Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the bill that's before us, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. It gives me a chance to say on the public record something that I've said privately for many, many years and publicly in my own electorate: how important and valuable our Public Service is. It's so critical that all governments, regardless of the colour of the day, have a strong, well resourced, fiercely independent Public Service that is there to provide support and frank and fearless advice to the government of the day. I say this not just because I have two siblings that work for the Australian Public Service but also because it is critical to good government. We need to ensure that the people who are responsible for delivering government's decisions, parliament's decisions, are able to do so and have the resources to do so.

This should be, for many, a bit of a no-brainer—the purpose, the title, is 'public service'—but for far too long people in this place and people outside this place have been critical of our Public Service. Too many job losses have occurred. Core public services have been whittled away, particularly in the regions. Departments have been gutted, replaced with very expensive contracts that have provided advice that we now know not to be of best value. What we see in this bill is delivering on Labor's commitment at the election to restore and strengthen the APS's core purpose and value.

This bill adds a new APS value, the value of stewardship, which all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as:

The APS builds its capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future, by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does.

This bill requires the Secretaries Board to oversee the development of a single, unified APS purpose statement, reviewed once every five years. It will help clarify and strengthen the provisions of the act and make clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This is critical, particularly with the way in which we saw the APS politicised over the term of the last government. It aims to build the capacity and expertise of the APS. We need to rebuild our APS ability. It breaks my heart that so many taxpayer dollars have gone towards third-party organisations, consultancy firms, to give us advice when it should be our own employees, our own Public Service providing that advice.

I know how critical the APS is in my own electorate. It's not just the day-to-day services for people seeking Centrelink support. We used to have a tax office in Bendigo that was well resourced, able to provide local businesses, local organisations and local individuals with support. The tax office is one area that has lost thousands of staff over the last decade. It simply has put the service in a very precarious position. They are doing well with the resources that they have, but they need more. That is so that they can do what we all expect them to do: make sure that we have a frank tax system, a tax system that is fair and making sure that everybody, regardless of who they are, business or individual, is paying their fair share of tax.

We also need to make sure that we have a strong, robust public service when it comes to areas of immigration, making sure that people are getting the advice that they need in a timely manner. People in my electorate have already said to me they have seen improvements just with the changes that this government has made by being able to process claims quicker and making sure people are getting the advice that they need.

But what they all accept, quite tragically, is that our Department of Immigration is rebuilding. After years of being gutted, after years of political interference, they are now rebuilding. We need a strong, resourced, fearless, independent Department of Immigration that can give us in this place, government or nongovernment, the advice that we need around immigration matters. Immigration matters, like tax matters, strike at the very heart of our community. It's one of those areas people get the most anxious about. 'Is my loved one in the right place in the queue?' 'Is the rejection of their visa for valid reasons?' 'Am I paying the right amount of tax?' 'Have I been treated fairly by the tax office?' These are laws that effect so many people, so ensuring that our Public Service is independent, is transparent and has the resources to make those decisions is critical.

This bill amends the Public Service Act and is a key element of our APS reform agenda. It needs to be ambitious. It needs to be enduring reform that makes the APS goal and vision clear. It comes from the independent review into the Australian Public Service, which concluded that the APS lacks a unified purpose, is too internally focused and has lost capacity in important areas. By helping to redefine the purpose of our Public Service, we will also attract the brightest back. Once upon a time before Yes Minister, people chose the Public Service as a career of choice. If you wanted to be a public-policy maker, you didn't necessarily put your hand up to be a politician; you put your hand up to be a public servant, and it was a career choice. You knew that you'd be responsible for designing public programming and policy. Yes, there were government and ministerial decisions, and you enacted those; but, equally, you advised government on the very best pathway forward.

I think back to what happened during the pandemic. Imagine if we'd had a stronger public service. Imagine if they'd had the strength, the capability and the expertise. Imagine if they were the very best in our country giving advice to government. Our experience of the pandemic might have been quite different. The chop-change approach that we had—JobKeeper, no JobKeeper—and the way in which the JobKeeper program was rolled out was a good idea poorly implemented. Could it have been different if we had had our very best? Far too many people in the Public Service start there but leave, choosing careers and alternative pathways in the private sector, because—we don't know. We could ask them. But that is part of why we need to refocus the purpose of our Public Service. Let's attract the best back into the Public Service so that we have the thinking capability and the purpose capability but also, too, the frank independence and purpose of the Public Service to do what we need it to do.

When I'm out there talking to people in my electorate, they do believe in a strong, well-funded Public Service. They don't subscribe to the fat bureaucrats model. They don't subscribe to the fearmongering of those opposite. They do see it as critical to having a really strong, supportive Public Service. In the areas that I've touched on, such as immigration, Centrelink and the tax office, it's fair to say that we have a challenge with our payments. They're clunky. They're complicated. People struggle to navigate their way through. Services Australia staff do their best, but who's doing that big thinking: is this the right way to be going; is there a better way to organise our payment structure; do we have the best people in the country working at that? That is why this bill is so important. We need to make sure that we are refocusing and rebuilding our capability so we're not going to third parties to provide us that critical information.

The COVID pandemic, natural disasters, geopolitical disruptions and increasing economic volatility have highlighted the importance of a well-funded, intelligent, well-resourced APS that will act with integrity, be agile and have common purpose. That is what is so important about this bill and why it is before us today, and that is why you find so many people on our side of the House speaking about it. We get and believe in the importance of a strong Public Service, which is starkly different to those opposite. I can remember one of the measures that they had. They called public servants who went on mat leave 'double-dippers'. They tried to take away their maternity leave and paternity leave entitlements. They're the kinds of views that our Public Service was up against. Is it any wonder that people left? There were the efficiency dividends. There was the way in which they cut jobs, made people redundant and didn't replace people. This made it very hard for people working inside the organisation.

Look at the role that DFAT, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, plays and the importance of trade. Those public servants who come and speak to us at the committees all play a crucial and important role. We task them with doing a lot of the heavy duty and the legwork when it comes to negotiating free trade. Just this week the member for Spence and I were at a treaties committee meeting where we were talking, committee-in-confidence, about the EU free trade agreement—where it was at and the government position and how it was going. Those were skilled public servants who have the knowledge and capability that is critical to us being able to do our jobs, and critical to the government being able to do its job of getting the best outcome in those negotiations. If we want to have a strong, well-resourced Public Service, it starts from the foundations. It starts with making sure that we have a unified purpose, that it's not internally focused, that they're not looking over their shoulders and that they're proud of the jobs that they do.

I do want to acknowledge the unions in this space and the people who've fought the good fight for a long time. The CPSU and other unions have always, in rounds of bargaining, continued to put this on the agenda. The fact that the workers themselves have put this issue of having a unified purpose across the APS on the agenda—not in those words but in similar language—demonstrates how those workers want to see themselves come together.

Critical to good government is having a well-funded, well-resourced Public Service that can be proud of the job that it does and ensure that its views are taken seriously, having the skill at every level and having a well-resourced, well-supported grad problem all the way up to secretaries, making sure that every group in between is properly resourced and properly supported. We need a strong Public Service if we're going to be a good government and a good parliament. I commend the bill to the House and strongly encourage all of us to think about the great work that the Public Service does now and will do into the future.

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