Winds of change seem to be gusting along the hallowed corridors of the fifth floor.
It is a perhaps little known manifestation of the post-DER principle and practice of devolved diarchy, but since we all moved into the new R1 Building in 1998, the VCDF and the Deputy Secretary ostensibly handling strategy matters share a suite of offices strategically located on a corner of the 5th floor.
This veritable tenants-in-common situation has long fuelled my sense of irony, mainly on organisational effectiveness and culture grounds.
But also because we have watched deputy secretaries come and go while my boss, Air Marshall Barney Stoush, the VCDF, remains seemingly ever-ensconced in this page and on history’s stage in virtual perpetuity.
Such a degree of cheek-by-jowl comparative bureaucratic luxury also allows the respective personal staff to discreetly monitor the comings and goings into the other office.
Many a sticky situation has been nipped in the bud by keen observation of the timings, identity and mood of the passing parade.
Last week, for example, Barney had a visitor who aroused some discreet but definite interest on the other side of our shared ante-room arrangement.
The visitor was a mid-level manager from the Defence Personnel Executive and one well known among the retirement-planning cognoscenti.
This mainly relates to his shadowy status as the person who needs to know when your spouse decides you need a redundancy package — without, of course, you actually volunteering for one openly to anyone and thereby disqualifying yourself under the law.
My most neutral expression of greeting was displayed as I showed the discreet visitor to the waiting nook, well out of sight of passers by in the corridor.
I noticed in passing that some previous denizen had somewhat subversively reorganised the publications atop the coffee table, leaving the well-thumbed issues of Defender and Viewpoint on top.
Our visitor discreetly ignored both publications, no doubt in recognition that it might be construed as somewhat tactless to read them with DEPSEC-S so close by. Instead he started to half-heartedly leaf through a copy of the much more discreet Defence Science instead.
When I tapped on the door to advise the VCDF his visitor had arrived Barney was himself leafing half-heartedly too, but through the far weightier departmental Co-ordination and Public Affairs Manual.
He looked up from his desk with a finger stuck in what I recognised upside down, as all good staff officers do, as the voluminous Guidelines for Defence Involvement in Interdepartmental Committees or Like Joint Government Agency Groups.
Barney had apparently been attempting to cross-reference a high-level policy edict therein with a pronouncement in Working Together: Principles and Practices to Guide the Australian Public Service.
He sighed in relief at the interruption to his thankless task, and slammed the volume shut with the type of definitive action that has catapulted him to the highest echelons of the Defence organisation.
Now Barney, as VCDF, has little involvement thankfully in day-to-day personnel policy or related administrative matters.
As a three-star officer he also has a definite use-by date in his employment contract, so the discreet visit was obviously not about him personally.
As I ushered the ever-discreet visitor in to Barney’s sanctum I momentarily wondered as to the purpose of the meeting, especially as it had been booked at quite short notice by the DPE Nabob.
No noise emanated from behind the closed door, especially no begging, sobbing or even howls of joy. Eventually the visitor quietly emerged, on his own, and discreetly slipped away down the back stairs.
When I took in his next brew, Barney was beaming broadly, humming quietly as he gazed out the window and looking like the proverbial cat with the cream.
This is probably why the CDF won’t let him play poker when socialising with visiting South East Asian VIPs. Obviously he had heard some very good news but the discretion was apparently highly contagious and Barney, for once, was giving absolutely nothing away.
In an attempt to sniff out what was going on (discreetly) I later raised a mundane personnel policy matter for an opinion. Barney did not take the bait.
My foray did, however, evoke his never long dormant penchant for team-boosting anecdote. Barney remarked that he had not seen such enthusiasm for providing ministerial briefings on personnel issues since the last time the female junior minister was a good-looking blonde of a certain age ? and he was only a callow and bachelor squadron leader at the time.
Later that week, I noticed workmen building a new scaffold in the R1 courtyard.
As I paused in the corridor outside the VCDF Suite, to watch the workers rig the ropes and test the mechanism with carefully measured sandbag weights, I felt a distinct breeze blowing.
Oddly it was not coming from the adjacent stairwell but from the other direction. Change is definitely in the air I thought as I soberly breathed in deeply from the heady atmosphere of the 5th floor.
No doubt the new window cleaning gantries are to supplement the renewed emphasis on passive solar heating during the forthcoming Canberra winter.
The grime-free windows will be especially needed.
The heating system is to be switched off during the day, in line with the new methodology for reducing electricity bills which Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group have so valiantly pioneered from afar in the digger’s accommodation at Lavarack Barracks.