EARLY IN MY career as a Queensland public servant, I attended a workshop with the renowned Professor Patrick Weller, where he interrogated me about to whom I was accountable as a public servant. I jumped right in, saying that I was accountable to my clients and responsible to the minister. Pat tore strips off me. I had it all wrong: under the Westminster system, I was only accountable to the minister, who was accountable for the portfolio performance to parliament and, ultimately – through our system of representative democracy – to the people.

It was 1990, and I was in my early thirties. I had shifted from being a young social-policy advocate working within and outside the public service with disadvantaged people and communities to being a deputy CEO heading up housing-service delivery in what had once been an old-style state housing authority. I saw my role as advocating and assisting the communities I served and acting as a conduit and adviser to the minister of the day.