Berkowitz Did Another Stitch Up [
28 August 2014 ]
QUOTE
Will a pre-appointment hearing for Carol Mills examine the murky appointment
process run by the Speaker? Investigators will be interested how the Speaker
got what he wanted in the appointment of his Chaplain in 2010. An
eye-witness to the events spoke to Guido today and disclosed the following.
A Speaker has no formal role in the selection of the Speaker’s Chaplain,
it is a Church appointment with two roles – one in the Commons, the other
across the road in the Abbey.
John Bercow insisted that half the short list of six be female. He
pre-determined the winning candidate would be female. “A female is going to
do that job. It has to be a female,” he is quoted as saying.
Although he had no right, he insisted on speaking to all the candidates
himself.
He rang up the selection board and lobbied them.
He continued to operate in the general election period when he had no
official standing as an MP.
All the short list ended up male with two perfectly suitable candidates,
one clearly superior to the other.
As a result of Bercow’s lobbying, two female candidates were appended to
the six.
Rose Hudson-Wilkins was appointed – but because she could not do the full
Church of England job, the role was split.
Speaker Bercow signed a certificate blocking an FoI request for the
relevant documents. It was a uniquely powerful certificate available only to
the Speaker, preventing any challenge being considered by the Information
Commissioner.
Similarities to the process selecting Carol Mills as Clerk may include
1) a predetermined decision that the winning candidate be female.
Improper interference with a procedure to produce a personally wished-for
outcome.
2) Putting political imperatives before the technical requirements of the
job.
3) Fighting tooth and nail against oversight or accountability.
4) Diminishing the role to make its holder more suitable for his own
strategic purposes.
5) Risking a sex discrimination action by his actions.
The source also commented on the behaviour and temper of Speaker Bercow
during this period, likening him not entirely humorously to Caligula.
But that’s for another time.
UNQUOTE
Caligula appointed his horse as pro-consul or something of the sort.
Clerk Of The Australian Explains That Berkowitz Is WRONG
QUOTE
The now infamous email from the Clerk of the Australian Senate makes very
clear that the issue’s around Bercow’s choice of Clerk is not one of gender,
misogyny, anti-modernisation or xenophobia.
The question is, can Carol Mills do
the job?
CEO of the Commons? Yes. Possibly. Maybe. Hard to say when a rigged
panel, a rigged process and a rigged short list produced a result the
Speaker had already decided on. But Clerk? A job that is hers until she
retires, as Bercow has made clear?
The Times leader
this morning does not think so.
Here is that email in full:
Dear Robert
We were utterly taken aback here when we saw a brief press report
in early July that Carol Mills had emerged as “frontrunner” to take over
from you, and have followed events with increasing disbelief and dismay.
It seemed to us impossible that someone without parliamentary knowledge
and experience could be under consideration for such a role. I do not
usually resort to the second person, but there is not a single
individual who has mentioned this to me in the past few weeks, from my
most junior procedural officers or senior staff here and senators, to my
State colleagues, who has not seen this candidacy as an affront to our
profession and the professionalism of us all. “Bizarre” is the word most
frequently used to describe the situation. I can only imagine what your
staff must be thinking.
. . . (Some Australian parliamentary history deleted) . . .
Since 2004, there have been three Secretaries of DPS, all
recruited from outside the parliamentary service, all bringing different
skills to the position, and all serving for a relatively short time.
Carol has been in the job for just over two years and came from a
background in the state public service. In a federation such as ours,
with the Commonwealth exercising designated legislative powers of a
national character, it is not always easy for a person to move
successfully from a state to the Commonwealth civil service. Nor is it a
simple matter to move from serving the executive government to serving
the Parliament if there is a lack of understanding of what parliaments
are and what they do. I am making large generalisations here but, in my
estimation, as well as having no parliamentary experience, DPS heads
have increasingly demonstrated a lack of appreciation of and/or respect
for the roles and status of members and senators and perhaps an
overemphasis on the role and authority of the Presiding Officers (to
both of whom the DPS Secretary is responsible). If the POs are onside,
it seems that little else matters. The consequence of this disconnection
from what Parliament does is that there has been a level of
dissatisfaction with DPS – and its leadership – that now appears to be
entrenched. Moreover, staff dissatisfaction within DPS is often
manifested by the provision of information directly to members and
senators.
