The Howard government wanted to end an "entitlement mentality" inside the federal bureaucracy with a workplace overhaul that began within a month of winning office, newly declassified documents reveal.
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Cabinet papers show the Coalition moved quickly to begin changing industrial rules in the public service it said were bound in a "grievance mentality" putting individual rights above improving government.
John Howard immediately left a deep mark on the bureaucracy by swiftly sacking six departmental secretaries and overseeing the loss of about 30,000 public service jobs in his first term.
Other moves, including new legislation governing bureaucrats and a permanent end to public service-wide bargaining, absorbed the Coalition as it brought changes that created diverging salaries for public servants.
In documents released on Tuesday by the National Archives of Australia, Howard-era public service minister Peter Reith in November 1996 proposed reforms to the Australian Public Service coinciding with the government's plans for broader economic change.
"The credibility of our call for genuine reform in workplace relations and more productive enterprises is necessarily affected by what we deliver in our own sphere of control," he told cabinet.
"Although there have been some reforms in recent years, the APS has not responded creatively enough in overhauling the way it does business; it is not yet equipped to operate as efficiently and competitively as is demanded by the dynamic environment in which it works."
Less than four weeks after winning government on March 2, the new prime minister asked Mr Reith to prepare a cabinet submission on the Coalition's proposed reforms to the bureaucracy.
Describing the matter as "urgent", Mr Reith came to senior ministers canvassing new public service laws replacing an act legislated in 1922, and a move to agency-level bargaining that has since led to vastly diverging pay among agencies.
A discussion paper supported by the Howard cabinet, and drawing on the McLeod Review conducted under Labor, called for an end to "outdated, rigid and cumbersome" regulations tying the bureaucracy down and feeding a stereotype of public servants as "paper pushers".
"It has produced a process-driven culture borne of regulation and an entitlement mentality," it said.
"This is not a criticism of individual public servants. They have been the victims of workplaces structures, systems and cultures which seek to control through regulation rather than to manage through trust.
"Arrangements are bound in a grievance mentality which focuses on the rights of individuals rather than systemic issues."
The paper flagged the government would review industrial conditions and said the bureaucracy's workplace deals should largely match those in the private sector.
Changes proposed in the discussion paper also foreshadow a move towards contractors and labour hire, a trend now subject to a partisan debate.
After the Keating government introduced workplace bargaining at the agency level in 1993, the public service returned to a centralised agreement in 1995 and 1996. Since that deal expired, the bureaucracy has not negotiated government-wide, a move blamed for disparate salaries across agencies.
