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It was cooked up in a business class galley at 30,000 feet and given the racy codename “Operation Halo”.

A coterie of high-profile government insiders dreamed up the plan in secret. Even senior cabinet ministers and transport bureaucrats were blindsided by the announcement of the most ambitious and expensive transport project in Victoria’s history.

The Victorian government’s signature infrastructure project, the $125 billion Suburban Rail Loop, is a key focus of the ombudsman’s report into the politicisation of the state’s public service.Credit: Jason South

The story of the conception of the state government’s Suburban Rail Loop had all the qualities of a great spy novel or a scene from Ocean’s Eleven, but public servants say it lacked the qualities expected of a transparent government operating in a way that is consistent with the principles of the Westminster system of government.

A key feature of that system is an independent, non-partisan public service capable of providing input and advice on government decisions. Instead, Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass in a report this week identified: “Government bypassing of traditional bureaucratic structures, concentration of decision-making outside of specialist departments, and a culture of ‘over responsiveness’ towards the preferences of ministers.”

Glass’ report into the “alleged politicisation of the Victorian public service” was triggered by a tranche of tenacious reporting in The Age that included this jaw-dropping piece of journalism by Timna Jacks, Chip Le Grand and Paul Sakkal.

The article told, for the first time, the unusual story of how the rail loop was kept secret from the public servants employed to scrutinise such projects. Later, pieces like this one from Le Grand reported on a mass purge and hiring of executives in the Department of Transport that became known as the “Red Wedding”, a reference to an infamously murderous scene from the series Game of Thrones.

More than two years after that first article, the ombudsman’s report found threats to the objectivity, professionalism and integrity of the Victorian public service.

“We uncovered rushed and shoddy recruitment practices, overuse of direct appointments often involving former ministerial staffers, executives fearful of providing ‘frank and fearless’ advice, and the marginalisation of public officials around keynote projects,” the report said, comparing the situation to a reversal of the British comedy Yes Minister, where public servants were running the country and mocked politicians for their impotency.

The report found “no direct evidence of widespread partisan hiring” but, troublingly, it found that a “culture of fear in the upper echelons of the public sector” was preventing senior bureaucrats from giving our political leaders the advice we need them to hear.

This kind of reporting from Jacks, Le Grand and Sakkal is difficult. Amid the climate of fear to which the ombudsman refers, identifying reliable sources of information within the government and public service is painstaking work. It requires tenacious reporting and a level of courage from people with knowledge of events that the public deserves to know about. Such people truly live up to the “public servant” moniker.

The premier and former premier have been dismissive in their public comments about the ombudsman’s findings. I urge you, subscribers, to read the findings for yourself here and make up your own mind on whether the Victorian public should be concerned.

As a publication, The Age is concerned on your behalf about the findings and what they mean for the health of our democracy. Our editorial, to be published on Saturday morning, will explain why in greater detail.

Despite the difficulty reporting on matters of integrity and transparency in government, The Age will continue to do so.

Holding governments, businesses and the powerful to account and protecting the public from harm should be the core business of any serious news outlet. That might sound to you like a relatively uncontroversial statement, which is why the fact that The Age and its stablemates are the only publications pursuing this kind of serious and difficult public interest journalism continues to baffle me. Restrictions on press freedom and the prohibitive cost of this work deters many, which is why we are eternally grateful for the support of your subscription.

In the past week alone your subscription has not only shown its value through the coverage of the ombudsman’s report and the investigative work that informed it, but it has helped fund our Sydney Morning Herald colleague Kate McClymont’s years-long investigation into allegations of indecent assault against presenter and political powerbroker Alan Jones. It also supported Charlotte Grieve’s important work investigating systemic issues in the podiatry sector.

This kind of journalism continues to set The Age apart from the pack. Our journalism is exposing wrongdoing and, through reports, reforms and action, continually has a positive impact on society.

We will soon send you more examples of the stories we broke in 2023 that made a real difference to our state and our country.

When that email arrives, I implore you to read it and ask yourself: who else doing this kind of work has had a comparable impact on society? And who else is investing in investigative reporting of this calibre?

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