Senators, in particular, have applied the blowtorch of scrutiny
to the administration of the department in their thrice-yearly estimates
hearings. Estimates hearings are conducted by Senate legislation
committees which operate in eight subject areas. The Senate Finance and
Public Administration Legislation Committee has Parliament among its
responsibilities (but not, of course, the Department of the House of
Representatives which answers only to that House, whereas the Senate
Department and the joint bodies appear before Senate committees as a
matter of course). In addition to examining bills, the legislation
committees also conduct inquiries into the performance of agencies
within their areas of responsibility.
Most unfortunately, in estimates hearings in 2011, when under
scrutiny for administration of heritage policies and practices, DPS was
caught out fabricating evidence to our F&PA Committee. This led to a
broad-ranging inquiry into the management of DPS and the departure,
through ill health, of the second Secretary. An interim Secretary (a
retired State Clerk) was appointed pending the search for a new
permanent Secretary and was able to diagnose for the Presiding Officers
many issues to be addressed. This was the environment into which Carol
was appointed in 2012, apparently from a background in the NSW public
service that included management of such cultural facilities as the
Sydney Opera House, and with a brief to shake things up.
The current role of DPS Secretary includes responsibility for
building services (including visitor services), ICT, security,
broadcasting and Hansard, and the library. The last is headed by a
Parliamentary Librarian who, under the enabling statute, is supposed to
operate independently and on the basis of a resource agreement with the
DPS Secretary. The Secretary role has no procedural or constitutional
dimension that you or I would recognise as a core function of a Clerk.
It has no connection with the day to day business of a Parliament, other
than in the maintenance of infrastructure and the provision of some
ancillary services. While these are clearly very important things, they
do not make a Parliament. It is essentially the role of an administrator
and bears no resemblance to the role of a professional parliamentary
officer.
In the Budget estimates hearings in May this year, a very senior
senator questioned DPS about the use of CCTV footage in the course of
internal staff disciplinary proceedings, a use that is not sanctioned by
the code of practice governing the CCTV system. It appears that a DPS
staff member was accused of leaving an upsetting note for a manager.
Part of the so-called evidence included CCTV footage of the staff member
leaving an envelope under the senior senator’s door. The senior senator
had been the initiator of the 2011 Senate inquiry into DPS (which
reported in 2012) and had continued to receive unsolicited information
from DPS staff. It now transpired that a security system operated by DPS
was trained on the office of one of its chief inquisitors and that
disciplinary action (proposed dismissal) was being taken against an
informant, ostensibly on another basis. I had given advice to the
senator – which he released – that the circumstances raised serious
questions of privilege. At the hearing, the Secretary’s understanding of
parliamentary privilege was described in terms of “the protocols of the
protection of members’ and senators’ rights to do business in the
building” and she conceded that “there may have been some inadvertent
conflict between staff management issues and the principles of the free
use of everything in the building for members and senators”, before
implying that the staff management issues were more important. The
episode was raised as a matter of privilege by both the senior
(Opposition) senator and the (Government) Committee Chair on behalf of
the committee, and it has now been referred to the Senate Privileges
Committee for inquiry and report. The inquiry is in its preliminary
stages. Personally, I was surprised that a resignation did not follow.
This episode may have acted as a catalyst for senators’
dissatisfaction with other areas of DPS to bubble over. The result was a
second wide-ranging inquiry into DPS proposed by representatives of all
parties in the Senate, including Independents, and agreed to unanimously
by the Senate. The terms of reference give a flavour of the areas of
disquiet and concern, including about fundamental structural
arrangements. This inquiry is also in its preliminary stages. While
there is a widespread view that the 2004 amalgamation has not enhanced
the quality or effectiveness of support for the Parliament, there is
also recognition that the eggs cannot be unscrambled. The problem is a
much larger one than the individuals who have taken the helm at DPS but,
as similar journeys in parliamentary administration in our two largest
States have shown, getting the right people into those positions is
essential. The right people in both those cases have proven to be people
with parliamentary knowledge and experience and the State
administrations are working much more happily and effectively as a
consequence.
I would have thought that establishing the parliamentary
credentials of an external candidate was an essential task for any
selection panel. It will no doubt be enormously embarrassing all round
if the task has to be done by a select committee. The only thing more
embarrassing, in my view, would be to make the proposed appointment.
Robert, such are my thoughts – apologies for their length but
this affects us all. I would have no objection to your sharing these
views should you consider it useful.
Very best wishes
Rosemary
Rosemary Laing
Clerk of the Senate
UNQUOTE
That is completely damning.
