Richard Ackland on Hatzistergos

Although part of this has appeared on my blog I have added in some things here.

As the saga over John Hatzistergos' war of words with Nicholas Cowdery ensues ... I want to say:

A million thank-yous to Richard Ackland! He has had the guts to tell it like it is about John Hatzistergos' war against Nicholas Cowdery and the DPP. Ackland spells out the truth about the alleged wasted funds by the prosecutors who attended a conference in Brisbane. He points out how the numbers of prosecutors are down, how junior solicitors are carrying grunt work (when they should not), and that the District Courts are in a mess because of fewer employees.

All of these gaps in human and financial resources reflects on John Hatzistergos and his director general Laurie Glanfield. It is not too difficult to infer that they are failing to provide good policy and good administration. The NSW Attorney General's Department is in a mess and these two men are in charge.

Ackland describes Hatzistergos and his media effort to discredit Cowdery as the thorn-in-the-flesh:"Hatzistergos represents a haunted, closed, suspicious, micro-managing sort of politics. And to leak against your public servants is, frankly, the pits."

The extract from Beverley Kingston's essay that is in today's SMH just cements the point about the problems of public administration in NSW generally.

I feel that the efforts of Mr Hatzistergos and Mr Glanfield are way past it in terms of usefulness to the people of NSW. I think it is high time that both Hatzistergos and Glanfield resigned.

NSW FOI 180 Degrees Opposite to QLD & Canberra

The NSW Attorney General Mr John Hatzistergos holds the office of the first law officer of the state. His primary duty is to defend and uphold law and justice over against his secondary commitment to the Labor Party and its policies.

During the Howard era many lawyers quite rightly pointed to the tension between duty and political loyalty in the case of Philip Ruddock as federal Attorney General. Ruddock opted to support Howard's Pacific solution on refugees in direct contradiction to his duty to uphold the national laws (and international covenants signed by Australia) concerning refugees. The problem in his case went even further as he appeared to choose ideology over against even the beliefs of his faith where defending the oppressed/refugees has a long and honourable heritage.

Here in NSW Mr Hatzistergos' loyalty to conservative Labor policies is fairly clear. His personal political philosophy about the supremacy of Parliament trumps all consideration of human rights jurisprudence - a field that he seems to misunderstand judging by the straw-man arguments he routinely draws out of the hat when asked on the subject.

Peter Timmins has summed up the deliberations of a national conference this past week about Freedom of Information in Australia. He points out the direction being taken in Queensland, together with the Federal government view, is a very positive one. He also notes how the direction taken by Queensland is 180 degrees opposite to that of NSW. The stance taken right now in NSW is worrying -- the government seems keen to ensure that it is very difficult to obtain information that might otherwise embarrass it. As chief law officer Mr Hatzistergos is supposed to promote democracy and the laws defending freedom. He is meant to set aside party bias and personal political philosophies. When a government in a democracy chooses to clamp down on the availability of information and uses weasel words to justify it, one begins to wonder what is it that they are afraid of being disclosed/revealed?

If the Ministers of the Crown are worried about circling the wagons to defend themselves from public scrutiny, then the public are quite right in questioning the government's motives. Beyond that, one can also ponder why the Director-General of any government department is likewise unwilling to release information. The public service is about serving the public -- it is not an elite club for wannabe political animals. If a Director General is running a particular programme of administrative changes and holds meetings where no minutes are written down, where committee members are intimidated, and where no paper trail exists: well one can ask if that level of secrecy is a cloak for rather venal motives. Do we have Freedom of Information? Or is it more likely Freedom From Information? Public administration policy and practices in the NSW public sector must be brought out into the open. Ministers should not be worried: what is there to hide? Directors General of departments: what are you hiding and why are you hiding data?

CROWN SOLICITOR'S OFFICE NSW RESTRUCTURED

The NSW Crown Solicitor's Office (CSO) is administratively part of the NSW Attorney General's Department. On 1 July 2009 CSO announced it has undergone a restructure. Its website assures us that these organisational "changes aim to further improve our clients' experience with and access to our services."

The website shows a new organisational chart and it indicates that CSO has a marketing division. Why CSO needs to "market" its services is not entirely clear to me. However one can be sure that the CSO employees are stretched to breaking point in what is demanded of them. There was a tacit admission of this in the 2007-08 Annual Report of the Attorney General's Department:


"The Crown Solicitor’s Office is assessing the recommendations made by
beyondblue, the national depression initiative, in its review of the CSO’s current
practices for managing workplace mental health, with a view to implementing them in
2008–09."(page 67)

While it is important that stress and depression be recognised and treated, the prior question is how does the public administration policy and practices affecting CSO provide the seed-bed out of which such mental illness arises? In other words, why are the employees whose numbers are fewer and fewer expected to do more and more? Why are employees working beyond the standard hours to the point where work is done until late at night and even on weekends (all of which is not remunerated)?

Is there a culture of fear among employees about losing their jobs if they complain? Why does such fear exist in the first place? Does this fear of being abused and bullied and of vendettas come from senior bureaucrats in the upper echelons of the public sector?

It is one thing to treat the symptoms of stress. It is another to go back to the tap-root source of it all and to apply weed-killer. Weed-killer is obviously needed to root out the bad personnel. hideous attitudes, unworkable policies and unrealistic work practices insisted on by those at the top in the public sector. Why does the NSW Attorney General Mr Hatzistergos preside over such a regime and do nothing to clear out the problem among those directly underneath him?

Vale: Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council

The Attorney General's Department is touted by its senior executives as an efficient organisation. In recent times many "efficiencies" have been "optimised", which is just turgid management speak: we are cutting jobs and trimming the fat to save money.

So there is a Savings Implementation Plan to achieve savings which includes various measures of which just three can be named in passing:

* consolidating various employee functions previously handled in individual agencies (like IT, human resources, payroll, finance, asset management) and handing them over to the Parramatta Justice Precinct where highly stressed, over-worked and under-resourced individuals try to implement "shared corporate services".

* reducing the hiring of agency contractors

* cutting out overtime and squeezing back on Higher Duties Allowances

Another example of trimming the fat (apparently) is the abolition of the Aboriginal Justice Advisory Council (AJAC). It was created in 1993 of members of the Aboriginal community who could advise the NSW Government on law and justice problems.

AJAC received funding from the Attorney General's Department, Department of Juvenile Justice, NSW police and Corrective Services. AJAC fulfilled its charter on various fronts such as highlighting the plight of Aboriginal women in prison (Speak Out Speak Strong report of 2002).

AJAC ceased to be at the end of the 2008 financial year. Adieu to the staff who worked in it.
There you have it instant "savings" because there are now fewer salaries to pay and there is one less body to administer/fund.

Another fine example of pretending the department is efficient by creating on paper the illusion that funds have been saved. Pity the same degree of diligence is lacking when one notes the top-heavy bureaucracy of the Department, the generous allowances paid to give tax-breaks to some SES persons earning in excess of $300,000 p.a., and the extravagant expenditure applied in the services of external consultants to tell the Department the blindingly obvious.