Ministerial staff have not been well served by academic and other commentary, much of which has been shallow and slapdash, error-prone and unhelpful.

Allan Behm's book, No, Minister: So You Want to be a Chief of Staff?, bucks these unhappy tendencies. Not only has he shown academic commentators like professors Anne Tiernan and R. A. W. Rhodes and the Business Council of Australia's Jennifer Westacott how to do it, he's made their limited contributions redundant. The book was launched last week.

Behm has held senior positions in the departments of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister and Cabinet, Attorney-General's and Defence. In 2001, he set up a private consultancy business. He was recruited to be chief of staff to Labor's Greg Combet when he became junior defence minister in 2009, a position he retained as Combet moved to be the climate change and then industry minister.

Behm has seen government policymaking and implementation from all of these vantage points. His reflections on his experience are intelligent, acute and sometimes provocative.

He defines the role of the chief of staff and what it takes to be a good one. He says chiefs should keep out of sight as much as possible and lead from "behind the arras". He explains how he thinks ministerial staff should be selected and the things that are important in those assessments, and he has helpful things to say about how chiefs should assist ministers.

Behm places a lot of emphasis on the chief's role in maintaining ministers' links and relationships with their colleagues, their departments, backbenchers and crossbenchers, the opposition and shadow ministers, and the host of people from all around the community, many of whom wish to bend ministers to their views by fair means and foul.

The book contains interesting reflections on the role of secretaries of departments and the present state of the public service, an institution the author rightly sees as governments' most "valuable asset".

Behm makes pointed observations about the interaction of politics and policy at the federal level today and, for different reasons, echoes journalist Paul Kelly's pessimism about the dysfunctions of government as it is now practised. Having spent so much time helping to put together Gillard's so called "clean energy future" program, only to see almost all of it destroyed by Tony Abbott for political reasons alone, has no doubt affected Behm's take on the state of affairs in the federal government.

No, Minister is neatly structured and accessible. Most chapters begin with an outline of their main points that are then expanded in a clear and logical way. The book is well written although some of its metaphors may be a little rich for some; for example, referring to matters relating to marriage, contraception and divorce as "the theology of the gonads" and the chief of staff role as "more or less like the melodic lead in a string quartet". Behm is sound, however, on the benefits of a drink and a decent plate of tucker, and he's right about the morale-boosting effects of a visit to L'Arpège restaurant in Paris for those unworried about having their wallets dramatically lightened.

Let's consider a few provocations in No, Minister.

Behm spends a good deal of time setting out the qualities and qualifications for ministerial staff. Most of this is on the money although the suggestion that "all ministerial office staff" should be members of the political party of their minister is debatable. That would greatly narrow fields of potential appointees and compromise merit in selections. For example, some eminently capable people might simply not be eligible for Labor Party membership.

Most importantly, the requirement would all but rule out the appointment of public servants to ministers' offices. Any who did join a minister's office would effectively be nailing their political colours to the mast, which, in the present environment, would be unwise.

Behm rightly makes much of the need for close working relations between ministers and their departments based on trust and mutual respect. In the past, that was promoted by having departmental staff spend time in ministers' offices other than as departmental liaison officers. It's likely that a part of the Hawke government's successful connection with the public service was on account of the then prime minister's insistence in having a senior public servant as his chief of staff, a habit that some other ministers imitated. The practice also had the added benefit of improving the public service's appreciation of the ins and outs of political government when staff returned to their departments after a stint with ministers. As far fewer public servants now work in ministers' offices, these benefits are lost and it may be no accident that relations between those offices and the public service appear to have become more fraught in many cases.

Requiring ministerial staff to belong to the political party of their ministers would be an effective prohibition on the interchange of staff between the public service and those offices. That is undesirable.

While Behm provides a good list of other selection criteria for ministerial staff, he may give more emphasis to some personal traits – like humility and enthusiasm – than others would be comfortable with.

The use of personal traits as a part of staff selection is controversial, and enthusiasm for them among those who study recruitment and promotion policy tends to wax and wane. It may be waxing at the moment but the fact is that these qualities are difficult to assess. They cannot be assessed in interviews and they can be gamed in tests. Referees inevitably will judge them in different ways. Moreover, no matter how humble and enthusiastic people may be, those traits count for nothing if they simply can't do the job.

