Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Fremantle for his fine remarks and thoughtful contribution, as is characteristic of the member in this place.

I'm pleased have the opportunity to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. This bill amends the Public Service Act 1999. Its purpose is to ensure that the Australian Public Service is well-placed to serve the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public well into the future.

I want to be clear from the outset that Australia has been exceptionally well served by its public servants ever since Federation and is still being well served by them today. Ministers of every political persuasion have known that they could rely on the Public Service to give them accurate information, advice and wise counsel in war and in peace, in depression years and in boom years. Ministers have also known that once this parliament passes legislation or once cabinet makes a decision, the Public Service will work conscientiously to put the will of the parliament. I have experienced, being the chair of a number of parliamentary committees, the diligence, the expertise, the thoroughness and the collegiate nature of the Public Service. I've been privileged to work alongside, to support and to collaborate with them on important policy matters that effect our country, and I firmly believe in the Public Service both here in Canberra and around the country.

Our Public Service has always attracted some of Australia's most talented professionals. Sir Robert Garran, Australia's first Commonwealth public servant, was head of the Attorney-General's Department for 32 years and the leading authority on the Australian Constitution. Sir Frederick Shedden, head of the defence department during World War II, was John Curtin's most trusted advisor. Curtin called Shedden 'my right hand'. Dr HC 'Nugget' Coombs worked for both Labor and Liberal governments on great post-war projects such as the Snowy Mountains scheme and was an early advocate for our First Nations people. Sir Roland Wilson was secretary of the Treasury for the whole of the Menzies era and the principal architect of our post-war prosperity. Richard Woolcott, who died earlier this year, was head of the foreign affairs department during Australia's transition from an outpost of the British Empire to an integral part of the Asia-Pacific region. Sir Geoffrey Yeend and Max Moore-Wilton were immensely influential heads of the Prime Minister's department. The integrity of the Public Service was protected by the Public Service Board, headed by powerful figures, such as Sir Frederick Wheeler, Alan Cooley and Peter Wilenski. I could name many more. What distinguished them was their outstanding ability, their strong sense of public duty, their commitment to public neutrality and their avoidance of publicity. Most Australians only ever heard their names when they retired and received their knighthoods.

But the House will notice that all of the public servants that I named were men. That was the way things worked for many, many years. But, in 1985, Helen Williams broke the glass ceiling when she was appointed the Secretary of the Department of Education and Youth Affairs, and today women occupy a range of senior positions across the Public Service. I might mention Frances Adamson, who was the head of the foreign affairs and trade portfolio and is now the Governor of South Australia. And both her successes at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have been outstanding and formidable Australian women.

All that being said, it has to be noted that the high standards of the Australian Public Service have been under increasing threat in relation years, and this legislation is a response to those threats. There is a popular perception, fed by the tabloid media, that the Public Service is a bloated bureaucracy. But, in real terms, both the size and the budget of the Public Service has shrunk over the past 30 years due entirely to cuts made by coalition governments under the guise of efficiency reviews.

In 1993 there were 165,000 Commonwealth public servants. At the end of 2020 there were 148,000. Given that Australia's population has increased by 8.4 million in that time, this is a very sharp reduction in real terms. Some of this has been due to the declining need for clerical workers, but much of it has been due to a deliberate attack on the capacity of the Public Service to develop and provide independent advice to ministers. Those opposite have preferred to outsource this work to a growing swarm of consultants and political-friendly think tanks, creating at times an echo chamber in which ministers are not only told what they want to hear; they are also not warned of the possible dangers of any course of action that they have decided upon. This has had predictably disastrous consequences. Can we doubt that the robodebt scandal was due at least in part to the refusal of ministers such as former minister Tudge and former minister Robert, not to mention the member for Cook, to seek or listen to professional advice from an independent and fearless Public Service.

In May 2018, in one of his last acts as Prime Minister before he was forced out by the current Leader of the Opposition and the honourable member for Cook, Malcolm Turnbull commissioned an independent review of the Public Service. The review's final report was delivered in December 2019 by David Thodey AO, chair of the independent panel. The review made a number of important recommendations designed to strengthen the integrity and independence of the Public Service against the threat of politicisation and ministerial interference, the growing power of unaccountable ministerial advisers and the cuts to budgets and staff levels that threatened to undermine the stability of the Public Service to do its job, not to mention the politicisation of the position of the most senior person in the Public Service, which was given to no doubt a qualified person but someone who had also occupied the role of chief of staff of the then former Prime Minister.

Sadly, by 2019, the honourable member for Cook was Prime Minister, and he rapidly made it clear that there would be no such reforms while he was in charge. As we now know, the honourable member for Cook was determined to centralise all power of government in his own hands, sidelining not only the Public Service but even at times his own cabinet colleagues. That was why he became the first Prime Minister to be censured by this House for abusing the powers of his office. I can do no better than to quote one of Australia's most experience and respected political journalists, Michelle Grattan, writing in The Conversation in December 2019:

The wide-ranging Thodey panel's Independent Review of the Australian Public Service has made 40 recommendations; the government says it agrees fully or "in part" with a majority.

But while only a minority were rejected outright or "noted", these, plus the rejected sections of those accepted "in part", have sent a very clear message: the government has no intention of countenancing reforms that would—

circumcise its power.

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