Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I recently had the pleasure in Higgins of hosting the Measuring What Matters Forum. The Measuring What Matters Forum was in response to a call by the Treasurer in relation to a statement that he is going to be putting out later in the year called the wellbeing statement. The wellbeing statement will complement the various other statements that we have in Australia such as the statement on the environment. We recognise that there is a growing recognition that measures such as GDP and the consumer price index simply do not capture the state of our overall wellbeing. They don't convey what we value, like financial security, our democracy, our connection to nature or feeling like we belong.

A key theme that surprised me that emerged during this discussion with my constituents was the need for goal-setting, program evaluation and accountability. My constituents were highly exercised over this, and they wanted to see measurable outcomes that were actually linked to aspirational, well-defined targets, supported by program evaluation to ensure accountability and public trust. That's a framework—it's a framework we need to build upon. These are some of the things that they actually said: 'Good government is founded on good policy and good policy depends on good advice. One of the APS core roles is to provide advice to support the government of the day, so that it can deliver its policy agendas and priorities.' I couldn't agree more. A second constituent said this: 'Ministers operate in an environment of high pressure, fast pace, intense scrutiny and great complexity. All of those things are true. They are responsible for making decisions individually and collectively, as members of cabinet, that have significant and far-reaching effects on individuals, businesses and communities. The importance of ministerial decision-making and the circumstances under which it occurs underscores the need to have well-functioning support systems in place for ministers.' What's a support system? For us it is the Australian Public Service. Then, finally: 'If it is a question of compliance, we have various rules in place, but our Public Service has been so gutted we have a lack of ability to evaluate and a lack of ability to deliver programs.' That's an indictment if I ever did hear one.

We have come to government and inherited a Public Service that has been hollowed out, undermined and eroded under a wasted decade from those opposite. The erosion of the APS was laid bare by the robodebt scandal. The previous government essentially co-opted a Commonwealth bureaucracy to do its bidding and the results were catastrophic. Just when we thought we had seen it all, up popped the PwC scandal—a salient lesson on the risks associated with outsourcing, which has led to an overreliance on external contractors. Under those opposite, a shadow APS bloomed, resulting in cost blowouts and a false economy whereby a staggering $21 billion was actually spent in the year 2020-21—the last year of the previous government—on external providers and external contractors. The reforms put forward in these amendments that we are discussing will restore a positive culture, capability and integrity to the APS, which we want to be seen as a model employee.

The Albanese government's APS reform agenda has four priorities. At its heart is integrity—an APS that puts business and people at the centre of its policy-making and its service delivery. We want the APS to be seen as a model employer. Finally, we want an APS that has the capability and capacity to do its job and do it well. The bill has certain objects that are now being added—one is a focus on stewardship. We know that the APS has a mission statement and certain core values, but we want to add stewardship to its operating ethos because we believe this is an overarching mission of the APS. New stewardship value has been developed through extensive consultation and has taken into account responses from over 1,500 APS staff across the country, from graduates all the way up to senior executives. The bill outlines the stewardship value as meaning that the APS builds capacity, capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. Stewardship, we believe, involves learning from the past and then looking into the future. It involves conservation and cultivation, leaving things in a better place than when you found them, as our First Nations people know. We believe that stewardship is important and we want the APS to be seen as having an important role as part of a wider public good.

We are also introducing a purpose statement, and this was identified in response to the Thodey review, which showed that there was a lack of a unified purpose in the APS, an excessive internal focus and a loss of capability in crucial areas. The APS statement will be developed to oversee a single unifying purpose statement for the APS, a bit like a mission statement. It will contribute to a shared sense of purpose for tens of thousands of APS employees, reinforcing a 'one APS' approach. The purpose statement will be developed through consultation by the service for the service and will not be set in stone. In other words, it will be able to evolve with the changing demands of a contemporary culture and society, responsive to the needs of the community and the government, and it will be refreshed every five years.

