Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk this evening about some matters relating to the Public Service. Firstly, and most importantly, I want to talk about politicisation of the Public Service. I have a serious concern that after 11 years we have a government which takes the benefits of office as a right. We have seen it in highly publicised ways in, for example, the outrageous advertising campaigns robbing the taxpayers to fund what should be funded by the Liberal Party. But I want to proceed from that, which I now take as a given fact, to some serious matters concerning the Public Service.

One matter concerns the stories today that related to the Australian Electoral Commission. I notice the Special Minister of State is here. He gave a personal explanation today which I have to say was significant for what he did not say rather than for what he did. He did not refer to the outrageous situation we read about in the newspaper of his spokesperson, a politically appointed staffer, purporting to speak on behalf of the independent Electoral Commission. I thought it was an outrage, and an example of a continuing activity of politicisation. But that is really the icing on the cake of concern that I have, which is more longstanding.

I refer as an example to the Auditor-General’s report which had been released previously but was publicised yesterday by AAP. This recent report of the Auditor-General relates to the outrageous pork-barrelling by the then family services minister Mr Anthony of 120 funding applications made through the volunteer small equipment grant program. The previous finding of the Auditor-General was that the changes to the VSEG recommendations led to an increase in the allocations to coalition, particularly National Party, electorates. That is pork-barrelling and I do not approve of it, but that is not my point for today. My point is that the Auditor-General then went on in this report to say that the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs amended the entries in their database regarding the 120 affected applications, such that the department’s funding recommendations in the database agreed with the then minister’s changes—that is, they retrospectively changed the database to conform with the decisions the minister had made when the minister had overturned their original recommendations. The Auditor-General quite correctly condemned this behaviour and said it was below the standard expected of Australian government agencies. In my view, this is not an act carried out by bad people; this is an act carried out by people put in awful circumstances and making what I believe is an error of judgement but, in so doing, compromising the high standards of the Public Service.

I now want to go to a very important long-term analysis, but I will not have time to deal with it at any length. The analysis was produced by Andrew Podger, who was appointed by the Howard government as Public Service Commissioner and also as secretary of the department of health and who was previously a departmental secretary in the Keating government, including, for a brief period, of a department of which I was minister. That history is not relevant, other than to show that this is a person respected in a bipartisan manner—he has been appointed by both sides. He has made a very powerful analysis of long-term systemic problems in the way the Public Service is being managed and politicised, going right to the head of the government, to the Prime Minister. Those issues are important and need to be recognised, and Australia needs to think that this is an abuse of power.

I also want to refer briefly to some false stories that are being spread in my electorate about proposals to cut the Public Service under a Labor government. I make no apologies for the fact that the Labor government will change priorities, and we will transfer Public Service resources from current low-priority uses to higher priority purposes. We have outlined them in press releases, and I stand by those. They are low priorities and we will transfer those resources to higher priority uses, like the wonderful proposal for early childhood which will be a fundamental, important reform. The shadow minister for finance has made absolutely clear that these are cuts we will make so we can increase investment in productivity drivers like education, skills and infrastructure. (Time expired)