Something is rotten in the state of Victoria

Glass repeated the truism that culture starts at the top, warning that her call for deep change would be ignored at peril.

Rising citizen empowerment has been accompanied by a similar intolerance for governments that are seen to act in their own and not voters’ interests. The last federal election emphatically confirmed this, and Labor’s powerful Victorian regime faces similar electoral threats if the new premier, Jacinta Allan, and her third-term ministers ignore the need for deep reforms.

These will need to go far beyond Glass’ central recommendation of an independent commissioner to select and employ mandarins.

New Zealand has a similar set-up, but anyone familiar with the real politics of government will agree that no Australian cabinet is going to surrender their right to appoint their own departmental leaders.

The US has long formalised partisan appointments to the public service and if “Washminster” government is to be wound back, it will take deep political commitment that cabinet government works best when advice is truly independent.

In Canberra, it has taken a change of government and four years of reform to right the federal public service and restore a culture of independence and policy strength. Stephanie Foster’s shotgun appointment last week to head Home Affairs, without any merit selection process, signals that is still a work in progress.

In Victoria, it has been obvious for several years that the once-revered Victorian public service is no longer that. The recent rush of its best talent to take up key roles in Canberra is just another data point showing the glory days of so-called Victorian exceptionalism are long gone.

Nowhere is this more obvious than the Suburban Rail Loop. Still not properly costed, the 50-year project was dreamt up with the tight secrecy normally reserved for highly sensitive national security projects.

Even the state transport secretary was cut out of any substantive involvement, learning of the mega heavy-rail project only days before it was announced.

The very agency that is meant to “take short-term politics out of infrastructure planning”, Infrastructure Victoria, was also sidelined. Any officials brought into the tight team of PwC consultants, ministers and the premier’s department were forced to sign confidentiality statements.

The project is now being run by former deputy premier James Merlino. But the secretive bypassing of usual planning processes means the project to link up Melbourne’s middle ring of suburbs, despite its obvious merits, is now so politically tainted it will struggle to get the long-term capital needed to make it a reality.

The same themes of bureaucratic experts being cut out, over-reliance on consultants and holding back of unwelcome advice were widely found. Glass identified in spades the deep and obvious culture of fear and timidity that now pervades public administration in Victoria.

Taken together, they point to a cancer that, if not frankly admitted, will continue the inexorable demise of the once mighty Victorian public sector. And the state’s elected government.