Australia recently saw the sort of shift in national leadership that some 70% of Americans are hoping for, when the government of John Howard—great ally of G.W. Bush–drew to a close after the election of Kevin Rudd as the new Prime Minister. Just what Rudd will do with his administration is still in its formative stages, and last week he delivered a major address to 900 senior bureaucrats signaling some of the changes ahead.

Two somewhat different takes on Rudd’s speech are found in Melbourne’s The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, though both Ross Gittins in the SMH and Michelle Grattan in The Age seem to agree that the passing of the John Howard approach to bureaucracies and bureaucrats is a good thing. Even so—and perhaps I’m not reading him correctly—Gittins seems to suggest that Rudd’s commitment to building bureaucratic processes that aren’t driven by ideology is questionable:

A clear message to emerge from that speech is that Rudd is more a bureaucrat than he is a politician. As a consequence, he – and his Government – is low on ideology, but high on bureaucratic “process”.

On some of the touchstone ideological issues, Rudd is surprisingly uncommitted. “Policy design and policy evaluation should be driven by analysis of all the available options, and not by ideology,” he told the assembled troops. “I do not have an ideological preference for the public sector, nor for the private sector,” he said.

A bit later he refers to Rudd as “lacking ideology.” As a student of bureaucracies and the history of bureaucracies, I don’t see his commitment to policy and process based on “all the available options” rather than ideology as a negative. That is, after all, what we wish to see return to the likes of the U.S. Department of Justice–policy and process that are consistent across the board, rather than favoring one political ideology over another. I would suggest, however, that while we prefer our bureaucracies not be ideologically driven in the way the Bush administration departments have been politicized, advancing the idea of policies and processes that are responsive to their constituencies, as Rudd seems to have done, is expressive of an ideal, and in that way is putting forth a non-partisan ideology. Lacking a clear partisan ideology doesn’t mean that he’s “lacking ideology” altogether.

While Grattan awaits the proof in the pudding, she seems less concerned than Gittins:

A major difference between Rudd and John Howard is their attitude to the bureaucracy. When Howard became PM, he immediately got rid of one-third of the departmental heads. He was suspicious of the public service. His brother Bob once told me this went back a long way. “Our family in the 1940s and 1950s was very anti-public service … If he has a grudge against two groups, it’s the public service and academics.”

Rudd is just the opposite. He sees the public service as a strong source of ideas — albeit one that has been beaten down recently. He insists (the proof of this pudding will be in the eating) that he wants robust advice, not just what the bureaucrats think the Government wants to hear. That doesn’t mean he’s fully happy with the current service. He has made it clear he wants a more creative, in-touch bureaucracy, with new blood.

While both Grattan and Gittins write of Rudd’s wanting to see greater professionalization of Australia’s bureaucracies such that they become responsive to those they are meant to serve, Gittins does make note of an important omission in the list of stakeholders whom Rudd mentioned as being necessary to that process: labor unions. I would agree that labor unions are one of the constituencies that ought to be heard during Rudd’s reformation of bureaucracies.