Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Commonwealth Public Service Act 1902, the initial legislative instrument of the Public Service, runs to some 27 pages. They were simpler times. It empowers the appointment of fit and proper persons. There was once a view, since superseded, that the main thing when filling any office was just to find a good person. In 1902—let's not gild the lily—the 'good person' was a white, middle-aged male person, a subject of His Majesty, preferably an English gentlemen, a family man, preferably possessed of property and of the right background. It is still important to find a good person to fill any role, of course. As time has gone on, we have sought to be more explicit about our expectations of our Public Service. The 1999 act includes a statement of values:

The APS is professional, objective, innovative and efficient, and works collaboratively to achieve the best results for the Australian community and the Government.

The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, before the parliament, and other legislation which is part of the government's refresh of the APS, seeks to go further. As Minister Gallagher stated, the government has four priority areas for the APS: fundamental integrity; people and business at the centre of the work of the APS; the APS as a model employer; and an APS that is possessed of the capability to do its job and to do it well. It may seem a lot. It is certainly ambitious, and there will be some murmur from the benches wishing for a time when we could just choose a fit and proper person and look the other way. It is tempting to assume some tension between efficiency and accountability.

I met with former minister Robert Tickner today. Tickner chaired the committee that created the landmark 1989 report, The AuditorGeneral: ally of the people and parliamentreform of the Australian Audit Office. That report saw no necessary conflict between accountability and efficiency, and recognised that political decisions would determine the criteria by which effectiveness could be assessed. It counselled merely that if there were regulations that reduced efficiency for no good reason they should be removed.

Former WA Premier Geoff Gallop has had a lot to stay on this topic. In his book, Politics, Society, Self, he includes a speech he gave in 2008 entitled 'Putting the public back into the public service'. Saliently, Gallop notes that the last 40 years have seen a number of different approaches to the Public Service, some of which have not, in his opinion, served the public interest. He states:

Slowly but surely, society is rediscovering the power that can come from collective purpose and collective action. It means a more strategic approach to government generally, more concern for the long-term and for social and environment factors in the sustainability equation. It means a focus on results and outcomes as well as outputs and efficiency. It means joined-up government and new partnerships with the private and community sectors to tackle seemingly intractable problems in health and education.

Last year, as part of this legislative process, Minister Gallagher posed the question: what does good government look like? She quite rightly emphasised that good government delivers effective policy while being transparent and accountable to the public. Geoff Gallop succinctly reminds us:

… you can't have democracy without politics, you can't have politics without politicians, and you can't have politicians without public servants.

So we can reasonably ask: what does a good public service look like? I know from my experience of the Public Service, when I first joined the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Western Australia as a graduate, I certainly had an expectation of the trusted place in which I was working. I looked forward to having the confidence to explore and understand the topics before me and then to be fearless in my representation of the way we should move and act on them.

I had the opportunity to work on issues such as native title and was very proud to be part of the lead negotiating team representing the state government on the Ord native title negotiations, at the time the most complex negotiations. One of the ways in which we were able to deliver on a successful consent determination and negotiated settlement was by being empowered, as the public servant and lead of that team, to engage with local Indigenous communities—Miriuwung, Gajerrong and Gija people—to understand what they saw as the best method of being able to engage and negotiate without feeling any sense of power imbalance with the state. I then felt strength to be able to go and speak to the then minister for native title, Eric Ripper, and put to him a new model of negotiating with Indigenous people. That model was completely new and innovative at the time, but now it's common practice for all negotiations across the nation. That was to be able to have Miriuwung Gajerrong and Gija people nominate individuals to represent their different groups of both genders, and of different demographics as well, to be able to have equal input and sufficient time, and to be resourced to be able to negotiate equally at the table with the state. Pat Dodson was selected as their person to negotiate with the state on their behalf, and that began a fantastic journey.

The reason I'm saying this is because I was empowered as a public servant to be able to identify the best way forward. I felt the courage and the strength from the nature of my position to take that forward to the relevant minister of the day and trust that he would listen to me without fear or favour as to what my advice was to be. Thankfully, he acted on that, and it resulted in the most significant determination of the time and has set the course of how we negotiate going forward in all native title negotiations.

That's just one mere example. I have many other I could draw on from working in economic policy and state security emergency management, where being able to trust and rely on your public servants to do the work, to engage with community groups, to talk across agencies, to remove those silos—which frustrate politicians, I'm sure—and to make sure that we actually work through what the implications will be for the society at large, not just for the government of the day. These are the roles of the public servants, and it is incumbent upon them to deliver that because the capacity of the parliamentarians in this room to do it alone is obviously not realistic. The reality is that it's the public servants that hold the knowledge and expertise to do it justice. For me, the bill before us is absolutely the right direction to ensure that the Commonwealth Public Service is fully resourced and enabled to do what it should, my experience at the state just demonstrates the power of making that happen.

But there are others perhaps more qualified than me to look at the role of the Public Service and how it should perhaps operate. For example, in 2019 the UK-based institute for government delivered a report entitled the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index. This report seeks to answer that question: what does a good public service look like? It ranks some 38 countries, including Australia, across a range of measures. The 12 indicators employed by the study are: capabilities, crisis and risk management, digital services, fiscal and financial management, human resource management, inclusiveness, integrity, openness, policy-making, procurement, regulation, and tax administration. Australia does what we might call well enough on that index, lying in an overall fifth place. But as Andrew Denton and Chris Harriot remind us, 'I don't care, as long as we beat New Zealand.' Unfortunately, we didn't beat New Zealand—they came in second, with the UK at the top. The Thodey report refers to New Zealand's experience, but perhaps we need to continue to look at the structures and measures taken there and in the other countries that trump us in this index—being the UK, Canada and Finland—to see how much more there is we can learn.

On the upside, Australia's fifth placing on that index is not based on an outstanding position in any single measure but rather a good all-round performance with above-average scores on all 12 indicators. I call this an upside as it suggests a good foundation on which to base further improvements such as this legislation will bring.

This bill will add a new value of stewardship, reminding public servants, politicians and all who deal with them that the APS serves the people now and for the future. It will require the development of a unifying purpose statement, clarify the relationship between ministers and agency heads to reaffirm the apolitical nature of their positions, and install regular capability reviews and medium- and long-term insight reports. It will require publishing of APS employee census results and action that will then follow. It will empower employees and reduce the bureaucracy.

As the Prime Minister said today in question time, public service is an honourable profession. We value our public servants and we seek to do what we can to enable them to better fulfil their vocation. This bill is part of that effort. I commend the bill to the House.

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