Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Public Service stands as a shining beacon of our important democracy. It's an important part of what makes Australia such a great place to live. What are those things that make Australia great? A minimum wage system, a Medicare system and access to higher education make Australia great. These are fundamental parts of the Australian fabric, but who administers them? Who coordinates them on behalf of the government of the day? It's the Public Service. One of the things that I think is fundamentally interesting about these people is their title: to serve the public. Their values, the way that they act, are to invest in public good, to make our country better.

I rise to make a contribution to the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. This bill aims to bring enduring change to the Australian Public Service and ensure its ability to serve the government, the parliament and, most importantly, the Australian public for today and into the future. I would like to thank the Minister for the Public Service for bringing this bill forward as well as for her commitment to our Public Service.

In the 2015-16 budget, the coalition government announced a policy to maintain the average staffing level of the Public Service at the 2006-07 level, which was about 168,000 people. This policy was referred to the Community and Public Sector Union as the average staffing level cap. This was proven to be a false economy. The government was spending more on outsourcing than any money saved. In fact, it was shown that the equivalent of nearly 54,000 full-time staff were employed as consultants or service providers for the federal government during the last financial year. That is the equivalent of 37 per cent of the 144,300 employees of the Public Service. During this speech, I hope to demonstrate later just how bad this decision was for the Australian Public Service at the capacity and capability level and also that it was very poor value for money for the Australian people.

At the 2022 election, we pledged to abolish the arbitrary staffing level cap of the Morrison government and to reduce spending on the procurement of contractors, consultants and labour hire. I was pleased to see that the 2023-24 budget papers reported that the average staffing levels in government will increase by about six per cent. That will be up to the equivalent of about 192,000 public servants. Some of the increases derive from ongoing or increased funding for critical services and a reduced reliance on contractors, consultants and external labour hire. Already about 3,300 formerly external roles have been converted to public service positions. This is good value for the Australian public.

Those opposite falsely claimed that the explosion of government expenditure on outsourcing was due to the unexpected needs for assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This does not sit with the facts. At the beginning of the Morrison government, spending on external contractors had already exploded by 250 per cent since the start of the coalition's time in office. When the staffing level cap was announced in the 2015-16 budget, the Australian government was spending about $1.2 billion on external contractors and consultants, and this was already a steady gain on the 2016-17 budget. External contractors then exploded 60 per cent in 2017-18, to $2 billion.

Why was this? Only two years into this experiment, the government realised that it couldn't reach its goals whilst maintaining the cap, yet it persisted with a policy that it knew was failing. I've described that as wilful blindness. Shockingly, it pursued the policy through the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the most dangerous and challenging public policy periods in Australian history, despite knowing full well that this policy was already a failure. All in all, during this decade of the coalition government in office, spending on external contractors increased by over 1,200 per cent, with spending on consultants increasing by close to 250 per cent. This is a shocking indictment on the coalition's approach to governance in Australia and the shocking way it spent public money.

I will say that I was a consultant for 12 years and that there is a time and a place for consultants. I use the analogy of electricity: you have base load electricity demand that you need to meet, and then there are times where you have peaking demand. The thing that I would say is similar is that, in the Public Service, there is core work that the Public Service needs to do to ensure that it fulfils its core requirements. Sometimes there will be projects with required expertise, so it's important to be very intentional to do this. We need to make sure that the capability and capacity to do the core work is held by the Public Service. That means you get to keep institutional knowledge within the organisation rather than it going external.

The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 represents a significant step in implementing reforms recommended by the Thodey review to transform the Australian Public Service. It aims to create a future-fit, responsive and trusted APS that gives frank and fearless advice and serves the government, the parliament and, most importantly, the Australian public. The APS reform agenda which the bill is a part of focuses on four priority areas: integrity, people-centric policies and services, being a model employer and improving the APS's capability. The proposed amendments in this bill emphasise the importance of strengthening the core purpose and values of the APS. This includes introducing a new APS value of stewardship and creating a unified APS purpose statement to promote a shared understanding of the APS's role across departments and agencies.

The truth is I have worked in the private sector most of my life; however, I remember a time when I was auditing a public sector organisation and I was also the WA branch president of Professionals Australia, the union that represents engineers. The thing that stood out to me not only when I would do audits but also when spending time with my public sector engineering colleagues was the fundamental values base of those that work in the public sector versus those in the private sector. The thing that I observed was a sense of collegiality, not only wanting to make sure that there is an investment in the skills of the future of the Public Service but also this fundamental desire to contribute to public good.

Australians should share our pride for our Public Service and know that being a public servant is an honourable profession. The current values are: impartiality, commitment to service, accountability, respect and ethics, which demonstrates the best of the Australian state. Impartiality shows commitment to fairness and equality in treating everyone the same, regardless of who they are and who they know. Their apolitical nature means so much of Australia sails on, regardless of the chaos of this place, a situation many countries aspire to. Their commitment to service is also a commitment to professionalism, objectivity, innovation and efficiency. These are the values of a well-engineered workforce, something we could all strive for and admire. The accountability of the Public Service in some way exceeds the accountability of elected leaders. We have only just legislated an anticorruption commission and we on this side welcome that transparency.

Finally, I will talk about the value of ethics. 'The APS demonstrates leadership, is trustworthy, and acts with integrity in all that it does.' These are simple but powerful words. Adding stewardship to these values means we are ensuring the APS will always work with an eye on the future while meeting the requirements of today, will work to build its capacity and expertise, future-proof itself and consider the long-term ramifications of its work. Reaffirming an apolitical APS is at the core of these values.

The now opposition on occasion decided that officers of the APS were their servants as opposed to the public's servants. Recognising the need to address the concerns about eroding capability over time, this bill emphasises the importance of building the capability and expertise of the APS. It proposes measures such as regular capability reviews and engaging the Australian public to uplift the APS's capability and ensure a skilled and confident workforce.

Apart from the incredibly important goal of strengthening Australia's Public Service, I see this bill as a part of a suite of reforms that the Albanese government has committed to in order to improve the governance and the general functioning of government all the way across the Public Service and even right here in this place.

On this side of the chamber we deeply believe in the importance of making government work for people, not just using the government as an ideological tool to achieve some vague notion of small governance or handing out contracts to favoured private contractors. We believe in the immense capability of the people who work in the Public Service and we want to support them by creating a platform for them to do their job effectively, with compassion and professionalism.

This bill acknowledges the importance of external scrutiny, transparency and empowering the APS employees. It provides measures such as enabling decisions at appropriate levels, publishing of annual APS employee census results and responding through the action plans to enhance the government accountability and transparency of the APS.

The final thing that I will talk about is the need to measure the right numbers. The truth is when the staffing level caps came in, the coalition government fundamentally wanted to measure the wrong thing. They had an ideological position that small government was better, but they didn't understand that they actually needed the capacity to deliver the work of the government. So, rather than just having people that were part of the APS, they hired external contractors. They essentially did not look at the right numbers, they fiddled the books and they had the wrong targets.

The truth is that we needed to look at this from a high-level perspective and understand what was fundamentally happening, and at the time the size of the problem was not well understood. But we fundamentally understand it now and we're fixing it. We're continuing to get on with the wasted decade of delay and dysfunction of the previous coalition government.

See this speech in context