What do Secretaries really think when junior staff ask for career advice? Why are silos so impermeable? And should Christmas really be cancelled? Join Danielle and Caroline as they take Mike through listener questions.

Mike Kaiser, recently departed head of the Queensland Public Service, joins us to chat about the interface between political offices and the public service, lessons from robodebt, why delivery is everything in government and the secret of leade...

Danielle unpacks the recently released APS State of the ...

Keeping track of the National Anti-Corruption Commission and Robodebt is tricky - first there's no investigation, then there's some kind of review, then there's a search for an eminent person....In this episode, we talk about where thin...

Post Office’s internal inquiries never got to the bottom of the situation. Here we unpack how to choose an investigator, getting the information to the person, and what do with a report.Opening grab from

Post Office leadership commissioned at least 6 different investigations of varying degrees of independence and rigor into complaints about Horizon after 2010. And yet none of them got to the truth. In the next two episodes, we unpack what not t...

Another great round of questions, thanks!

Thanks for the questions folks!

The Australian Public Service Commission has released the findings of its Centralised Cod...

In this episode, we look at why Post Office kept prosecuting Sub Post Masters through the lens of Dan Davies' analysis in his new book The Unaccountability Machine.O...

A massive power imbalance, everyone doing the narrowest version of their jobs, and an overriding culture that assumed postmasters were thieves. These are just some of the ways Post Office ended up prosecuting postmasters for shortfalls that exi...

In this episode, former state Minister for Health and the Arts (among others) the Hon John Hill, shares his insights into what Ministers want - and what they need - from the public service.You can buy his book ‘

In this second interview with former Commonwealth Secretary and Australian Public Service Commissioner Andrew Podger AO, Danielle gets to chat aboutThe pros and cons of bringing all service delivery together in a single ...

With a decade as a Commonwealth Secretary, and two more as Australian Public Service Commissioner, it is no surprise Robodebt Royal Commissioner Holmes turned to Andrew Podger AO for

What does the community want more - every last transgressor to be punished, or government to keep out of their business?How can regulators keep pace with changing community expectations about what is ‘appropriate’ - and, indeed, what is...

In episode two of this mini-series, we pick up the story of the Essendon supplements scandal from the perspective of the investigators.In this story we hear how ASADA ends up in the middle of a media fire storm, with inadequate regulato...

“Lack of good governance is why good people did bad things at Essendon Football Club”. So says Lindsay Tanner, former Minister for Finance, and President of the Essendon Football Club from 2015.In this mini-series, Caroline tries to con...

In the second of two follow ups to her interview at the end of 2023, Sue Vardon dives deep on her commitment to training Centrelink staff, including the establishment of an in-house Registered Training Organisation (RTO).

In the first of two follow ups to her interview at the end of 2023, Sue Vardon returns to share her thoughts on the dangers for Senior Executives who outsource considerations of legality to the lawyers.

Centrelink is not alone in having a push and pull between the investment required to get it right up front, versus the convenience of fixing things up later.We discuss the old chestnut 'fast, cheap, good - pick two' , and the l...

If you knew your IT system was unreliable, wouldn't you keep some manual checks to make sure it doesn't go wrong? Not if you're Post Office, and desperately looking for savings. Especially if you've just lost your biggest revenue source, in the...

Despite hundreds of technical issues and continuing delays in meeting quality requirements, in January 2000, Post Office Board accepted the Horizon IT system as its own.In this episode, we discuss how hard it is to say 'stop' in the mid...

Why was the Post Office's Horizon IT system so error ridden in the first place?And is the false conviction of nearly 1000 postmasters really Tony Blair's fault in the end? (Spoiler alert: probably not.)In this episode, Caroline ...

Season 2 kicks off with a deeper look at the British Post Office fiasco.Gaslighting critics, false confessions, aggressive litigation tactics, challenges with redress, and no accountability from senior leaders - sound familiar?<...

In this special holiday bonus, inaugural CE of Centrelink Sue Vardon AO joins Danielle and Caroline to talk through her submission to the Robodebt Roy...