The Stricken Ship HMAS DPIRD

Under the Barnett governments time in office the state Department of Agriculture was totally focussed on one thing.….Agriculture.

This was helped by the fact that throughout most of the Barnett years most of the seven senior managers heading up the Department had agricultural related qualifications.

Sadly, under this government, we have lost the Department of Agriculture into the mega Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development and today only one of its seven senior managers have an Agricultural Science degree and that is the newly appointed Acting Director General, Terry Hill.

Strangely enough, Terry was one of the past seven ag science qualified directors back in the days of the old Ag Department, but was smart enough to retreat to the Pilbara Development Commission to avoid the killing fields, which is what the Department has turned into under this government.

For those too young, ‘The Killing Fields’ refers to the 1970s madness in Cambodia under Pol Pot who went around liquidating competent government officials, those that who actually knew how to run the government, believing that a perfect new world can only be created by clearing out those from the past regime, or anyone who might push back on some of the government’s mad new ideas.

Under the McGowan Government’s Machinery of Government changes, there has been a push to create a perfect new public service by culling out experienced senior managers.

Obviously, in the quest for perfection no one has been physically shot under the changes, but there have been plenty of senior managers that have gotten the bullet or avoided it by finding a better life elsewhere.

Any who were seen as being too close to the last government or likely to provide frank and fearless advice were shown the door.?

If anything, the old Department of Agriculture has suffered the most, with the move into DPIRD resulting in a clean out of a swag of respected senior operators, leaving few in the upper echelons who come from the regions, grew up on farms, studied agriculture or have worked in field research.

Ralph Addis, the recent past Director General, was the last man standing with such a background but as of last week he too has abandoned ship.

Most of those who now inhabit senior positions have limited broadacre experience, they are management generalists or scientists who have not been closely linked to the economics or science of the production of grain and livestock, let alone understand life in rural communities and the business of successfully operating a broadacre farm.

The problems at the top have been compounded by the failed move in mashing together the three different departments, a lack of early funding to smooth the transition and a meddling minister who is in a hurry to regenerate the whole agricultural sector into a new purer version of itself.

As a result, few farmers today would complement the Minister on what her Department has been able to achieve over the past 4.5 years since she took over the combined jobs of Director General of Regional Development and Agriculture and in her spare time dabbled in the role of Minister.

In the normal world of Westminster government, Ministers don’t get involved in the detail of running departments.

The Minister’s job is to listen, speak rarely in briefings and then after careful consideration indicate in which direction they would like to go.?

Having them pacing the floor of the bridge, attempting to navigate and steer the ship at the same time while telling the engineers how to fix the ship inevitably ends in disaster

You can always pick the ships in the governments flotilla that are all at sea, the ones where chaos reigns below decks.?They can be identified by the long line on lifeboats that are floating in their wake more often than not filled with senior officers that were either forced to walk the plank or simply abandoned ship in the middle of the night.

When one of them happens to be the captain of HMAS DPIRD that was last seen pulling hard on the oars rowing in the opposite direction, then you know things are grim.

Not all of this is the fault of the Minister.?The relentless slashing of the department’s budget has not helped. As I have written in previous articles, past governments also have much to answer for, when it comes to funding cuts.

Every Treasurer in the last 30 years has taken a slice out of the department’s budget. Effectively halving its staff numbers from 2000 in 1990 to no more than 700 allocated to agricultural related projects today.

When this government came into power, they made much of the cuts of the Barnett years, but they cleverly ignored the flood of funding at around $100m/pa that was being pumped into primary industries support programs from the big Royalties for Regions bucket.

This gave us key infrastructure such as the 300 regional mobile phone towers costing $300m, and Ord Stage II. In comparison, this government has barely spent $30m on connectivity with few mobile towers to show for the dollars and the Fitzroy irrigation project has been drowned in red tape. ?

The chaos caused by the amalgamation and the sneaky funding cuts that were buried deep in budget papers plus the purge of senior managers has taken a major toll on the department’s ability to deliver on its core function, which is to support agriculture, fisheries and regional development.

If anyone wanted confirmation that the departmental ship was in trouble, then they only need to attempt to read the 2019 report entitled?Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development’s Capability Review: Phase 1.

Unfortunately, large parts of that report are blanked out by the government censors, hinting that the government was embarrassed by its conclusions and worried about people like me reading it. ?

Having been around government secrecy for a long time, you can’t tell me a capability review is worthy of state secrecy, if anything it should be part of good governance and helping to build public confidence and release.??

This report is not the only hint that things were not well in DPIRD. I keep hearing whisperings of the relentless demands on the senior executive from the Minister and the efforts been taken to suppress any dissent from her goal of regenerating and purifying the industry.

This reminds me of Stalin’s purges of the 1930s, where ideological purity was more important than the search for scientific truth and improving farm productivity.

For Russia, the end result was the Great Famine of 1932-33 which was the direct result of those in their Department of Agriculture imposing Stalin’s mad policies on farmers despite knowing that they would result in a collapse of crop production and mass starvation.

