The Federal Government has released a review into the process of appointing board members more than two years after it was handed down.
The review found that “too often the practice… has been to appoint friends of the Government to boards”.
It was supposed to have been publicly released in mid-2023.
The Government has now shared a new framework for appointing candidates.
Background
A review of the process of appointing people to Government boards was announced in February 2023.
Former Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs led the review.
Government boards inform institutions like the CSIRO, ABC, the NDIS, and Australia Post.
Cabinet ministers can directly appoint members.
Findings
Briggs found ministers had directly appointed as many as half of all board members in some Government portfolios.
The appointment of “friends of the Government... as a reward for past loyalty or to ensure alignment with government priorities,” Briggs said, “looked like... nepotism”.
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She said the current system does not have “enough checks and balances” to ensure ministers are fulfilling their “accountability obligations.”
Briggs made manyrecommendations, such as introducing new legislation designedto “ensure that board members are usually appointed independently”.
Other recommendations were to restrict people to sitting on a maximum of two paid Government boards at a time, and to require a minimum six-month gap betweenleaving office and being appointed to boards for politicians and their staffers.
Performance reviews of a board and its members were also recommended to be conducted every five years.
Response
In a statement, Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher said the Government “took the time to get [its response] right”.
Along with the report, the Government shared a new framework to guide the process of appointing board members.
The framework comes into effect in February, and directs ministers to appoint “on the basis of merit,” andconsult independent panels in some cases.
Except in rare cases, no one should be on more than two boards at once.
Criticism
Shadow Public Service Minister James Paterson said the Government released the report “at the last possible minute… after more than two years of obfuscation”.
Paterson said since it had received the report, the Government had “happily ignored [its] principles,” including by appointing former Queensland state Labor MP Mike Kaiser as Secretary of the Department of Climate Change.
