Hilary Golder - Politics, Patronage and Public Works: The Administration of New South Wales. Vol. 1

Hilary Golder

Politics, Patronage and Public Works: The Administration of New South Wales. Volume I, 1842-1900

Sydney: UNSW Press, 2005.

Pp. xi + 268                 Hardback                     ISBN 0 86840511 6               

Too much political history is written on the Superman principle: the government makes a decision and, zap!, the policy is put into effect. Historians are not usually interested in minute administrative processes, and the over-bureaucratisation of higher education probably adds little to their enthusiasm for studying pen-pushers and bean-counters. In any case, it is easy to assume that, since New South Wales was created as a direct arm of the British state, the new settlement must have inherited a ready-made system of day-to-day government. A little reflection on the central and local institutions of Georgian England is enough to realise that the colony was, in large measure, on its own as it set out to keep track of its own problems.

Hilary Golder’s excellent book tells what was really going on. By making 1842 her opening vantage point, she is able to describe the administrative structure on the eve of the introduction of popular election, which widened the scope for settler pressure on government. This is important, since in addition to demonstrating how the special needs of the colony shaped its administration, she is also concerned with the counterpoint theme of the ways in which the system that evolved influenced the expectations of the colonial population. Looking backwards from 1842, she explores how the imperative of keeping track of most of the population (government back home was not concerned to monitor individuals at all) and the need to allocate and register land holdings pushed governors and officials into creating a novel and highly centralised structure. The running of a penal colony could not be indefinitely entrusted to quill-wielding convicts, since those literate enough to work as clerks had probably been transported for embezzlement or forgery. Hence an independent civil service had to be developed, at least in outline. Thanks to the beneficence of distance, tight budgetary control from London could be circumvented by creating a revolving system of temporary posts, while the creation of ad hoc boards made it possible to recycle the same officials, some of whom worked very hard indeed. Similarly, the British model of volunteer landowners dispensing justice in the localities broke down in New South Wales, where an antipodean squirearchy never took root, and somebody had to interpose between the floggers and the flogged. From police magistrates to postmasters, government was everywhere. The more it imposed control, the deeper it had to accept responsibility, for instance in providing basic care facilities for the sunset years of those transported for life. In one of the many striking phrases that enliven the text, New South Wales was “part gulag, part welfare state” (p. 24).

            Golder stresses that the key point about the advent of responsible government in 1856 was that it was unaccompanied by the moderating discipline of a party system. Politicians were but loosely constrained by the defence of principle and turned instead to the plundering of jobs, while insecure and factionalised ministries were only too willing to use patronage to buy votes. In 1857, the entrance test for clerkships was scrapped by Charles Cowper, premier of the colony’s second ministry (and, later, also head of its fourth and seventh cabinets). This was just the moment when the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms were adopted to smarten up the civil service in Britain. Apologists argued that the intention was identical, to prise the bureaucracy from the control of a narrow aristocracy. But since in Australia this aristocracy was defined in terms of its education, Cowper was hardly laying the foundations of a meritocracy. Legislators were encouraged to hope for snug retirement berths, while their votes were assured, for a session or two, by lavishing minor appointments upon their kin. A simple entrance test was re-introduced in 1871, but the well-worn device of the temporary appointment made it easy to evade.

            Indeed, it is remarkable that the structure of government worked as well as it did. Some appointments were notorious sinecures: the offspring of one cabinet minister had a hot line to Henry Parkes, and so nobody even asked him to do any work. It was, of course, Golder’s sub-theme which provided the pressure to force the system on deliver. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the colonial state took on more responsibilities, in areas such as education (where it was ahead of Britain) and especially the railways (which remained a private sector responsibility in the old country). Individual politicians needed comfortable jobs, but whole communities demanded efficient services. But, perversely, the voters who wanted branch-lines with trains that ran on time also imposed a low taxation regime upon their rulers, and ministries constantly sought to curb the cost of the monster of their own nurturing. By 1878, around four percent of the male workforce was on various government payrolls. Half-hearted attempts at reform began in the 1880s, but legislators had to realise that they were a large part of the problem. Political courage was required to create an impermeable barrier between the snouts and the trough for, by 1893, there were 30,000 full-time or part-time government employees  this at a time when around a quarter of a million male adults qualified to vote, and not all bothered to cast their ballots. Parkes had led the way in reforming the railways in 1888, and in 1895 George Reid carried legislation to establish an independent Public Service Board. Golder argues that by that time, there was simply too much patronage for politicians to handle, and appointment and promotion by merit had already become the norm. Golder questions the effectiveness of the new Board, which created its own mythology of Augean stables to be cleaned. With a weary nod to modern “down-sizing”, she doubts whether posts eliminated in the drive against waste were really unnecessary. Then as now, it does seem a coincidence that many of them disappeared simply because the incumbent happened to retire during the so-called “reign of terror” of the Board’s early years. Massive reductions in public employees were claimed, but Golder shows that the Board simply reclassified the large unskilled labour force working on the roads and railways. The roads and the railways were still repaired, but the men doing the spadework ceased to be counted as civil servants. The rigorous new system was tough on the nephews of politicians but it also “tidied away” loopholes that had enabled, for instance, widows to take over their husbands’ post offices. Unfortunately, the statistician T.A. Coghlen, the driving force behind the new Board, believed that a professional public service was by definition a masculine public service.

            This impressive book is evidently based on massive archival research, much of it among files that can hardly generate delight. Yet Golder has a light touch, deftly selecting her evidence so that we are not bludgeoned by her scholarship. Illustrative episodes are helpfully side-lined into “boxes” to avoid breaking up the flow. This economy of referencing may explain the absence of omission to a pioneering exploration by John W. Cell, in his 1970 monograph, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Policy-Making Process. Cell used the formation of the Donaldson ministry in 1856 as a case study of the problems encountered by colonial politicians in taking control of the machine of government. Many of the questions that he posed about the manipulation of the bureaucracy Golder has now answered.

            It is a pleasure to encounter a book that really is a hardback, robustly bound and also handsomely designed. In particular, contemporary illustrations have generally reproduced with a high degree of clarity. However, the text occasionally has a crowded appearance, caused by restricted spacing between sentences. Oddly, full stops vanish altogether from initials, an unsightly device in a land where so many men were known by two initials and a surname. Presumably, six pages from the end, somebody’s spell-checker failed to persuade that there is no letter “a” in “ideologue”. These minor shortcomings are only worth mentioning because the second volume ought to match in appearance the ground-breaking quality of the research. It is certainly eagerly awaited.