricate as government?”
As someone who lived through the scandalous final years of Queensland’s Bjelke-Petersen regime (1968-87), Davis said that he understood government corruption and lip service paid to the rule of law risked undermining trust in everything worth caring about in public life.
Lost integrity could be hard to win back, he warned.
“Ours is an urgent, restless world. So much injustice still, at home and abroad, so many questions,” Davis said.
“Leading PM&C was a chance to observe the seriousness with which ministers take their responsibilities and the professionalism of an APS in serving whatever government is chosen by the Australian people.
“A public service which … has been striving for effective local delivery, more joined up services, better procurement and greater opportunity for community empowerment since the Coombs royal commission nearly 50 years ago. It is a journey that continues,” he said.
Professor Davis made his remarks in a valedictory speech marking the end of his tenure as the top mandarin of the APS. The event was hosted by IPPA ACT.
Melissa Coade is The Mandarin’s news editor based in Canberra’s parliamentary press gallery. She has had various government, communications and legal roles, and has written for the Law Society of NSW journal (LSJ) and Lawyers Weekly.
Glyn Davis’ parting advice recommends a visit to MOAD