One of Behm's longest chapters deals with the public service. Among other things, he says that, in recent years, there's been a "clear decline in [the public service's] capacity and capability" and it is now more "error-prone". He also quotes approvingly from a person who says that, within a decade, the best of the service's recruits are rendered "totally unemployable". These are reasonable points but they may be overplayed.

For example, Behm also says: "In departments for which Combet was responsible, the capability, energy, hard work and professionalism of the senior executives was outstanding." He is also generous with his praise of other departments Combet had to deal with, although some of them are leavened with criticisms that may be well earned. Former Climate Change Department secretary Blair Comley is commended generously, so there's at least one graduate recruit who has not been rendered unemployable. Nor was former Treasury secretary Ken Henry, who was recently made the chairman of the National Bank. Indeed, Behm's career is also a counterpoint. More to the point, a very large proportion of senior managers in the public service are graduate recruits.

There are some bright spots on capability and capacity. Staff in the service are now far better educated and they include far more women in senior positions. There is a more substantial policy capacity in some departments than 50 years ago, when central agencies hogged the field. More information is readily available to underpin policy analysis. It may be that the problem is more that this capability and capacity is not being used as much as it could be – that is, the question of capability and capacity may be as much a matter of demand as it is of supply.

The Abbott government certainly seems to have turned to people outside the public service to get the kind of advice it wants; for example, the renewable energy target review done by Dick Warburton, whose adverse views on that target were well know. When a lot of policy advice is so obtained or via the use of consultants, and senior public servants are sacked apparently because of their associations with unliked policies from the old regime, the public service may have become more reticent and more likely to hide its light under a bushel. The risk is that if the policy capacity and capability is less used, then it will be likely to wither in proportion. If this happens, the public service could end up more sidelined than it now seems to be. That would be a sad day for the public's interest in good government.

And any fears about the public service now being more error-prone may be mitigated by a reflection on the record of the former Postmaster-General's Department, which once made up about half the staff in the public service. No successful charge of it not being-error prone could be sustained.

Behm concludes his chapter on the public service ruminating on the need for a repeat of the Coombs royal commission of the 1970s. It's hard to see how that is warranted. It took 10 years for the Coombs commission's recommendations to be implemented. The problems that now affect the public service could be attended to without the inevitably slow-paced procedures of a big royal commission. There are many obvious things that could be done to improve the quality of the Commonwealth's administration, for example:

• Fixed-period contract employment for secretaries of departments could be abandoned and where secretaries need to be moved from their positions because relations with a minister have become unworkable they should be found another position at a roughly comparable level.
• Merit systems should be used to appoint people to statutory positions.
• SES structures should be refined; deputy secretary positions should be only provided where secretaries have unmanageable spans of supervisory control.
• There should be a more substantial central personnel authority in place of the Public Service Commission.
• As Behm suggests, the efficiency dividend should be abandoned, along with other arbitrary savings measures, to the maximum extent possible.
• There should be a more substantial investment in carefully assessed needs-based training.
• The present pay-fixing policy, which is fraudulent, irrational and incapable of being rationally implemented, should be replaced by one that specifically seeks to place public service remuneration in a reasonably competitive position in the general labour market for comparable work.

There's more, but that would be enough to get started on.

It's not often that former officials in Australia take the trouble to write a book about their experiences in working for governments. It's hard to think of a "kiss-and-tell" book from an official, as is so common in the United States, thank goodness. Even the great H. C. "Nugget" Coombs' volume of autobiography, Trial Balance, is probably not much consulted these days, if it ever was.

Behm's book stands out.

He has reflected with intelligence, balance and good sense on his experiences as a ministerial chief of staff and on his career as a senior public servant. He has produced a book that goes well beyond mere description to analyse, explain, draw lessons and make a great range of perceptive and clever suggestions. No, Minister is an excellent contribution to the cause of better government. It should be studied by all ministers, members of Parliament and their staff, and heads of departments and their staff at Commonwealth and state levels.

Public administration academics should do likewise if they wish to make themselves at least better informed.

Paddy Gourley is a former senior public servant. pdg@home.netspeed.com.au

No, Minister: So You Want to be a Chief of Staff? by Allan Behm, Melbourne University Publishing (June 2015).