Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you to the minister for the engagement on this bill. I just want to respond to a couple of points that you've raised. Firstly, on the question of the disallowable nature of the transparency of appointments, we consulted with the minister's office regarding these amendments, and, had you agreed to say, 'We'll pass this amendment without the disallowable piece,' frankly, we would have absolutely put it forward, but there was no engagement in terms of options for this to be removed in terms of being considered at all.

Secondly, you raise an issue around the disallowability. I thought very hard about this because I don't want to see the politicisation of appointments as you might see in countries like the US. However, if you look at the US, for example, the appointments that get most politicised are often political appointments, and deliberately so. They become very politicised. These are public sector appointments. These appointments should never be politicised. Part of the point of making it disallowable is to stop appointments being politicised, because if an appointment was very significantly politicised then you would expect it to be disallowed. I think what we are looking for is actually for the public sector to be less politicised than it currently is. Certainly, the history of appointments shows that there's actually an increasing politicisation of public sector appointments. That is partly what we are trying to address in this bill.

I note your points about the values of openness, merit and integrity. I note also that these are themes that were strongly in the Thodey review, and that is why I have drawn them out. I take your point about whether they're covered or not, but I think these are quite fundamental values that are worth drawing out. Certainly, we're very supported by, I think, the extensive consultation that the Thodey review addressed.

Finally, on the point of the Thodey review, I support, and I've certainly heard from other colleagues that they support, increased integrity in the public service. We support that investment and we're passionate about it, but we don't want to see a bill that doesn't go far enough while still not understanding where the government is going to go in relation to the Thodey review. That was why an amendment was put forward to say, 'Get a full view of the Thodey review.' We want to understand the government's direction of travel on this to a greater extent because the integrity our public service is critical to this country.

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