STATESMEN IN DISGUISE*

It is a daunting honour to tread in the illustrious footsteps of those who have previously delivered this Oration. It is also a personal pleasure, because Sir Robert Garran was the gracious and tolerant chairman of the Canberra University College Council that gave me my first academic post. Impressive but totally unpretentious, Sir Robert was a man that I could look up to, literally as well as figuratively. In 1938, however, I was scarcely aware that Garran had been the first Commonwealth public servant, a permanent head for thirty-one years and, as Attorney-General John (later Sir John) Latham put it a few days after Garran retired in January 1932, "guide, philosopher and friend to every Federal Cabinet" during those years¹     

ADMINISTRATIVE CHRONICLE VICTORIA*

In its final months the outgoing Thompson Liberal Ministry was largely pre-occupied with the implementation of its New Directions strategy. It introduced a public service bill in December to bring about greater effectiveness in the public service and ensure that its policy priorities were understood, thus complementing the Effectiveness Review Committee already set up, and it began a review of the three central coordinating agencies, the Public Service Board, the Treasury and the Department of the Premier, with an independent American consultant. The thrust of these three measures was to advise the government on proposals to set up new departments, relocate personnel and manpower resources, to set up programs for effectiveness reviews, and to bring forward amendments to the Public Service Act of 1974 which had followed Sir Henry Bland's inquiry in the early 1970s. These were intended to give the Public Service Board extended powers to allow it to conduct effectiveness reviews into statutory authorities, to extend Board employment powers to such authorities and to bring them into the public service framework, ensuring a more cohesive and less fragmented State public service. Senior staff could now be employed on term appointments, with performance-oriented objectives, giving greater flexibility at the top. And finally, the Board was to have power to become involved in specific industrial issues at the departmental level, sharpening its current generalized industrial powers.