The Prime Minister's public service department was riven by internal tension, hostility and mistrust after the hasty changes ordered by the Abbott government, a new academic study has found.
Public servants at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet treated new colleagues with "elitism and dominance" after the "politically driven", massive and rapid expansion of the department in 2013, insiders say.
The academic researchers found the deep tribal divisions exposed by the "machinery of government" move were symbolised by fashion choices, attitudes to work and even the language spoken by different groups.
The lack of planning or attention to "cultural issues" had a serious impact on the massively expanded department's ability to do its job, senior and middle managers have revealed.
One manager told the researchers that "legacy" PM&C; bureaucrats were disparaged as "like little drones doing all these like strategic bullshit things and not actually changing stuff on the ground".
The newly elected Abbott-government's changes to PM&C; were controversial from the start, rapidly expanding the department from about 550 public servants to more than 2250, bringing in bureaucrats from eight other Commonwealth agencies to underpin Mr Abbott's pledge to be the "Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs" as well as Minister for Women.
The 'MoG' threw together the elite policy specialists from the Prime Minister's department with the service delivery workers in indigenous and women's affairs in an uneasy and hasty marriage.
Fairfax revealed there were soon grievances from the newly-drafted indigenous affairs bureaucrats who were paid much less on average, in some cases $19,000 a year worse off, than their new PM&C; colleagues working at the same level.
New recruits were also unhappy that some of the department's indigenous affairs leaders based themselves at PM&C;'s headquarters in Canberra's parliamentary precinct, far from unfashionable Woden where most of the rank-and-file worked.
Now, the true extent of internal bad blood and dysfunction caused by the merger has been exposed by University of New South Wales and ANU researchers who interviewed 16 middle and senior managers at PM&C; and found the problems were made worse by a failure of those managing the merger to consider cultural differences.
"It meant that not only did the groups continue to operate separately, but the tensions and hostility between the groups was amplified and fragmented their willingness to work together co-operatively," the researchers wrote.
One interviewee spoke of unpleasant conversations that were "politely veiled".
"Every decision that was made was often a sense of frustration and fear and annoyance," they said.
Managers told of the difficulty of integrating different workplace cultures from the eight agencies whose staff were "MoGed" into the newly formed indigenous affairs group within PM&C;, compounded by the clashes with the "elitism" of the "legacy" Prime Minister and Cabinet bureaucrats.
The department's tribes were easy to tell apart.
"You know when someone from PM&C; is coming in because they're all suited up and very formal," one interviewee told the researchers.
In contrast, public servants from Indigenous Affairs and the Office for Women a more relaxed approach to work wear.
"The majority of people in the office were ... ex-Human Rights or Women's Affairs lawyers who'd worked at domestic shelters, who wore a lot of fluffy sweaters and tie-dye skirts and had their dyed hair and big earrings," another manager said.
PM&C; has been contacted for comment.
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