What I have learned with more than two decades of employment in the state government is managers actually have less power than they think. Yet, this important fact doesn’t stop them abusing what power they do have. In people-centric organisations, the purpose of the department is to provide a service or product to the public utilising the knowledge and skills of the team, this is normally at a subsidised price.

What these managers fail to realise is they are not in business, yet they seem to think they are. They are a service provider and their role is to provide a service to the community using taxpayers funds – the taxpayer pays their inflated salaries. These inflated salaries do not attract the top talent either, I see lots of career bureaucrats. These managers have an obligation to utilise taxpayer funds in a manner that serves the public and to not enrich themselves or their cronies. This is not just an ethical obligation, this is written into the Public Sector Act – this is law.

Many managers treat this as an inconvenience instead exploiting their position to enrich their personal power base. This generally involves rewarding those who do not present a challenge to their authority, they will promote those who pose no threats to their dominance as they now owe their master their total loyalty. In private organisations, the emphasis is to identify the most motivated talent and develop these individuals to best harness their abilities to generate value for the business – this is sadly not the case in government organisations.