Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the proposed Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. This bill offers small steps to improve the Australian Public Service at a time when we have a crisis of confidence in its governance.

The Australian Public Service includes all entities employing staff under the Public Service Act 1999—currently about 160,000 individuals. They administer the services which collect our tax, monitor our borders, procure and distribute our medications, administer our health systems, care for our elderly, monitor our schools and our universities and look after the disabled and the unemployed. We need them. We should respect them. We need to be able to trust them.

A number of recent studies have found that APS capability is no longer fit for purpose, that it needs renewal of its fundamental structure, hierarchies and practices. To that end, a report was commissioned in 2018 by the Turnbull government to consider reform of the Australian Public Service. When presented in 2019 by David Thodey, that report noted a weakened Public Service resulting in weakened service delivery for Australians, and it called for service-wide transformation. It said:

To achieve this aspiration, the APS will need to undergo a significant transformation, guided by the recommendations in this review — uniting through a clear purpose, building its professionalism and expertise, embracing data and digital, looking out and working with partners to solve problems, getting rid of the excessive silos and hierarchy, and strengthening service-wide leadership and governance.

The report made 40 key recommendations, which it suggested would trigger and sustain far-reaching change when implemented. It identified strong support for change, but it also forecast the need for a deep commitment from the APS and from its leaders, with strong endorsement from the government, for that reform to succeed. Further, the report suggested that very significant financial investment was needed: $100 million to kickstart the transformation and then $1 billion a year to supply better service outcomes through digital transformation and other public capital.

During the 2022 election campaign, the Australian Labor Party did commit to improving the APS. That commitment has led to this bill. The reform agenda is informed by the 40 recommendations of the Thodey report, but this proposed legislation directly addresses only six of those 40 recommendations. The government budgeted in October 2022 only $72 million over three years to strengthen the capability of the APS and then a further $18.5 million over two years in May 2023.

The Thodey report called for service-wide transformational change, but this is not delivered by this bill. With this bill, the government is outlining plans and budget support for only very modest improvements to the capability of the Australian Public Service. Four key reforms of the Thodey report are missing from the bill: measures to strengthen the power of the APS Commissioner, legislation clarifying the distinct rules of the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as opposed to the APS Commissioner, measures to strengthen the merit based process for secretary appointments and constrain the capacity of the Prime Minister to terminate employments, and a measure requiring consultation of the Leader of the Opposition before appointment of the APS Commissioner.

The employees and officers of the Australian Public Service are obliged to serve the government of the day with integrity. They have to provide frank and fearless advice on matters of public policy, from national security to fiscal policy to social security, across all of the machinery-of-government arrangements. They are a vital part of our government, and yet, in a recent study, we found that only three out of 10 people trust their government's systems.

In essence, the Thodey report identified two principal concerns with the Australian Public Service: firstly, the increasing trend of outsourcing core Public Service work to contractors; and, secondly, the increasing politicisation of the Australian Public Service. Last year, one in four people employed by the Australian government was an external contractor. The Morrison government spent an appalling $20.8 billion on external contractors last year. Rather than incremental change as we have with this bill, we need transformational change to our Public Service. Recent research confirmed 'citizen satisfaction with service delivery experienced is directly related to the level of trust and advocacy in government.'

Paradoxically and quixotically, that report was undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Most people in this House and in this country know of the recent allegations regarding PwC's breaching of confidentiality agreements around government plans for multinational tax laws. Four of every five Australians now want PwC banned from further government contracts. This bill will do nothing towards that end.

Last week we heard from the Australian National Audit Office of the subversion of the Morrison government's Community Health and Hospitals Program. It reported that the public servants of the Department of Health acted unethically and unlawfully in that they consciously and deliberately decided not to develop opportunity guidelines for government grants. Further, despite the absence of legislation that could reasonably be relied on to authorise expenditure on some grant proposals, the Public Service intended to, and did, execute grants despite the absence of a legislative authority to do so. This bill will do nothing to address the Public Service deficiencies identified in that report.

Finally, and most egregiously, we've recently heard of the failures of robodebt, an unlawful method of automated debt assessment and recovery employed by Services Australia as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program. Robodebt was a case study in bad government and Public Service failure. We have to learn from the lessons of robodebt, but this bill will do nothing to facilitate that. It's premature that we're seeing this limited and uninspired legislation before we see the report of the robodebt royal commission. I support my colleague the member for Curtin in her suggestion that we should delay this legislation until we have that report.

The Grattan Institute reported last year that one in five federal board positions are handed to politically connected individuals. That includes 22 per cent of the 320 members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. For many years we have seen successive governments hand out powerful, well-paid positions to friends, supporters and party loyalists—indeed, to the victors have gone the spoils. At a state level this reached new heights when John Barilaro invented his own cushy job—a new nadir, or peak, depending on how you see it, of creative corruption. I wholeheartedly support my colleague the member for Mackellar on her separate private member's bill regarding the importance of independent, nonpartisan scrutiny of senior Public Service appointments. Again, this bill does nothing to address that issue.

In 2019, Prime Minister Morrison told this country that ministers determined policy for public servants to deliver. He discounted, he did not value, the frank and fearless advice and the competence and integrity which a well-staffed, well-funded and independent public service can and should provide. We shouldn't be debating this legislation today; we should be debating a much bigger and much more imaginative piece of legislation with the ability to guarantee for us real change and real independence for our Public Service so that we can rebuild trust in our systems and in our government. It's a great shame that this bill will not do that.

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