We are putting some guardrails around ministerial influence on hiring. The first APS value is to be impartial and independent, and we want to reinforce that. That's important to prevent scandals and catastrophes like robodebt from ever occurring again. It's important that we defend this value of impartiality, and so we want to ensure that APS employment decisions are made at arm's length from ministers and political interference. I think that's very important. This bill will make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. It's explicit.

We will also look at building the capability, expertise and thought leadership of the APS. This really speaks to developing an institutional memory, which, after a long period of time, turns out to be a priceless asset. It surprises me that we have such turnover in some government departments. I've been a public servant my whole life. I've worked as a physician in public hospitals from the day I graduated to the day I entered parliament, and what was clear in my profession was that highly skilled health care professionals did not leave; we just did not have the churn that you see in a lot of government departments. It meant that we built up a huge institutional memory and capability. It's probably the reason why, for many of our hospitals and centres of excellence around the country, it's all about the people, the expertise and the capability. It's that memory that then trains other people coming up, whether they be nurses and doctors or allied health professionals, pharmacists and so on. You keep building and building on that capacity, and then you do other things with that ability, such as research, public policy or public health, for example. That's the kind of destination we want the Public Service to evolve into. It should be seen as a valued career pathway for our best and brightest. We, here, all serve our country, but there is another way to serve your country, and that is through the Australian Public Service. It is noble and fitting that we should be tightening up the legislation around this important asset.

To be future fit, the APS needs to continually build on the capability of its staff to create a skilled, confident workforce for it to remain a trusted institution. We believe that the APS must work in partnership with the public to solve these problems and co-design the best solutions. Co-design is a very important word; it has a great deal of meaning, particularly in medicine but also in public policy. The best results come when you engage with the grassroots community stakeholders and co-design a solution with them. Bureaucrats and parliamentarians don't have all the answers. We have to listen to the people in order to craft the best solutions, and that has been a hallmark of the Albanese government. Just about every major piece of policy reform that has been undertaken, in every portfolio, has gone to some type of public consultation. In the chamber is the aged care minister, and she is chairing an important task force and review looking at aged care. Similarly, this has now gone out to public consultation. Why? Because we realise that this is a complex area and that we have to gather as many ideas as possible in order to solve this problem.

There will be capability reviews that will occur. This is done in order to foster a continuous culture of improvement in the APS. We want to look to identify gaps and areas of improvement. The bill will make these regular, independent and transparent, and they are occur on a five-yearly basis for the departments of state, Services Australia and the ATO. That's a good thing.

We will also have long-term insight reports. I found this fascinating. This is a recommendation from the Thodey review which compels the APS and these departments to come up with long-term strategic plans. This is designed to push back against the short-termism that has infected our public policymaking, which has led us into the mess that we're in. Short-termism has led us into a climate catastrophe, a health crisis, an energy crisis and all kinds of other problems, and it will be long-term thinking that gets us out of this. This is a welcome addition to this legislation.

We'll also be publishing annual feedback of APS employee census results. This is a mechanism for employees to provide feedback and understand that this will be openly published. It will be transparent and it will be associated with an action plan to ensure that those grievances or areas that have been identified as being potentially weak can be improved. We also want to foster a culture of engagement and transparency.

Finally, we will also be looking at enabling decision-making to occur at the lowest appropriate classification. What is that mean? It means that we're trying to flatten the hierarchy and empower those staff who might be at the lower end, who are often younger but often brimming with ideas, to come forward and share their ideas for the betterment of the nation. We will be compelling agency heads to implement measures that enable decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest possible classification level. This is also designed to stop this upward drift of decision-making, which just adds to delay and red tape. We find that kicking the can up the food chain doesn't always work and can lead to all kinds of problems.

In conclusion, we are facing a multitude of challenges—environmental, health and economic. These problems are certainly complex, and they need a harnessing of ideas to allow these ideas to bubble up to the surface from all quarters—community, government, the business sector, industry and our APS. The solutions require a shift away from short-termism towards generational investment. For that, we need to ensure we have a mechanism that rewards and retains our most talented minds to serve the nation. I commend this bill to the House.

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