Something akin to Stalin’s Russia has been the life in DPIRD over the last nearly five years with demands to remake agriculture into a new purer ideal that forsakes the god of yield and instead worships the new age world of undefined progressive agriculture.

It’s not only the constant shuffling of managers to find those with the ideological purity to enact the Ministers commands that has weakened the Department, but the confused lack of clarity on strategy, the demands to do more with less resources, the political meddling in tactics, the administrative chaos and the culture of fear that together has done the damage.

Things got so bad at around the time of the Capability Review that the public sector union did a survey to gauge the feeling within the department. It is instructive to highlight the two key findings;

·???????????????????46% of DPIRD staff did not feel they could speak up or report issues without fear of consequences

·???????????????????Staff morale was rated at 2.2 out of 10

Following these two reports the Auditor General’s Office undertook their own investigation on the Departments ability to manage biosecurity risks and they found that:

Only 13 of its 38 actions from its 2013 plan have been completed.

·???????DPIRD has not ranked the highest risk pests nor created emergency plans, generic or specific, to deal with prohibited species.

·???????The process for declaring pests is still not transparent to stakeholders

·???????DPIRD has reduced regulatory activity in favour of voluntary compliance and community engagement.

·???????DPIRD cannot demonstrate that information on the spread, abundance and impact of high priority pests is accurate and current.

·???????Information on individual pests is still fragmented and inadequate to plan effective management programs and measure their success.

In its defense the Department said:

It is important also to recognise that the capacity of the Department to provide these services is impacted by the occurrence of new and emerging biosecurity threats and priorities, including responses to biosecurity incidents and incursions. Future planning must ensure that these critical services can be maintained throughout these times.

Which is code for we don’t have the money, people or expertise to do what is required under the legislation and all our money and time is going into dealing with new outbreaks, and the ministers’ other priorities. They went on to say;

Whilst much work has been done in this transition, there is much still to do.

So, the Department gets it has a problem, but how seriously has the Minister taken things.

Well, the Minister responded to the report 12 months after its release by proudly announcing that an additional $15m over four years would go into supporting biosecurity.

To put that into context that’s adding just under 4% a year of the annual $100m biosecurity budget, once inflation is factored in and it’s a real boost of just 1.5% a year which is less than the annual growth in the industry and is not going to do much to help manage the flood of people and border crossings that we can expect to arrive post Covid.

But this ignores the extent of the real budget cuts across the whole of the department over the past four years along with the planned future further cuts listed in forward estimates out to 2025.

This is one sinking ship which is also rapidly running out of fuel.?It helps explain why Ralph stole into a lifeboat last week and rowed away.?He was not going to go down with the ship when the Minister insisted on hanging onto the helm.

Terry Hill who has taken over, at least understands irrigated agriculture and the importance of regional development, but he faces the same set of problems and besides with won’t be rocking the boat while in the acting role.

Its only, if, and when, the Premier appoints a heavy hitting Director General who can evict the Minister from the bridge and take back control of the wheelhouse that the ship has any hope of staying afloat.

This new Director General, will need to have the courage to tell the Minister to enjoy the ride and spend more time listening to departmental advice rather than giving it out.

Failing that the Minister needs to be put on a new ship that she can take command of. No doubt Captain Ralph is hoping it is not his new command.

Ultimately, nothing will improve unless more resources can be extracted from the Treasurer to ensure the department stays afloat.

At the very least the funding hole of Departmental Services budget has to be filled, as it’s budgeted to fall from the pre-pandemic level of $190m in 2019-20, to $183m in 2024-25. ?This equates to around a $15m cut in real dollars which means the loss of another 75 staff.

With such major budgetary problems there is no point in running around funding hemp farms and throwing millions at regenerative agriculture collectivisation projects if the Department can’t fund its core biosecurity, animal welfare and animal health responsibilities which are set out in legislation.

Now no doubt the Minister will claim that there is nothing to see and the staff should go back to their stations and stop hanging around the life rafts. But the problems are real and they need to be addressed.

So as usual some advice to the Minister.

First to avoid that sinking feeling I suggest that it might pay to leave the helm to the new Acting DG, your place is not on the bridge.

Second spend more time listening to the paying passengers many of which come from farms, they may be annoying in not wanting to eat the organic menu and concerned about the ice bergs going past but they are why you have a ship at all.

If you do these two things this may help the senior leadership in the Department focus on their jobs without fearing for their future.

Besides its good to get out on the decks and mix with the passengers besides the decks are closer to the life rafts and if there are none left then, at the very least you can easily retreat to the bar and listen to the band.

Finally take steps to prove that I am wrong by providing evidence that all is well on-board HMAS DPIRD.

Dial up the Nous Group and get then to complete a second Capability Review but this time release it in full, together with the previous report.

Call up the Auditor Generals Office and ask them to do a third review of the department’s biosecurity capacity, and lastly get the union in to do another staff survey.?

And a final word to Ralph - enjoy HMAS Lotteries I hear it’s more like the Love Boat where everyone wants to dine at the captain’s table and the cruise route does not include the killing fields of Cambodia.

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