Stephen Bartos

Difficult as these initiatives will be, the public service has been given an opportunity to show it can rise to the challenge and deliver.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with picking winners, whether in gambling or government policy. Picking losers is the problem.

The slow pace of inquiry into the public servants named in the sealed section of the robodebt royal commission raises serious concerns about public sector accountability.

The Australian government intends to introduce a supplier code of conduct to encourage companies to behave ethically.

The APS will be tasked with implementing an additional $9.8 billion in savings and reprioritisations on top of savings in the May Budget.

If the public service is not given relevant work to do, opportunities for on-the-job learning are not there.

Australia’s first (and so far only) viable carbon-pricing scheme was introduced by a minority government under Julia Gillard, along with a raft of other useful legislation and government programs.

The government has appointed an excellent body of RBA reviewers and established good terms of reference, but arguably took a wrong turn in including Dr Gordon de Brouwer.

If we are lucky, the example of the US congressional hearings could prove infectious. in Australia.

The public service will need to drop the complacency about climate change that prevailed under the previous government.

It’d be unrealistic to expect former ministers to say nothing about their previous portfolio areas, and there are lessons from the Peter Dutton controversy.

For public servants, if you are in a government department that has been moved then the AAO is major. Otherwise, it’s no big deal.

While policy delivery skills will be needed, they have been well-practised in recent years and do not require rebuilding. Policy capacity skills do.