Public servants are employed in a life-time career service with protection from arbitrary or politically motivated dismissal. Tenure of service encourages public servants to provide objective and impartial advice to Ministers. If public servants were elected, or if their appointment and dismissal was subject to the government of the day, they would be inclined to provide short term, partisan, and politically expedient advice, rather than advice which is in the long term public interest. Recruitment to the public service is on the basis of merit. The public service operates with a hierarchical structure of posts and positions with a graduated classification of salaries and benefits.
Public servants have a standard retirement and pension plan.
These conventions and practices gave rise to the ideal of a politically neutral public service with complete loyalty to the government of the day regardless of its political complexion. An expert, career service permanently staffed on the basis of merit rather than political patronage. A professional service, offering impartial and courageous advice, devoted to the public interest and obedient to the will of the Minister and Cabinet. A service which provides the nation with continuity when governments change. Public sector reform Reality has probably never matched the ideal, and a number of reforms to public administration in the 1970s, 80s and 90s have subsequently shaped the ideal.