Jenny Wilkinson makes a strong case for evidence, pragmatism and intellectual rigour in the public service. But good advice also depends on ministers willing to hear it and officials protected from political pressure.

Sir Les Patterson, the one-time self-appointed chairman of the Australian Cheese Board and etiquette adviser to Australian governments, once explained that “I’m not an orator, ladies and gentlemen. I’m an Australian public servant.”

It’s a significant distinction that’s been validated by hundreds of public servants who, when let loose, have left captive audiences stupefied, confused and rueful.

It’s tempting to name names but that would be unfair, as it would be necessary in the space available herein to leave so many unacknowledged.

The secretary of the Department of the Treasury (DoT), Jenny Wilkinson, has bucked the trend of this sad history in an interesting and intelligent speech last month. It’s on the DoT’s website and it can be approached with confidence and without being distracted by its invocation of those morale-sapping words ‘leadership’ and ‘reform’.

Wilkinson contradicts the belief that good policy is “essentially a matter of good ideas. Find the right answer, make the argument, and the rest would follow.” Climate policy, she says, “disabused me of that notion fairly quickly.” For Wilkinson, “Durable reform is one of the hardest things a democratic system attempts [and that] … the public service has an irreplaceable role in making it possible.”

She stresses the need for public servants to do “hard thinking” so they can have “a genuine intellectual position on what would work better, and why”. She’s sensitive........

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