EI Inquiry: Matrix of confusion

SYDNEY – Bureaucratic language used by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service management obscured rather than advanced the basic day-to-day jobs of staff, Commissioner Ian Callinan said yesterday.

The inquiry has heard of a “matrix style of management” with layers of hierarchy and that the managers would not necessarily have any practical knowledge or experience of quarantine protocols in live animal imports.

Callinan interrupted testimony by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service (AQIS) national program manager David Ironside saying the language used masked the issues.

"I have the impression that there is a whole lot of language that's used that tends to mask or to diminish the understanding or the thrust of these things.

A lot of business-type, corporate-type language which doesn't seem to have any particular role to play in public administration," Commissioner Callinan said.

Ironside had given evidence that the station manager at Sydney's Eastern Creek quarantine centre, Greg Hankins, expressed concerns at the lack of hard copies of work instructions when he took up the appointment earlier this year.

Ironside said there was information available on the department’s intranet but there was not a central point to access relevant information

"The strategy is about trying to take those operations manuals and finalise them and have them located with the other finalised work instructions on the relevant part of the intranet," Ironside said.

Commissioner Callinan asked why there was not a simpler method of obtaining the information.

"Why don't you just have a set of duty sheets?" he said.

"...perhaps if there were more focus on the jobs that people had to do on a day-to-day basis, there might have been more efficiency and we may not have had the problem that occurred.

"See, I have to say to you that I have a tentative impression that a lot of this obscures what you should be doing rather than advances it and that the language itself may be one of the problems."