It will never happen though. Trendy Lefties, despite all their yelling about social justice and all that, will never give up their prized bete-noir: blood-thirsty atrocity-committing sub-human diggers.

Nicholas Gruen [12]:
John Stone was successfully cloned …. or, looking at the dismal performance of so many pretend senior public servants, should that be …. clowned?

Liam [8]:
Be careful. A Rudd government might emulate the stupidity of Howard goverment’s PRO-terrorism laws …. and outlaw any critism of that sacred cow: Migration Agents. After all, if Migration Agents were abolished - your curtains would fade, pigs would fly backwards, your chooks would stop laying and you would have seven years bad luck …. true.

I actually have more respect for the minority of senior public servants who are genuine believers in Howard’s way, though of course they gotta go. I expect that some will do the right thing and resign anyway.

Fortunately for Miss Betty, she will be able to rely on the Abbot remedy. No doubt there is a new job waiting for her in some employers’ chamber, right-wing think tank, or gulag.

Rudd on Laeline recently got rather passionate about the APS and I am hopeful that we may get some improvement - though probably less than is desirable.

I also suspect that a couple of Secretaries might retire gracefully on their own initiative - Dr Boxall from DEWR comes to mind

http://www.amazon.ca/Working-Class-Life-Peter-Shergold/dp/0822938022

to the present that should be told one day

Readers might even want to enter their own comment box nominations for the post-election hit list.

As Liam said, Ken Oath!

Let’s start with the architecture faculties - close ‘em all down!

Keep up the the game

I would hope (and expect) that Rudd will follow the precedent set by Hawke.

In fact, the AFP Commissioner can only be sacked by the Governor-General for “misbehaviour or physical or mental incapacity”

Surely after the Haneef incident a case can be made for at two of the above criteria.

Let Windschuttle and Albrechtson stay where they are. Much easier to keep an eye on them if they are close by.

I might come back to this post, but as a quick hit, this is a falacious proposition:

In practice, merit has dominated and the vast majority of secretaries have been and are career public servants with proven performance in policy-advising and/or program management.

The truth is that merit applies up to a point, and there will be exceptions, but in the real world, there is no unambiguous test of merit at the senior executive level. Yes, there is an apprenticeship up to that level, and there are specialisms and niche executive markets. Broadly, however, at this level, everyone can do the job, bar splitting hairs. Appointments are something like 99 per cent discretionary - comparable, say, with trying to work out whether Stephen Larkham was better than Mark Ella. To assess the degree of politicisation, the polarity to be tested is not merit versus capable of doing the job, as Podger implies; but merit with the correct politics or merit per se.

http://www.ssc.govt.nz/display/document.asp?navid=258