Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question before the House now is that the amendment be disagreed to.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sadly, we've seen revelation after revelation about a conga line of dodgy decisions coming out of the Morrison government. It's what happens when a government treats the Public Service like his own political plaything rather than a source of frank and fearless advice. The Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments trashed trust not just in government but also in our public service, whether it was the sports rorts, the Urban Congestion Fund, the commuter car parks for stations that didn't exist or, of course, the most recent Auditor-General's report finding that the $2 billion community health and hospital program was treated just like another slush fund. Imagine that: using health like a slush fund. To make matters worse, the public servants supposedly in charge of the program had to monitor the media to keep track of the Morrison government's announcements. You had senior public servants sitting at their computers, waiting for the next announcement in their area of portfolio responsibility, waiting for decisions to be made by a press release. Sadly, their expert analysis was being ignored or not even sought, because the money was being used for what was in the interests of the seats held by the Liberal and National parties or of targeted seats, not what was in the best interests of the Australian taxpayer. Again, the public were treated like mugs.

The Public Service lost the trust of the Australian people. How about the public servants who knew that the former Prime Minister had five secret ministries and didn't think to tell the nation? Can you believe we have that as a political fact that we now accept? How low those opposite dragged our democracy—right down into the gutter. This is why change is needed. Just like almost every area of government, it's up to the Albanese Labor government to clean up the mess of a decade—a decade of wasted opportunity and dreadful mismanagement.

During the last decade, the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison governments set about diminishing and sidelining the Public Service through cuts and ignoring their advice and did so proudly and gleefully. Instead, they relied excessively on contractors, consultants and outsourcing policy decisions. Consequently, policy expertise withered on the vine. These legislative changes in front of the chamber are part of the Albanese government's agenda to rebuild the Australian Public Service. Most of the amendments contained within this bill are recommendations from the 2019 Independent Review of the Australian Public Service, the Thodey review, or go to the intent of the Thodey review. These are responses that are sensible, unlike how the LNP operated when they were in government for that wasted decade—those three squandered terms that had little to show for it but debt and disaster.

The Albanese government has consulted widely on these changes, including with employees, representative groups, agencies, experts, the Public Service and the CPSU. At the heart of this bill are three guiding principles of change which aim to make the APS work better for the Australian people. They are: strengthening the APS's core purpose and values, building the capacity and expertise of the APS and, lastly—something that has been missing for way too long—supporting good governance, accountability and transparency.

How will this bill strengthen the APS's core purpose and values? It will do this by adding a new APS value of stewardship that all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as 'the Australian Public Service builds capability and institutional knowledge and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does.'

When the APS doesn't meet these expectations, through either not understanding their importance or being set up to fail, it is ordinary Australians who suffer. Just look at the devastation reaped by robodebt. It damaged lives. In fact, it took lives. Government decisions implemented by public servants took the lives of Australians. They were our most vulnerable Australians. I will never forget or forgive some of those opposite for what they did. I do, on this occasion, think of the poor public servants who were forced to implement this dastardly LNP policy. The scheme rolled on and on and on, raising and chasing debts that were not owed, wrecking lives—and we're yet to receive an apology from those opposite. Sometimes I wonder if they have any shame at all. Robodebt was a failure of leadership to listen to its own employees, who had correctly highlighted the fact that simply averaging income over 12 months instead of every fortnight would yield incorrect outcomes. Sadly, some of the Public Service leadership failed to recognise or reconcile the impact these decisions were having on some of the most vulnerable people in Australia.

The amendment bill will also require the Secretaries Board to oversee the development of a single, unifying APS purpose statement and review it once every five years. It will also require all agency heads to uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement, in addition to the APS values and employment principles. This will make sure that the APS looks at itself to make sure that it is delivering the right outcomes for Australians. The bill will clarify and strengthen these provisions in the act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. We don't want to see ministers having their fingers on APS staffing decisions. It's time to reaffirm the APS's apolitical nature.

The second component of this bill will be to build on the capability and expertise of our wonderful Public Service. The bill will do this by having the APS make regular independent and transparent capability reviews a five-yearly requirement for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These mandated five-yearly capability reviews will assess organisational strengths and areas for development, with reports and action plans responding to findings required to be publicly released. The public needs to have confidence and trust in these organisations and, where improvements have been identified, that these are then being made.

