Posted on August 25, 2009
Since the Prime Minister reshuffled the ranks of the senior public servants responsible for defence and foreign policy late last week, most of the commentary has focused on the implications for the defence portfolio. Ian Watt, the new Secretary of the Department of Defence, certainly has the credentials to manage the financial challenges facing the department.
But it could be that the harder of the two jobs handed out by the Prime Minister is going to the new head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dennis Richardson. He will take over from Michael L’Estrange who has had a difficult four and a half year tenure in the Secretary's post. Mr L'Estrange has been a very able secretary and is widely liked within the department. He has had, however, a very difficult time in the post as DFAT's status as a key national security player has steadily deteriorated.
The truth is that DFAT requires a major shake-up. It does its work with great professionalism, but under considerable adversity. More funds will help, perhaps considerably, but the reality which now needs to be confronted is that increasingly it is being marginalised as a serious agency of government: steadily it has lost the capacity to make a useful and distinctive contribution to policy formulation and debate in relation to Australia's national security. It is in the nation's interests that this decline be arrested. As well as making DFAT relevant, Mr Richardson's job must also be to rebuild its corporate esprit de corps and to encourage it to believe in itself once again.
We should all hope that Mr Richardson has been given the top job in foreign affairs because the Prime Minister wants change in the way DFAT is managed and contributes to the making and implementation of our foreign policy. In a way, this is a far more demanding exercise in public administration than that taken on by Dr Watt over in Defence. DFAT starts from a lower base of need, but more importantly, in Defence the new secretary and the new minister have a strong prime ministerial mandate for change and a serious bucket of money to help drive it. So far, it is anything but clear that DFAT has the same powerful impetus underpinning its fortunes.