can suggest that they are an expression of the "persona" of the minister any more. Now the minister isn't accountable for what they do, because now a minister can say, "Oh that was one of my advisers, I did not know about this". Well, if ministers are using that to escape accountability, they can't escape the proposition that it's time the advisers were made more accountable for defined roles, and became answerable in the same way as public servants to all the investigatory and accountability bodies, including parliamentary committees. John Alford : Do you think it would make a difference if there were to be a cap placed on the number of ministerial advisers? Terry Moran : It would help, because it would be another means of forcing a hard look at what jobs they do. So when the Coombs Royal Commission reported in 1976, there was a definition of the role of ministerial advisers that seemed reasonable to everybody at the time. That's fallen away. Now, in some jurisdictions, you have tribes of younger, inexperienced people who crowd out mature policy debates while they pursue hyper active issues management. This is corrosive of good government. John Alford: If you were king for a day, what changes would you make to the public service? Terry Moran: Well first, I think accountability has to be improved. So I would make the heads of agencies and departmental heads more directly accountable in their own right to parliamentary committees for delivery, particularly through