level we are seeing an argument emerge on both sides of politics along the lines of, "we want more activities shipped out to the states". The current federal government has done that in a number of ways. Take the 2011 reforms to public hospitals. These go past the state and territory governments to self-governing public hospitals, to which governments will pay fixed proportions of the efficient price for delivery of service. This can become a template for other areas of social policy in the future. John Alford : One thing that has come up recently is the role of ministerial advisers. Do you think they make it necessarily harder or easier for public servants to have a productive relationship with elected politicians? Terry Moran : I think there is a big problem. Ministerial advisers have become the black hole of accountability within our parliamentary democracy. The reason for that is that the old conventions governing their roles no longer hold true. In the past, if a public servant told a ministerial adviser something it would be deemed that they had told the minister, and the adviser would make sure the minister knew. In turn an adviser would speak with authority if they actually knew the minister's wishes or had good reason to know what they would be. There is insufficient accountability because there are so many ministerial advisers now with few, in some jurisdictions, who actually possess a grasp of the business of government commensurate with their responsibilities. No one