What are public servants for?

James Whelan from the Centre for Policy Development has just written a report on the public sector, called The State of the Australian Public Service: An Alternative Report.

Larvatus Prodeo has a post about it. Several hours after posting, there's one comment. Which rather makes me think people are considerably less fired up about the role of the public service than they are about a wide, wide range of other issues.

Here are some reasons why this might be the case.

• Public servants are often the ones doing the work that we loathe the government for doing. It's hard to care about people you think are acting wrongly.
• We take all the good things the public service do for granted because we are utterly used to them being provided with a minimum of fuss (unless we are poor in which case see the point above and imagine dealing with Centrelink on a bad day).
• Stereotypes about public servants say that we are overpaid, lazy bludgers ripping off the taxpayer*, so it's hard to care about us as people, or acknowledge the work we do.

Larvatus Prodeo asks the question, what are public servants for? I'm looking forward to thinking about that more, but I'm afraid I'm not so clear on the answer. I fear I know quite a bit about what I do, but much less about why and what overall I should be achieving.

I also saw, today, an art work from 2003 that talked about four different models of disability. I know I don't want the public service to be 'for' the administrative model, for people with disability or for anyone else for that matter.



*Incidentally, I love how there is only one taxpayer in some of these discussions. She must be righteously pissed off, I reckon.

Worring and suchlike

Travel insurance is a very good thing, because it means that there are less things to worry about, except you can add worrying about the travel insurance itself if you are a very thorough worrier.

Worrying about work gets into your sleep, until you are dreaming about what the Remuneration Tribunal might do. Which is hardly worth worrying about even when awake, because they just do what they do. Do do do dooby dooby doo.

That wasn't me, by the way, that was my work mate, who is not such a worrier generally.

Other things you can worry about: illness, assignments, money, if the mould can be scraped safely off the jam, global inequalities, missing the bus, whether worrying gives you grey hairs or only wrinkles, warts. Warts are not caused by worrying. There is no such thing as worry warts, whatever people might say.

Global warming is a good worry option, because it introduces a wide range of second-order worries, including worrying about how so many people ended up being idiots. Or maybe that's more of a wondering than a worrying.

You can worry at knitting, but only if you are a small dog in an English story for children. You can worry about time travel, but it never seems to come to much, so maybe worrying works as a prophylactic after all.

Cinderella moments

So, Best-Department-Evah is having a ball this year. They tried to organise one last year, but everyone was a bit 'meh' what with the extended caretaker period and not knowing if we'd have jobs and all.

This year everyone is very keen, and in a moment of uncharacteristically wild girliness I have purchased a ticket. I'll be sitting with a group of people from my grad year (2008). They are quite a bit with the younger-and-thinner than I am, of course, and many of them have been to balls quite recently, I believe.

Last time I went to a ball was in 1989 and it was my final year of high school. My dress was made by my mum, and was a Mariana Hardwick knockoff, burgundy shot silk kind of jobby. Shawl shoulders and long, black gloves. Those of you who were around in the late 1980s will be able to visualise, I am sure. The puffiness in the skirt region was down to stiffened black tulle, and my mum boned the bodice for all she was worth, and I could still breathe so you can see what a genius she was. It didn't really look like this, but it didn't exactly look unlike that either (especially to the untutored, not growing up in the 1980s sort of eye). It was like a slight pretension to good taste version of that.

Now, as I understand it, fashion has moved on a bit in the formal frock stakes, and also I am not seventeen any more. My other experience of formal evening wear was from 'doing my deb' in 1988.* This dress was also spectacular and most foofy with a skirt of five layers of tulle and a stretch satin bodice, so I looked like a cross between a ballet dancer and Madonna on a modest day. This too, I belive, would not be an appropriate option. Although if I wasn't three times wider now than I was then, I might be tempted to give the bodice a red hot go.

Also, I have since forgotten how to dance, although back in the day I could do the Pride of Erin and the tangoette like nobody's business.

So, what does a person of almost-forty wear to a ball? A person no longer has access to genius, dress-making relatives and a person's wardrobe is filled with suits of black and grey.**

On the upside, no pumpkins will be harmed.

*Why yes, we did have a bicentenary theme, thanks for asking. The table decorations were yellow and green and included bunches of helium ballons. Bewdiful.

**How a person became the sort of person to have a wardrobe full of suits of black and grey is another story. Suffice to say, it surprises me every single morning. I used to have a wardrobe (or more accurately a clothes rack and a messy pile on the floor) full of 1960s cocktail dresses and a selection of Useful A-line Skirts - suitable for every occasion. I would like to wear a 1960s cocktail dress to the Ball, but I no longer have Twiggy sized hips, so I set my frocks free for others to find and love.

Good news

My broccoli is starting to broccle. Take that old frost.

I am off to Brisbane and other regions of south east Queensland for a few days with the junior. They have less frost up there.

In two days I have seen the former PM and the former Chief Minister, but in different places. One of them is very thin.

Recommending a book I haven't read yet myself.

Peter Salmon's new book (and first book for that matter) is called The Coffee Story.

He is someone I have known for a very long time, or at least knew very well for a very long time some time ago, and I remember him talking about writing a book about coffee and thinking about it for very long time.

I will read it when I stop panicking about Executive Power and the writing of 7,500 word essays. If you are in a panic-free zone you could probably read it now, if you felt like it.

In which I have nothing to say because I have so much to say

You may have noticed, by not visiting, that I have not had much to say of any consequence of late. There are several reasons. One is that I am tired from working a more grown up sort of job. One is that the Noodle has expressed a wish that I not blog about him very much any more, and I try to respect that.

One is that many of the things I care about overlap with my work, and I am never sure what the Commonwealth owns and what I own with the information and the thinking so it seems I should err on the side of silence. This is a good thing because it means I am doing a job that I really like and care about, but gosh it's an odd feeling not knowing who owns stuff that is inside my own head.

Another one is that I am not reading the way I used to. Something inside my mind just doesn't do it right now. No doubt it is because my brain is busy with a bunch of other stuff, but it is messing with my sense of who I am and what I am for.

So all this adds up to me not being sure if I need to blog at all right now, because writing for people to read isn't really happening. So if I don't come back for a bit, thanks for all the interest and comments and general making the world a bit more intering-ness over the past few years because the thing that I miss is the sense of being in a conversation with other people that can roam and ramble and still make some kind of sense. And somehow I still feel a bit lonely for that, even though I am talk talk talking all the day long.

Ms Broccoli, meet Ms Frost, MsFrost, Ms Broccoli

Frost, I know that Broccoli has never done you any harm. So please leave Broccoli alone from now on, eh? I am starting to think that you are a bully.

It's probably too late for poor old Mr Lettuce.