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

No. I didn't say that. Anyway, you can check the Hansard.

Honourable members interjecting—

There are some incorrect interjections being made, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Goodenough. Andrew Podger, who was Public Service Commissioner under the Howard government, was quoted in 2019 as saying that under the Morrison government:

Controlling the public service to minimise political risk is too often given more weight than taking advantage of the intellectual capacity and administrative experience the APS has to offer …

By 2019 senior public servants had learned that if they wanted their careers to advance, they needed to tell ministers what they wanted to hear, not what they needed to hear.

This, then, was the situation that the Albanese government inherited when we came into government last year. As Michelle Grattan wrote:

… we need the parliament to intervene, if not in the immediate light of the Thodey Report and the government's response, then before or shortly after the next election.

And that is what this government has undertaken to do. The Minister for the Public Service, Senator Katy Gallagher, was given a strong brief to fix the mess which the previous government had left behind. As a senator for the ACT, she represents a large body of public servants, and as a former chief minister she understands the relationship between the executive and the Public Service better than just about anybody in either this place or the other.

By introducing this bill, the government is taking the necessary steps to rebuild the integrity, the professionalism and the central role in government of the Australian Public Service. The bill is about restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions, and it's also about restoring the Public Service's faith in itself. The bill will strengthen the Public Service's core purpose and values, build its capacity—

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