Public Eye: The secretaries' golden rules for Senate estimates

Clerk of the Senate, Richard Pye, gave the Secretaries Board a briefing on the process on February 7, including "the underlying principles and practices, the responsibilities of public servants as witnesses and the availability of guidance to support committee hearings", according to a communique from the meeting.

We don't know any more than that, so Public Eye had to get creative.

We've drafted our own golden rules for secretaries appearing before senators keen to score some political points.

Do let us know if we've missed any.

Sometimes estimates falls at a really inconvenient time for your department. Like when ex-colleagues have been backgrounding the Australian Financial Review about tensions between the department and your minister. That can be really inconvenient.

You've got to play it cool, though, as Department of Defence secretary Greg Moriarty showed on Wednesday. Keep your frank and fearless thoughts for behind closed doors - and off email chains, lest they be FOI'd - and repeat after the minister.

Mr Moriarty, with support from Australian Defence Force Chief General Angus Campbell, backed comments from Defence Minister Richard Marles that the department had "a way to go" before reaching the standard of excellence he expected.

"... [It was] important for us to understand the minister's evolving perspectives and his expectations of us," Mr Moriarty said.

"Those are reasonable expectations, and it's important for the department to continue to focus on delivering timely, accurate and quality advice to all of our ministers and the government."

Liberal senator Simon Birmingham couldn't help himself though, with the department officials appearing on February 14, Valentine's Day.

"There won't be any Valentine's Day cards flowing between the Minister for Defence and his department though, will there?" Senator Birmingham quipped. He didn't get the recognition he deserved though, as officials blanked him on this.

Estimates is just as much as performance for politicians as it is for public servants, and eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant's appearance this week showed that you need to be ready to field the wild antics of senators trying to prove a point.

Things took an unexpected turn in the Community Affairs committee on Tuesday when Nationals senator Ross Cadell decided to do a live demonstration while questioning the agency about the lack of age verification on porn sites.

The exchange saw Senator Cadell use his government phone to (in his words) "crudely and rudely" search the word "porn" online in the middle of estimates.

"This will bite me on the ars-... bum somewhere," the Nationals senator said prophetically, as his neighbour Hollie Hughes leaned over wide-eyed to look at the screen. He told the room as he clicked through to the first result and was met with a pop up asking him to declare that he was 18 years or older.

"Senator, you should have your parental controls on, c'mon," the Commissioner joked, in a valiant attempt to cut through the awkwardness.

"You're making a really important point here..." Ms Inman Grant tried to continue, before being cut off by a red-faced Senator Cadell.

"Whoops" he exclaimed, revealing that he had clicked through to the website itself.

"Is there a bailiff in here that might take him away?" the Commissioner said. "I totally lost my train of thought."

Remember, you get paid the big bucks - and they are the big bucks - for a reason. You're the accountable authority.

Department of Employment and Workplace Relations secretary Natalie James set the record straight on Wednesday, after reports that her staff had disconnected from the office, due to their flexible working arrangements.

All APS employees have the right to a flexible working arrangement - a principle now enshrined in enterprise agreements across the federal government.

"To suggest that my people are disconnected from the office when they are working from home could not be further from the truth," the DEWR boss said in her opening statement.

"They are the opposite of disconnected, they are about as wired into the matrix as you could possibly be.

"They are connected to our work and our people through technology, they're on calls, while often also sending Teams messages to one another.

"They're speaking to drafters, to jobseekers, to providers, to partners, and stakeholders, using the technology available to them."

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She stressed the "right to disconnect" legislation, passed by the Parliament last week, was not about remote working arrangements, but about "how we interact when we are not at work".

"In my department we work hard to try and get this balance right, particularly for our senior people, who are remunerated in a way that reflects an expectation that they do work outside of their ordinary hours," she said.

"But they are still entitled to balance and their wellbeing is paramount, one of our biggest challenges is setting reasonable boundaries around this."

We expect she will be donning some sort of "right to disconnect" tie at the next Senate estimates.

Let Tony Cook's months-long headache over that $1200 Courgette dinner be a lesson to you. Think before you dine.

The Department of Education secretary announced he had changed spending rules at his department after a $1209 dinner at the Canberra fine dining establishment.

That dinner, and others, was put on the public record at the October 2023 estimates, but Liberal senator Sarah Henderson, the opposition's spokesperson on education, was keen for an update.

Mr Cook said he'd reduced the spending ceiling for hospitality and admitted the department had "let the taxpayers down in terms of what they would expect from public servants".

Still, Mr Cook had to cop it.

"How did this happen in the first place?" Senator Henderson asked.

"How could you run a department which allows this sort of flagrant waste of taxpayers dollars?"

Opposition and crossbench senators may try to paint you into a corner and force you to speak out against the government of the day, in some shape or form.

But take a leaf out of Health boss Blair Comley's book and artfully dodge around such attempts with non-committal statements and personal anecdotes.

Shadow health minister Anne Ruston tried to get the Health and Aged Care department to weigh in on Labor's "right to disconnect" law, asking Mr Comley whether he would have the guts to turn off his phone and ignore his minister Mark Butler outside of work hours.

"Look, I think actually the answer is: yes, I could," Mr Comley said, though added that he would probably have a conversation with the minister's office before he did that.

The department secretary didn't go so far as to say whether he supported Labor's legislation to give employees the right to disconnect from work, instead saying that he thought there was a way "to come to an agreement about what is practical and what works".

Mr Comley even wove in his love of golf, recalling a time he had to chat with his workplace about whether he could "be disconnected on the front or back nine".

"I get very disconnected on the golf course. Mainly 'cause I'm looking for my ball," Senator Ruston chimed in.

Gone are the days of pork-barrelling. Elsewhere in estimates this week, we learnt that we are now in the midst of a new threat to democracy: teddy bear-barrelling.

You may recall last week Public Eye looked into $3750 worth of Medicare Urgent Care Clinic-branded teddy bears, purchased as part of a campaign to raise awareness for Labor's 58 bulk-billed centres across the country.

Well, the opposition's health spokesperson took the Health Department to task for dropping thousands of dollars on the soft toys, which she described as a "pretty stupid thing".

Senator Ruston grilled officials over what reach they thought the bears would have, to which first assistant secretary Rachel Balmanno responded that the teddies were a small fraction of a $5.9 million investment into promoting the clinics.

But the senator was also concerned that the bears - which were supposed to be given to MPs with urgent care clinics in their electorates - hadn't reached some of her Coalition colleagues.

"And yet if you go online and have a look at social media, there are a number of Labor Party members of parliament who are posting that they've got the UCC teddy bears," Senator Ruston said.

"I still think you would like a teddy bear Senator Ruston. So we will do our best to get one to you," Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy said, after several minutes of back-and-forth.

But the shadow health minister wasn't having a bar of it.

"No, to be perfectly honest, as I accept the jovial nature of our interaction, I think this is really quite serious because it looks to me like we're teddy bear-barrelling," Senator Ruston said, deadpan.

The audit office has turned its scrupulous eye on Defence's multi-million dollar advertising campaigns for Australian Defence Force recruitment, welcoming members of the public to contribute to an audit on the matter.

It comes as opposition spokesperson for defence Andrew Hastie criticises the government for failing to recruit and retain to the ADF.

But it's been a struggle for at least the past five years (almost certainly more) under both Labor and Coalition governments. Here are some quick figures from annual reports and Finance: