Do we all have fantasy jobs? The work we might have done if we'd had the right skills or talents? And if we had those jobs, would we then be universally applauded, loved even, for our sheer genius?

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Yeah, nah. Then, there's the real world in which we currently exist. And which apparently our senior public servants are not too keen on.

I too would love a job where people weren't mean to me. What a glorious concept! But are there any actual jobs like that? Nope. In the words of a former prime minister, nope, nope, nope.

Look, as far as that goes, in some respects I feel sorry for senior public servants who don't like to be picked on after a particularly poor showing at estimates. News this week that senior APS figures want to be able to ban MPs from putting unkind clips of them on social media. I kind of feel like this is a direct hit on James Paterson, who uses YouTube to skewer various public servants. And he hit back: "The strongest response I get when sharing videos of estimates are the full, unedited clips of the extraordinary lengths some officials go to avoid answering reasonable questions in the public interests".

"Australians can see that for what it is and if officials don't want to be criticised for it then maybe they should just answer the questions as they are required to."

Such a good idea and would have been ideal during robodebt. Remember when public servants - and Coalition politicians - said it wasn't fair to call it robodebt because people were involved. Haha. To be honest, sometimes their responses feel like they aren't presented with any context or connection to the facts. Who can forget the insanity of the robodebt hearings, where almost every answer seemed to be divorced from reality? Not me.

Now, the folks on the Secretaries Board are worried that what they say in various hearings is then presented online without proper context.

Anyhow, the Secretaries Board doesn't like its bureaucrats being........

© Canberra Times