The bill will also require the Secretaries Board to commission regular long-term insight reports to explore medium-term and long-term trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia. These reports will ensure that the APS can build trust in its expertise and understanding of cross-cutting issues that matter to all Australians and can be a leader in innovation and change.

Lastly, in terms of these guiding principles, the bill, just like the Albanese government, will help restore and support good governance, accountability and transparency. We will require the publication of the agencies' APS census results and an action plan that responds to results. Again, making this information open to the public will foster a culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement within agencies.

We will also require agency heads to implement measures to enable decisions to be made by employees at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions. This will ensure decision-making is not raised to a higher level than is necessary. Not only will this reduce the unnecessary hierarchical nature of the Public Service but it will also be empowering to APS employees.

Let's look at those three guiding principles again: strengthening the APS's core purpose and values; building the capability and expertise of the APS; and supporting good governance, accountability and transparency. It is not a mistake that many of these changes come back to two simple words: trust and confidence. The government and the people of Australia need to have trust and confidence in the APS to do their jobs, the jobs that they are paid for, and trust and confidence that they will deliver the best outcomes and services for Australia, especially to those who most rely them. I commend this bill to the House.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recently had the pleasure in Higgins of hosting the Measuring What Matters Forum. The Measuring What Matters Forum was in response to a call by the Treasurer in relation to a statement that he is going to be putting out later in the year called the wellbeing statement. The wellbeing statement will complement the various other statements that we have in Australia such as the statement on the environment. We recognise that there is a growing recognition that measures such as GDP and the consumer price index simply do not capture the state of our overall wellbeing. They don't convey what we value, like financial security, our democracy, our connection to nature or feeling like we belong.

A key theme that surprised me that emerged during this discussion with my constituents was the need for goal-setting, program evaluation and accountability. My constituents were highly exercised over this, and they wanted to see measurable outcomes that were actually linked to aspirational, well-defined targets, supported by program evaluation to ensure accountability and public trust. That's a framework—it's a framework we need to build upon. These are some of the things that they actually said: 'Good government is founded on good policy and good policy depends on good advice. One of the APS core roles is to provide advice to support the government of the day, so that it can deliver its policy agendas and priorities.' I couldn't agree more. A second constituent said this: 'Ministers operate in an environment of high pressure, fast pace, intense scrutiny and great complexity. All of those things are true. They are responsible for making decisions individually and collectively, as members of cabinet, that have significant and far-reaching effects on individuals, businesses and communities. The importance of ministerial decision-making and the circumstances under which it occurs underscores the need to have well-functioning support systems in place for ministers.' What's a support system? For us it is the Australian Public Service. Then, finally: 'If it is a question of compliance, we have various rules in place, but our Public Service has been so gutted we have a lack of ability to evaluate and a lack of ability to deliver programs.' That's an indictment if I ever did hear one.

We have come to government and inherited a Public Service that has been hollowed out, undermined and eroded under a wasted decade from those opposite. The erosion of the APS was laid bare by the robodebt scandal. The previous government essentially co-opted a Commonwealth bureaucracy to do its bidding and the results were catastrophic. Just when we thought we had seen it all, up popped the PwC scandal—a salient lesson on the risks associated with outsourcing, which has led to an overreliance on external contractors. Under those opposite, a shadow APS bloomed, resulting in cost blowouts and a false economy whereby a staggering $21 billion was actually spent in the year 2020-21—the last year of the previous government—on external providers and external contractors. The reforms put forward in these amendments that we are discussing will restore a positive culture, capability and integrity to the APS, which we want to be seen as a model employee.

The Albanese government's APS reform agenda has four priorities. At its heart is integrity—an APS that puts business and people at the centre of its policy-making and its service delivery. We want the APS to be seen as a model employer. Finally, we want an APS that has the capability and capacity to do its job and do it well. The bill has certain objects that are now being added—one is a focus on stewardship. We know that the APS has a mission statement and certain core values, but we want to add stewardship to its operating ethos because we believe this is an overarching mission of the APS. New stewardship value has been developed through extensive consultation and has taken into account responses from over 1,500 APS staff across the country, from graduates all the way up to senior executives. The bill outlines the stewardship value as meaning that the APS builds capacity, capability and institutional knowledge, and supports the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. Stewardship, we believe, involves learning from the past and then looking into the future. It involves conservation and cultivation, leaving things in a better place than when you found them, as our First Nations people know. We believe that stewardship is important and we want the APS to be seen as having an important role as part of a wider public good.

