The Australian Public Service has evolved into a revolving order of consultants working for mini warlords, writes Vince Hooper.
AUSTRALIA’S PUBLIC SERVICE doesn’t run on policy or politics. It runs on feudal instinct.
Once upon a time, the Australian Public Service prided itself on being the quiet custodian of Westminster ideals — neutral, competent, and faintly smelling of instant coffee. But those days are gone. The modern department is not a workplace. It’s a feudal map. And if you’ve spent more than a week inside, you’ll know the map has warlords.
From Treasury to Transport, Canberra to the states, every bureaucracy now hosts its own self-styled mini-monarchs. They command teams, hoard resources, and issue decrees from open-plan fortresses with titles like “Assistant Director” or “Acting Something-Or-Other.” Their weapons? Outlook calendar control, strategic ambiguity, and a rare mastery of “not minuting that.”
With each new minister, the map redraws itself — new banners, same castles. Every reshuffle brings a fresh round of “strategic realignments,” meaning last week’s priorities are now heresies punishable by a working group.
Australia’s public servants face a challenge no management consultant dares name: how to survive the Warlord Era. Forget “adaptive leadership.” What you need is conflict diplomacy.
Rule One: Swear fealty early
Identify your local warlord — the one who thrives on reply-all emails and “urgent” meetings about future meetings. Discover what they worship most: KPIs, “innovation,” or “stakeholder engagement.” Then pledge your allegiance via PowerPoint. If you can align your deliverables with their empire-building narrative, you may yet live to see the next reporting cycle.
Rule Two: Never outshine your chief
In today’s bureaucratic fiefdoms, success is measured not by outcomes but by optics. Your boss doesn’t want your ideas — they want your devotion, presented in a colour-coded Excel dashboard. Any attempt to improve efficiency risks being seen as rebellion, particularly if it involves evidence.
Rule Three: Avoid the eye of Canberra
Like medieval knights steering clear of the royal court, managers must fear that email from “The Minister’s Office.” It heralds a reshuffle, or worse, the creation of a “taskforce” — a modern crusade that begins with fanfare and ends with an unfinished SharePoint site.
The regional departments, meanwhile, operate as semi-independent duchies. Canberra may issue decrees, but local barons interpret them through the ancient art of selective implementation.
Then there are the mercenaries. Consultants move between fiefdoms like roving armies for hire, wielding PowerPoint spears and brandishing words like “synergy” and “transformation.” Their day rates could fund a small hospital, but their final reports always conclude that “further review is required.”
Now every fiefdom has its own “Digital Transformation Lead,” armed with acronyms and no budget. Artificial intelligence is the new alchemy — promising to automate everything except accountability.
At the upper echelons, the satire sharpens. Deputy Secretaries now resemble serene monarchs surrounded by parchment scrolls bearing the runes of bureaucracy: “cross-agency collaboration,” “digital uplift,” and “fit-for-purpose.” Their courtiers – a revolving order of consultants – craft vision statements that will never be implemented but will look magnificent in a Senate Estimates binder.
The tragedy is that the warlord system was never decreed. It evolved organically — through funding cuts, political churn, and the strange Darwinism of middle management. In an ecosystem of shrinking budgets and swelling egos, the fittest are not the competent, but the cunning.
And yet, somehow, the public service still functions. Australians still get roads, welfare, and border policy (mostly). Beneath the feudal layers, quiet professionals persist — those who have mastered the ancient art of serving both crown and common sense.
Perhaps that’s the genius of the system. No matter how many warlords rise, merge, or rebrand themselves as “Executive Sponsors,” the public service endures – stoic, understated, and forever reorganising itself into new forms of confusion. Civilisation, Australian-style, continues – one committee meeting at a time.
The bureaucratic field manual
“Cross-agency collaboration”
Temporary truce between warring factions
“Stakeholder engagement”
Endless ritual of appeasement
“Transformation project”
The same process, with a new logo
PowerPoint-assisted denial
“Whole-of-government approach”
Everyone else’s problem
If you can’t identify your local warlord, look closer. It might be you!
Vince Hooper is a proud Australian/British citizen and professor of finance and discipline head at SP Jain School of Global Management with campuses in London, Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore and Sydney.
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