Is Mr Laurie Glanfield Out of Touch?

The daily routines for a busy departmental Director General must involve many committee meetings, liaising with senior employees who have delegated authorities, and of course consultation with the Minister and members of Cabinet.

The public expects that a person who is a departmental Director General is up-to-date on what is going on in the organs of the Government that she/he advises. The public also expect a Director General to be directly accountable to the people for what happens on their watch. After all, better service delivery is the new marketing slogan and the buck stops with the Director General.

In March 2006 a letter was addressed to the Chairman of the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART). It was dated 9 March 2006 and signed by the Director General of the Attorney General's Department, Mr Laurie Glanfield (see the letter in PDF (Click here) at IPART's website).

The letter states, among other things, that:

"My department prepares a significant proportion of the government's legislation and in addition comments on the legal policy implications of all legislative proposals submitted to cabinet ... As required by the Subordinate Legislation Act 1989, my department prepares regulatory impact statements to assess the costs and benefits of making (or repealing) statutory rules that relate to legislation administered by the Attorney General ... Statutory rules are finalised following public and stakeholder consultation, then reviewed by both the NSW Executive Council and Parliament's Regulatory Review Committee."

So what's the big deal?

The problem is the last sentence quoted shows that Mr Glanfield was in March 2006 apparently unaware that as of 1 Janury 2004 (26 months prior to his letter) that the Regulation Review Committee no longer existed.

NSW Parliament's website states:

"The Regulation Review Committee is a completed joint statutory committee, established 24 Nov 1987, and ended 1 Jan 2004."

Small factual errors like these do raise the eyebrows. If the Director General is to be respected as a figure of authority and expertise and skill, and is to be trusted by the people of NSW as a crucial adviser to Cabinet, then how is it that he was apparently unaware in March 2006 that the Regulation Review Committee ceased to exist in January 2004?

Perhaps it is time to insist on some closer scrutiny of this particular public servant's work and for greater accountability from the Director General towards the public that he is supposed to be serving. Perhaps the public should be asking the Attorney General Mr Hatzistergos to answer openly and directly specific questions about the affairs, bureaucracy, repeated restructures, and budgetary expenditure of the department and of its reporting agencies.