Inquiry reveals MPs' fury with top secretary
Parliament House is no stranger to power struggles: Hawke v Keating, Howard v Costello, Rudd v Gillard v Rudd.
Add another: Carol Mills versus seemingly everyone who works in the building. Most Australians have never heard of Ms Mills, but she was well known to political insiders as the senior public servant responsible for the day-to-day running of Australia's cradle of democracy.
A Senate inquiry released this week has laid bare the depth of politicians' anger at Ms Mills' administration of the $100 million-a-year Department of Parliamentary Services, saying it was "deeply dysfunctional".
The bipartisan report revealed further juicy details of a feud between Ms Mills and another top bureaucrat, raised questions over a tender awarded to a neighbour of hers and reinforced allegations she misled the Senate.
Pre-empting the report's findings, Ms Mills was sacked from her $381,000-a-year job by House Speaker Bronwyn Bishop and Senate president Stephen Parry the day before Anzac Day.
It is a stunning fall for Ms Mills, who only last year was in line for the plum job as clerk (parliamentary business chief) of Britain's House of Commons. A backlash from Tory MPs aghast at the thought of a woman from the colonies heading to Westminster forced Speaker John Bercow to abandon Ms Mills, in part because of the growing disquiet at her performance.
In an extraordinary email, the Senate's imposing Clerk, Rosemary Laing, told the retiring clerk Sir Robert Rogers it would be "bizarre", "embarrassing" and an "affront" for Ms Mills to win the job as she had no understanding of parliamentary procedures.
Ms Mills had also raised the ire of MPs after cuts to security that resulted in many of the building's 5000 occupants walking through its metal detectors unmolested even if it sounded an alarm. Amid the spectre of a terrorist attack, screening of all occupants was reinstituted.
The Senate report released this week made it untenable for Ms Mills to stay in Canberra.
Senators were highly critical that artist Anne Zahalka was commissioned to photograph Parliament House workers to mark its 25th anniversary without any documentation of the $40,000 contract which was awarded in 2013.
Ms Mills said at a committee hearing she and Zahalka were neighbours in Sydney and had discussed the commission at a party, though she did not feel the need to declare a conflict of interests.
The final nail in Ms Mills' political coffin came via grainy CCTV footage. Last year her department looked at spy camera images purportedly showing a public servant sliding an envelope under Labor senator John Faulkner's door.
The Senate stalwart became angry at the covert crackdown, claiming it interfered with his ability to do his job.
Last May, Ms Mills told a Senate committee she had only learnt about the incident that morning, but Dr Laing revealed the issue had come up in a meeting with Ms Mills just days after it had occurred - three months earlier.
Ms Mills has been silent since her sacking but had maintained she had done nothing wrong.
