There are plenty of suggestions the Palaszczuk Government is looking at a broad program of public sector reform this year with the change at the very top announced last month signalling some likely changes.

About four weeks ago, the Premier announced her long serving director general Dave Stewart would exit his post in May and head to London as the state’s new United Kingdom agent-general and European trade commissioner.

This was unsurprising for those with their ears close to the ground in William Street although business types around town might have raised their eyebrows as Palaszczuk told a function for corporates after the election Stewart wasn’t going anywhere.

Outgoing Director-General of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet Dave Stewart (left) pictured wih Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. (Photo: AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

There’s no doubting Palaszczuk’s high regard for Stewart – she praises him privately and publicly and relies on him as much as anyone in the government.

Stewart is being replaced by long serving senior state bureaucrat Rachel Hunter who first came to prominence as the Queensland Public Service Commissioner 21 years ago.

There are many rumoured stories about Hunter’s future – yes in this “what’s next” age we are already looking beyond her time before she starts her new job!

Some “tower of power” chatter has it she’s not overly enthusiastic about the job (even though she’s keen to give it a good go, as they say) and is taking it on the basis she’ll be able to leave by Christmas. The more official line is that she is there for the long haul and you shouldn’t believe the word on William Street. That would be from the same sources of information which had it just five months ago Dave Stewart wasn’t going anywhere, anytime.

Another bit of chatters says Mike Kaiser, former Queensland MP, adviser to two state premiers, former Labor Party campaign director and executive with the National Broadband Network and big four accounting and consulting firm KPMG, is already being lined up to take over from Hunter – should the denied departure of the still to begin director general actually happen.

Kaiser jumped from KPMG to a senior government post after last October’s election, heading up the resources department (despite Queensland being a “mining state” there no mention of that activity in the name).

As you can see, there are more qualifications in there than a Commonwealth announcement on the vaccine program but chatter is the preferred currency among those who stroll along the Star-studded end of William Street.

Maybe most or some of this will happen. Maybe it won’t. But Hunter will move into the most powerful bureaucratic seat in Queensland next month and it’s likely she could foreshadow some broader public sector reform.

She does, after all, have an interest in this usually arcane aspect of public life and the middle of this year marks the 30th anniversary of Wayne Goss’s signal bureaucratic reform with the establishment of the Cabinet Office in mid-1991.

As this column has noted since the election, the worst instinct of the Palaszczuk Government is its tendency is towards “business as usual” rather than big change that risks spending what is fresh and available political capital.

If Palaszczuk and her ministers want to get some very relevant insights into how to get things done there is a handy primer just out that should be handed around at the next state cabinet meeting.

Leadership by Don Russell is the latest in the Monash University’s In the National Interest series of what are not much more than pamphlets on politics and power. At just 80 pages, even the slowest reader at the cabinet table should be able to get through it over lunch.

Russell uses his half-a-lifetime of experience as a senior Canberra public servant, key adviser to Treasurer and Prime Minister Paul Keating, senior bureaucrat in Canberra and Adelaide and many other significant roles in between to distil advice for ministers in the modern era.

The essence is easy to spot and critical for all practicing politicians to digest. Politicians can, says Russell, be divided into two groups.

“There are those who subscribe to the notion that if you are nice to the electorate, the electorate will be nice to you,” he writes. “The other group tends to believe that the electorate is much more impatient, and, unless you are being useful, they will inevitably tire of you and replace you. Loosely speaking, these groups can be described as the pleasers and the doers.

“Pleasers try not to upset people and will seek approval from as many groups as possible. They will try and shield the electorate and themselves from bad news.” Russell’s book marks pleasers out as people intensely interested in polling, looking to advance their own position in the eye of the electorate.

“Doers, on the other hand, will identify problems. They tend to maintain a dialogue with the electorate and endeavour to educate and inform people,” Russell says. “They will seek acknowledgement for tasks achieved. For doers, transparency can be an asset. The identification of a problem can be the basis for their next challenge.”

At the end of his introduction to his thesis, Russell adds an incentive for any politician wanting to choose between being a doer or pleaser, saying they “tend to have more fun”.

With more than three and half years ahead of them, the Queensland Government has a golden opportunity to choose the path of the doer. As Russell says, at the very least, they’ll have more fun.