Henry has lost political independence

Comments on Robert Gottliebsen “Rudd will pay for RSPT intransigence”, 28/05/2010, http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Mining-BHP-Rio-RSPT-Australian-dollar-pd20100528-5UTB2?OpenDocument&src=sph

Gottliebsen has made the correct observation that "Treasury as the designers of the flawed tax and one of the key groups publicly attacking the miners has lost its public service independence. Under the Westminster system it is the politicians who should do the attacking and the public servants should implement polices. The position of Ken Henry as the head of Treasury is not sustainable."

The public generally does not want to lay blames to public servants. However, the more the public look at the mistakes the Rudd government has made in the past 2.5 years, the more they realise it was likely due to the combination of Rudd management and leadership styles and the impractical, inexperience and poor quality in some quarters of the top public bureaucrats in charge.

That is unfortunately and sadly true.

Australia needs more independent voices, as opposed to the bureaucrats who serve the government of the day and government commissioned studies or modellings.

We only need a small part of the savings from either the wastes in government programs, or from savings from the ineffectiveness of some programs to fund independent institutions to improve the quality of the governance government.