Public Service Ethics in Australia

This chapter reviews the main threads making up the pattern of developments in public service ethics in Australia. As used here, “public service ethics” refers to the ethics of career officials in merit-based systems of public employment with norms of non-partisanship, providing loyal service as policy advisers and program implementers to whatever political party holds office as the government of the day. The Australian system of public service was derived in the late nineteenth century from the evolving British system, with important Australian innovations designed to strengthen the political independence and official impartiality of public servants (see Caiden 1965; Finn 1987). Now a century later, Australia is going through a fundamental overhaul and streamlining of the public sector, with a breakdown in traditional responsibilities of public and private sectors that poses an uncertain future for the concept of a career public service (Mulgan 1998; Keating 1998).