The silence of the bureaucrats
How restrictions on officials' speech diminish us all
Germany has recently passed a law banning government officials from commenting in public in ways that depart from official policies of the political leaders of the government.
Penalties include sacking and even suspension of superannuation or pension benefits. European social security systems are closely tied to employment arrangements so this penalty may be less punitive than if first seems. It is the civil equivalent of stripping the ranks from a disgraced officer.
Thomas Fazi commented, in this article on “Germany’s authoritarian turn”, and in a related tweet, that it was the most dystopian thing he had seen. By the way, Thomas writes an excellent substack himself that I do recommend.
In truth, however, Thomas may not have realised, as a journalist, just what the real working conditions and political rights of civil servants are like. Public servants -minor, modest government officials as I was for three decades - have long acted on the assumption they have no or very limited rights of free speech. In Australia, the High Court has indeed ruled so. The prerogatives of elected officials override the civil rights of civil servants. It is regrettable; but this is reality, not dystopia.
For example, Victoria has a constitutional provision prohibiting public servants commenting on any aspect of government administration or policy, with severe penalties. As a government employee you are warned about this provision by politically appointed executives in the lead-up to elections.
There have been several cases of dismissal of public servants for expressing their views in Australia. One case of Mikhaila Banerji went all the way to the High Court Banerji had servant expressed concerns about Commonwealth Government refugee policy, and despite working in an unrelated field, so that her comments did not compromise her own professional work. But her employer dismissed her because dissent and the appearance of dissent on this sensitive issue would not be tolerated. The constitutional court of Australia, that island of democracy, ruled that:
On appeal, the High Court unanimously held that the impugned provisions had a purpose consistent with the constitutionally prescribed system of representative and responsible government, namely the maintenance of an apolitical public service. The Court also held that the provisions were reasonably appropriate and adapted or proportionate to their purpose and accordingly did not impose an unjustified burden on the implied freedom.
(Comcare v Michael Banerji, High Court of Australia, 23 August 2019)
When the Court said “apolitical” here they really meant cowered. Numerous inquiries in Australia have exposed the current day public service as deeply politicised. The High Court judgement was interpreted as a restriction of freedom of speech, not only of public servants but all employees who their employers seek to control through codes of conduct and organisational policies. Of course, these provisions are enforced inconsistently. Some tattlers are more equal than others. The powerful and favoured are free to speak their minds; their minds meld with the political leadership. I have witnessed many such cases of such inconsistent interpretation in my years in the Government of Victoria.
But the quality of our republic suffers because of the stifling of so many articulate, perceptive, and well-informed minds. I wrote about these issues in several essays in my book Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat: Writing on Governing (2023). Here is an excerpt from the title essay of the book, which was originally written in 2017. It is the tenth section of that title essay, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat” which meditates on the Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”.
From “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat”
X. Flight in green light
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
(Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird)
It is not often that the average educated reasonable person catches a glimpse of bureaucrats in flight, out in the open, for all to see, their black wings starkly beautiful in a soft green light. They are told it is not their job to take the limelight. They should keep away from public stages, television lights, and open-ended discussions with media identities. Most are harshly disciplined for talking out of school, even for making critical comments on Facebook about the upper hierarchy of their organisations. Free speech – even perhaps all elements of freedom of thought, conscience and religion as defined by the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights – is something bureaucrats routinely, in my experience (yes, limited to a tolerant democracy of moderate quality), defend for others, while not enjoying themselves.
An effective invisibility cloak and a great cone of silence – that evergreen metaphor of broken, mundane conspiracies created by Mel Brooks in Get Smart – screen out bureaucrats from the great conversations on matters of public importance that shape the moral lives of our distressed republics. Those republics suffer for it. They suffer through a lowering of standards of public speech and political thought. They suffer through the gradual humiliation and disordering of the great public institutions of bureaucracy, which are at their strongest when they enjoy a strong, open and accountable relationship with the people they serve. That relationship should not be funnelled through the cell phone of a whizz-kid political adviser and the mindless demands of the 24-hour political media machine. They suffer from the diminished pool of knowledge shared to solve our many common problems of coordination. They suffer through the loss to the public stage of some of the best informed, articulate and compassionate minds. In their place we get panel shows of partisan left/right think-tankers, meretricious lobbyists and journalists endlessly talking to journalists about what journalists think of the issues in the papers of the day. Truly, the bawds of cacophony.
Could it be another way? I recall several years ago a serious current affairs television program announced that it would interview the head of the department responsible for child protection and family services, then called, with no conscious irony, the Department of Human Services. The department had been heavily criticised on many matters. The still quite new Government, then within the first weeks or months of its office, had even made something of a major election issue of the failings of this department and promised a major and fundamental inquiry, quite an unusual reordering of political priorities. The head of the department was also not some mere courtier, but had worked on the front lines of child protection in her early career. She held a deep knowledge of the dilemmas, and had some real polish in speaking clearly to many audiences about how things ought to improve. Moreover, it was she who had been responsible directly and personally for many of the failures and many of the successes in child protection over maybe 20 years. It was right that she should face the tough questions, not some Minister newly briefed and with only a helicopter view of the problems. Surely, she is the best person to ask, on principle because of both her knowledge and accountability.
But when it came time for the interview, the capable, polished and assertive Minister appeared in the studio and live to air. The first question of her, was why would you not let your most senior bureaucrat speak directly to the program? The Minister’s response was that I am the elected official and the Minister responsible, and it is appropriate that I represent the Government’s views to the public. This is the Westminster system, but, more precisely, it is a narrow code of operations enforced with rigid, thoughtless discipline entrenched by political and media advisory staff over the last thirty years.
It is not that the Minister was not capable and within her rights to speak on behalf of the Government. But was she really within her rights to silence her most senior official, and to prevent any form of direct relationship between the leaders of bureaucratic institutions and the public they serve? The Minister, after all, would have many more opportunities to speak to the media. The provincial government I serve releases five or more media releases every day. But they are the cheap and bowdlerised verse of the bawds of euphony. It is surely time to silence their cries; to sit back and to observe the blackbird in flight in these strange and rare lights.
I hope you enjoyed this essay from my book. I rarely write on government these days, but my book contains reflections on the real experience of one minor, if meditative, government official. The cone of silence demanded by political executives in ‘liberal democracies’ prevents even sharp observers, like Thomas Fazi, from hearing and seeing the world of government and bureaucracy clearly. We like to celebrate whistleblowers and provocative journalists; but we chain our honest, inquiring government officials to this dysfunctional cone of silence. We exclude them from public conversation. I have long struggled with this problem and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat was my memoir of how I escaped that frozen cone of silence.
You can buy Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Bureaucrat here.
It provides some evidence for why we should abandon the cone of silence that hangs like a sword of Damocles over the bureaucrats of the world. It offers a few fragments of wisdom I hope from a modest government official who only asks that we listen to wisdom from whomsoever speaks it, not only from authorised accounts of government communications professionals, check-marked social media accounts or celebrity media performers.
It tells my story of how my voice was released, from silenced bureaucrat to substack essayist. I would love it if you supported me by sharing that voice with others.