We are also introducing a purpose statement, and this was identified in response to the Thodey review, which showed that there was a lack of a unified purpose in the APS, an excessive internal focus and a loss of capability in crucial areas. The APS statement will be developed to oversee a single unifying purpose statement for the APS, a bit like a mission statement. It will contribute to a shared sense of purpose for tens of thousands of APS employees, reinforcing a 'one APS' approach. The purpose statement will be developed through consultation by the service for the service and will not be set in stone. In other words, it will be able to evolve with the changing demands of a contemporary culture and society, responsive to the needs of the community and the government, and it will be refreshed every five years.

We are putting some guardrails around ministerial influence on hiring. The first APS value is to be impartial and independent, and we want to reinforce that. That's important to prevent scandals and catastrophes like robodebt from ever occurring again. It's important that we defend this value of impartiality, and so we want to ensure that APS employment decisions are made at arm's length from ministers and political interference. I think that's very important. This bill will make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. It's explicit.

We will also look at building the capability, expertise and thought leadership of the APS. This really speaks to developing an institutional memory, which, after a long period of time, turns out to be a priceless asset. It surprises me that we have such turnover in some government departments. I've been a public servant my whole life. I've worked as a physician in public hospitals from the day I graduated to the day I entered parliament, and what was clear in my profession was that highly skilled health care professionals did not leave; we just did not have the churn that you see in a lot of government departments. It meant that we built up a huge institutional memory and capability. It's probably the reason why, for many of our hospitals and centres of excellence around the country, it's all about the people, the expertise and the capability. It's that memory that then trains other people coming up, whether they be nurses and doctors or allied health professionals, pharmacists and so on. You keep building and building on that capacity, and then you do other things with that ability, such as research, public policy or public health, for example. That's the kind of destination we want the Public Service to evolve into. It should be seen as a valued career pathway for our best and brightest. We, here, all serve our country, but there is another way to serve your country, and that is through the Australian Public Service. It is noble and fitting that we should be tightening up the legislation around this important asset.

To be future fit, the APS needs to continually build on the capability of its staff to create a skilled, confident workforce for it to remain a trusted institution. We believe that the APS must work in partnership with the public to solve these problems and co-design the best solutions. Co-design is a very important word; it has a great deal of meaning, particularly in medicine but also in public policy. The best results come when you engage with the grassroots community stakeholders and co-design a solution with them. Bureaucrats and parliamentarians don't have all the answers. We have to listen to the people in order to craft the best solutions, and that has been a hallmark of the Albanese government. Just about every major piece of policy reform that has been undertaken, in every portfolio, has gone to some type of public consultation. In the chamber is the aged care minister, and she is chairing an important task force and review looking at aged care. Similarly, this has now gone out to public consultation. Why? Because we realise that this is a complex area and that we have to gather as many ideas as possible in order to solve this problem.

There will be capability reviews that will occur. This is done in order to foster a continuous culture of improvement in the APS. We want to look to identify gaps and areas of improvement. The bill will make these regular, independent and transparent, and they are occur on a five-yearly basis for the departments of state, Services Australia and the ATO. That's a good thing.

We will also have long-term insight reports. I found this fascinating. This is a recommendation from the Thodey review which compels the APS and these departments to come up with long-term strategic plans. This is designed to push back against the short-termism that has infected our public policymaking, which has led us into the mess that we're in. Short-termism has led us into a climate catastrophe, a health crisis, an energy crisis and all kinds of other problems, and it will be long-term thinking that gets us out of this. This is a welcome addition to this legislation.

We'll also be publishing annual feedback of APS employee census results. This is a mechanism for employees to provide feedback and understand that this will be openly published. It will be transparent and it will be associated with an action plan to ensure that those grievances or areas that have been identified as being potentially weak can be improved. We also want to foster a culture of engagement and transparency.

Finally, we will also be looking at enabling decision-making to occur at the lowest appropriate classification. What is that mean? It means that we're trying to flatten the hierarchy and empower those staff who might be at the lower end, who are often younger but often brimming with ideas, to come forward and share their ideas for the betterment of the nation. We will be compelling agency heads to implement measures that enable decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest possible classification level. This is also designed to stop this upward drift of decision-making, which just adds to delay and red tape. We find that kicking the can up the food chain doesn't always work and can lead to all kinds of problems.

