Amanda Vanstone | After robodebt, it's important we don't forget our public service heroes

After more than 10 years as a minister, I can share experience of both good and bad within one department. My first portfolio in cabinet was employment, education, training and youth affairs. It was a bureaucratic aircraft carrier in which rotting carcasses could be easily hidden. You could turn the wheel with great vigour for very little change in direction. How did I get that lucky having done no opposition work in those areas?

A polite response would be that ministers are expected to be like a barrister, pick up a brief and get across it. Then move to the next. After all, you are not meant to have all the answers, you have a whole department brimming with facts, opinions and advice.

A less generous answer is that John Howard and his close coterie knew that portfolio was in for very large cuts to contribute to getting the out-of-control deficit back in the black. You don't have to be a genius to understand that if someone is sent out to say both "You're going to get less" and "You're going to pay more" it will be a thankless job. They will be attacked and vilified. So best not give a job like that to a mate. Give it to someone, who, if they are killed politically in the process, you will not weep.

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The volume of savings was one quarter of the government total. For good measure almost all of it came from my part of the portfolio. David Kemp, the junior minister from the right wing, had schools and they were hardly - if at all - touched.

To be fair, the big spend was in my part of the portfolio so obviously that's where savings were going to come from. As I walked out to do the first monthly unemployment figures doorstop, Arthur Sinodinis came scurrying down the hall to catch me before I went out. I told him not to worry, I knew the policy: "No cuts to unemployment programs". Silence. "That's just what you can't say", he responded. I was somewhat stunned. First doorstop on unemployment and I have to avoid mentioning our policy? Thanks. (Arthur was the messenger). Labor had a bad track record with wanting to be seen to be doing something. For example, putting unemployed construction workers through training to make soft toys never seemed to have an air of success about it. So the knife fell on many of those programs.

One or two senators thought they were doing me a favour by pointing out who in the department should be dispatched to Siberia because 'they were Labor'. It hadn't occurred to them that they, presumably, wouldn't approve of a Labor government doing that to known Liberals.

A couple of the Siberia nominees should have gone there for both incompetence and truth avoidance. These guys with little or no private sector experience decided, in cahoots with a training provider, to hire a yacht from Indonesia to come to Queensland so young people could be trained for the prolific charter business. What could go wrong did. The yacht was prepaid and never arrived. Hence it was dubbed the ship of fools. Getting information from the department to answer to the media was nigh impossible. They didn't know that one of theirs who had been a liaison officer in a previous minister's office had years before worked for me. Thus I knew they were deliberately hiding information. I just didn't know where. An aircraft carrier is a big hiding place.

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So without consulting the departmental secretary I referred it to the Auditor-General. I'll never forget the feigned upset as the secretary complained it looked like I didn't have faith in him. Duh. The Auditor-General's report (that unhelpfully came out months after the blame had been laid at my feet) nonetheless made clear where the malfeasance lay. I thought the department got off lightly.

Higher education was the other area marked for big savings. The senior public servant was another one it had been suggested I send to Siberia. He was an entirely different kettle of fish. What a mistake that would have been. He came in to our first meeting and outed himself as a committed Labor supporter so we had a clean plate to start with. He identified how we might work together to achieve the government's desire. He would come with a dozen or so headline propositions for savings. We would go through the likely consequences of each one. Then after some thought I could tell him which were no-go zones. Then he'd come back with more detail on the remaining options, building in more detail as options were deleted. Until after many meetings he had shared his knowledge and expertise in the most comprehensible, cogent and coherent way imaginable. He let me into his world. He knew every nook and cranny of higher education. He was one of the best and smartest people I've worked with.

When the savings package got through the Senate he appeared at my office. There was no celebration to join, we were all just exhausted. He said something to the effect that he hadn't agreed with all the changes and certainly hadn't thought I'd get them all through the Senate. He thought he should shake my hand. I'll never forget what a class act that guy was. First class. Top of. His name was David Phillips. He now has a consulting firm and my guess is if you use him, you won't waste your money. And I'm certain if the public service had more people like him we'd be a very, very lucky country.