Public Sector Commissioner Mal Wauchope appears to have his hands full.

As the controversies mount around the new Labor Government’s appointment of top public servants acceptable to its ministers — and the axing of those who aren’t — Wauchope’s name keeps cropping up.

It appears the Public Sector Commission has no role to play in providing a senior public service that is apolitical and independent of the executive.

The job is to get the Government’s wishes implemented.

Several senior public servants with hitherto unblemished records have disappeared without trace after closed-door meetings with Wauchope.

No details of reasons for their departures have been offered, in conflict with Labor’s professed interest in openness, transparency and accountability.

Inquiries about the disappearances end at the brick wall of the independence of the PSC. No one seems to know who asks the commission to act in these matters or if it is acting on its own initiative.

The appointment of a new police commissioner — with Wauchope heading the selection panel — has become hopelessly compromised in mysterious circumstances.

The WA Police Union’s demand for the Corruption and Crime Commission to take over the process was effectively a vote of no confidence in the PSC.

“There is now a cloud over this entire process,” union president George Tilbury said.

“It’s clear something has happened. You don’t have the most important panel member in the selection process withdrawing with a pathetic excuse that there’s a clash of dates in their diary. I would expect the CCC to be looking closely at this.”

Tilbury said there appeared to be some level of political interference. That’s damning for the force’s confidence in its eventual new leader.

And that issue is no orphan.

There is now a cloud over this entire process.

The Road Safety Commissioner falls on his sword and the same responsible minister, Michelle Roberts, professes not to know why.

And another public servant who lost out previously when the Barnett government created the road safety commissioner role is seconded into the job without an open PSC process.

The head of Lotterywest, Paul Andrew, vanishes after a meeting with Wauchope and the agency’s chairwoman Heather Zampatti without any cogent reason offered.

Labor has dodged parliamentary questions about why Andrew left, consistently claiming it was by “mutual agreement” but refusing to disclose who initiated the split.

When Liberal MLC Tjorn Sibma probed how this mutual agreement was reached, this is what minister Sue Ellery offered: “The matter of bringing Mr Andrew’s contract to an early end was raised by his employer, the Public Sector Commissioner, at the meeting held on Wednesday, 14 June, 2017. Mr Andrew agreed to end his contract at the meeting.”

There was no indication whether Wauchope had decided overnight that Andrew’s face didn’t fit or whether someone had asked for the well-regarded former head of Surf Lifesaving in WA to be given the bullet.

While that position itself is not crucial in the overall scheme of things, the smell around this issue highlights the real problems in what Labor is doing.

Premier Mark McGowan’s comments about finding a way to reduce the payouts to departing senior bureaucrats, triggered by the $340,000 handed to Andrew, was a joke. If you sack someone unfairly or terminate their contract early, money is the only solution.

As I have had cause to point out before, next to the all-powerful job of director-general of Premier and Cabinet — which appears to have been shamelessly stitched up for one of the Premier’s mates — the most important bureaucratic job in the minds of the public is our top cop.

Labor never liked Karl O’Callaghan and made it clear it wanted to see the back of him.

Given that his contract was up, there was no problem with selecting a new commissioner with whom the Government could work as long as it was done properly.

Frankly, it’s become a disaster. And it highlights Labor’s duplicitous methods in shaping a public service that is anything but impartial.

Labor never liked Karl O’Callaghan and made it clear it wanted to see the back of him.

A senior police source says the commissioner’s selection will now be open to an abuse of process appeal which could go on for a long time.

Why former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty pulled out of the panel may never be known, given the opaque nature of these matters.

But the explanations given so far don’t pass the sniff test.

Roberts herself is to blame here. She is an interventionist minister and the police are wary of her.

It’s known she favoured Tim Atherton over O’Callaghan for the job in 2004 and her judgment was questioned when the deputy left a year later under a cloud.

McGowan wants to paper over the ham-fisted intervention in the selection process by his former copper MP for Burns Beach, Mark Folkard. That doesn’t wash in an issue as sensitive as this.

Folkard complained that a former colleague of his was denied an interview and that he — not on the selection panel — thought he should be.

“No one in Australia would parallel this person’s CV,” Folkard said.

I’m told that person is Glenn Crannage, who left the department way back in 2001 to head up his own businesses.

He, along with every other applicant, will now get an interview.

He competes with the likes of Australian Crime Commission head Chris Dawson, NSW Assistant Commissioner Catherine Burn and top-flight locals Steve Brown and Michelle Fyfe.

This is how AAP dispassionately reported the latest mess: “Mr Keelty has been replaced by former Victoria Police chief commissioner Ken Lay, who joins Mal Wauchope, Kay Hallahan and Robert Mitchell, with interviews to be held in mid-July.”

Hallahan is a 76-year-old former Labor police minister and Mitchell is a former head of Fire and Emergency Services under Roberts.

Surely it’s a panel that will get a political job done.

The PSC declined to answer my questions about how the selection panel was selected and if the minister’s office had a role, instead directing me to an earlier media statement in which it said it would make no further comment.

I got a one-word answer to three questions about how Mitchell was appointed. This is not how accountability is meant to work.

“Asked why the list of interviewees had increased from six to 10, Mr McGowan said everything was ‘completely above board’ and the Public Sector Commission just wanted to have the biggest field available,” AAP reported.

“He denied it was a case of anyone being removed and re-added to the list. But the Premier could not explain why Mr Keelty’s scheduling conflict was not determined earlier.”

In other words, it stinks. However, Roberts has rejected suggestions the process needed to start from scratch.

“No, we don’t. That’s a process being handled by the Public Sector Commission and in this instance the Public Sector Commissioner himself is the chair of the panel and he is running the process,” she told the ABC.

“He is someone who’s worked for Labor and Liberal governments over the last 30 or 40 years. He’s someone of enormous credibility and he is running the process and he is chairing the panel.”

So we can all relax?