There is nothing government loves more than a fresh start that fits inside the existing organisational chart. A resignation occurs, a successor is elected, the stationery is amended and everyone gathers solemnly around the new nameplate as if accountability has been achieved by an apprentice signwriter.
The ACT has a new deputy chief minister, which may prove a very good appointment. But politics has trained us to applaud continuity and renewal simultaneously, two products normally kept on opposite shelves. The new deputy brings experience, the government says. Also, everything will be different. It is a magnificent trick: the same machine, now with improved machine.
What the public wants after an integrity controversy is boring and therefore genuinely radical. Who approved what? What records were kept? Which warning was ignored? Who can stop the next mistake before it acquires a communications strategy? These questions lack the emotional sparkle of a leadership ballot, but they are the difference between an institution and a group photograph.
Administrative culture is often discussed like weather. It drifted in. Visibility was poor. A procurement front settled over the education portfolio. Nobody can be blamed for cloud. Yet culture is simply repeated behaviour with a pension plan: the things senior people reward, tolerate, document badly or decide not to see.
So welcome to the office. Keep the lanyard; it’s probably coded to six doors and none of them opens the cupboard with the useful files. Then publish the reforms, the deadlines and the person answerable for each one. Renewal does not need another adjective. It needs a calendar.