Hello, my name's David Rundsenman and this is Talking Politics.

Today's Talking Politics Guide is with Dennis Groob and he's going to be explaining about the civil service.

Who do they serve and has it become more politicised over time?

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It's probably best to start with where the idea of a civil servant comes from.

There's a sort of Victorian origin story here.

The ideal civil servant comes out of a Victorian notion of what it is to be a public servant.

Just tell us what the ideal is like before we talk about what the reality is like.

Like most ideals, the sort of myth of the 19th century civil servant has a long and

interesting history, but remains very much a myth.

So we're going back, I suppose, the great foundation document of the modern civil service

is the North Cretrielyan report of 1854

when the then-secretary, permanent secretary of the Treasury, Charles Trevelyan, was tasked

with looking at how to reform the civil service. Now, he's produced this wonderful report,

which is still referred to all these years later.

If you look at it, it's a 19-page polemic.

It's full of politics.

It's full of very little evidence and a lot of advocacy.

And what he's advocating for is what we would now consider a meritocratic style of civil service

...