They say you should start as you mean to continue, and there could soon be fewer managerialist buzzwords and more frank questions permeating the corporate culture of the Australian Taxation Office if new commissioner of taxation Rob Heferen’s initial leadership note to staff is anything to go by.
In a pleasantly unvarnished introduction to staff, the new tax boss has outlined his passion for cogent tax policy and reform but also put staff on notice he values inquiring minds that ask the questions that count, saying he’s watched the “institution go from strength to strength” and intends to build on those strengths.
“I value curiosity, courage, and integrity. I value the ability to communicate, and the ability to Listen to Learn rather than Listen to Win,” Heferen told staff in his first “Commish Connect” communique, saying he intends to detail the use of listening modalities in the near future.
It’s an observation likely to prompt senior staff and suppliers scrambling to try and find the authoritative text on the matter, although we suspect it may be in the ‘leadership’ section of the many volumes of corporate behavioural therapy self-help books (rather than the ‘transformation’ section).
Institutional hardness of hearing has previously been a cultural issue in the APS.
Take the ATO’s most recent high-visibility challenges, which included a bruising (but impressive) performance at the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme and the somewhat perverse phenomenon of first-person refund fraud that spawned Operation Protego.
Both were arguably enabled to some degree by a top-down culture that started on The Hill and tended to prioritise and reward results and outcomes over process or criticality and encouraged a tin-ear to concerns and often the cultivation of arguments to neutralise critics or obstacles.
Heferen might be forgiven for quietly hoping he won’t have to deal with quite as many treasurers as his predecessor, Chris Jordan, who was lured from consultancy to public service only to see the Treasury portfolio install a revolving ministerial door that resulted in Scott Morrison being appointed twice.
The new tax boss is also making it clear he’s an APS insider and a lifer who is happy to regard public service as a vocation as much as it is a career, and that he knows not everyone will be feeling comfortable.
“A change in leadership can be tense, even in a 20,000-strong organisation, and you may be wondering what sort of commissioner I will be. In truth, that’s something we will find out together in the coming days, weeks and months, but what I can tell you now is the sort of person I am,” Heferen said.
“I am a committed public servant. I have dedicated my career to the Australian Public Service for the last 35 years and am passionate about serving the people of Australia through the government of the day.”
Heferen told staff he’d “spent well over half of my career working on tax” and was constantly reminded of “the value in what we do here to serve the Australian public”.
“So much so that I have wanted to come back to it time and time again,” Heferen said.
But what of tax reform, the policy arena where progress, rational agreement and consensus are routinely sacrificed to the electoral gods and policies sometimes resprayed to sport the livery of the day (think Broad-Based Consumption Tax versus Goods and Services Tax)?
Heferen isn’t completely shy about sharing his extensive tour-of-duty diary at Treasury and its collection arm that covers a few decades now.
“While at the ATO back in the mid-90s, I worked on the government’s response to Ha and Hammond, and then took a secondment to Treasury to work on what became the ANTS package,” Heferen said.
(ANTS being ‘A New Tax System’ that was used to stand up the GST after John Howard previously made the famous ‘never, ever’ pledge.)
“I stayed at the Treasury for around 12 years, where for many years my efforts were focussed on tax reform, including the design and implementation of the GST as well as Ralph review implementation, and then the Henry tax review.”
That indicates there will be some qualitative advice going back to Treasury around achievable opportunities and potential challenges ahead, although much of the May Budget will likely already be locked in.
A big mover under Jordan was data and technology-powered Tax efficiency, especially the expansion of Single Touch Payroll, which has cleaned up dozens of industries that once routinely gamed legacy systems to their advantage.
Resultingly, Tax is also now a far more timely provider of payroll data that now feeds the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ public sector employment and earnings figures.
At last count, the commonwealth accounted for 350,300 employees at June 2023, who collected pay worth almost $34 billion for the 2022-23 financial year and with those earnings about to go up thanks to the public service wage increase starting to flow later this month.
The workers get a bump, but so too does the ATO.
In the meantime, Heferen has the customary agency immersion with executives, stakeholders and community representatives and will tour the Tax estate, a reason to come into the office if ever there was one.
“I can see the great foundation we have here, strengthened in the last decade by commissioner Jordan. But I also got a taste of some of the challenges ahead for us, and how we might work together to face them,” Heferen told staff.
“If you see me around, please say hello (and please call me Rob).”
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