In conclusion, we are facing a multitude of challenges—environmental, health and economic. These problems are certainly complex, and they need a harnessing of ideas to allow these ideas to bubble up to the surface from all quarters—community, government, the business sector, industry and our APS. The solutions require a shift away from short-termism towards generational investment. For that, we need to ensure we have a mechanism that rewards and retains our most talented minds to serve the nation. I commend this bill to the House.

David Smith (Bean, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to be able to rise to speak in favour of this bill here today, particularly as a former public servant and as someone who represented public servants for more than a decade through the labour movement. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is an important step in recasting and resurrecting the capabilities of our federal Public Service. On this side of the House, this particular challenge has long been recognised as one of the most pivotal problems facing good government in Australia. That is why we made a commitment to the Australian people at the last election that we would take steps to fix this problem. Crucially, rebuilding our depleted public sector capability has been one of the drivers of our government from day one. This bill and our government's broader Australian Public Service reform agenda are about restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions, and achieving this by rebuilding the capacity and expertise of government. Looking around the world at the state that many great democracies find themselves in, and contemplating the challenges for our country that loom on the horizon and creep ever closer to us, there are few tasks more important than restoring trust in and capacity of government.

We are fortunate to have a good blueprint, through the Thodey review of 2019, for how to proceed with this important task. It, frankly, boggles the mind that this review was not acted upon before now—that it has taken a change of government for this important work to begin. Before I move onto the detail of this important bill, I would like to make an extended reflection on how we arrived at this particular point of crisis in our public sector. The degradation of the capabilities of government did not happen overnight, nor was it a slow-burning consequence of factors beyond the control of government. It was, rather, a result of a pattern of policymaking and an avoidance of taking action informed by analysis and review. Commissioning and then failing to act on the Thodey review played a role in that process, but, in truth, it was well underway before then.

It was a process that I had the misfortune of seeing up close. Before I entered public life I worked for more than a decade as the public sector director and ACT director for Professionals Australia, the union for scientists, engineers and other professionals. I worked across the federal government, working with engineers and scientists in the Department of Defence; veterinarians in the department of agriculture; scientists in the CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, CASA and Air Services Australia; and engineers at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. These specialists performed important work for the government and rightly felt a certain sense of pride in the contributions they were making. It was a real honour for me to be able to represent them and advocate on their behalf.

It was an honour, yes, but it was also a source of continual frustration. This sense of frustration was a consequence of watching these fine public servants, with their immense expertise—many were world-leading experts—being stymied in the execution of their roles. Their advice—informed by a learning expertise in many cases to high postgraduate level—was too often not given appropriate weight. At other times it was ignored or rejected in favour of consultants and contractors. Indeed, too often the advice of those external consultants and contractors, imbued with vested interests, was more highly prized than that coming from more deeply experienced public servants. The very skills and expertise of those I was representing was often too thinly spread, making capability assessments of their departments' and agencies' programs inherently difficult. It was this sense of frustration, witnessing these good and decent public servants have their expertise and advice not valued appropriately, that motivated me to seek election to this place, so that I could play a role to stop this terrible rot. I am proud to have represented specialists in the Public Service and even prouder to be here today standing up for them.

This bill will not solve all their challenges, and those challenges it will resolve won't go away immediately. But this bill is a start—an important start—and a real acknowledgement from this government that a problem exists that needs to be acted upon. This bill will not just help my former members in the Public Service. It will help improve the roles and job qualities of public servants across the Australian Public Service. As an MP who represents a Canberra seat, I can tell you, Deputy Speaker, that many of my constituents are public servants or have devoted much of their careers to public service. It takes a special kind of person to become a public servant. You have to possess a strong commitment to service and the greater good. The rewards are often found more in the achievements of good policy and the effective delivery of government services rather than anything financial. I am proud to represent such dedicated public servants in this place, and it is my view that the least we can do to recognise their efforts is to ensure that they're working within an efficient and impactful public sector. This bill will achieve just that.

What we are discussing here today goes to the heart of the capacity and capability of government to serve the interests of its citizens and protect the integrity of the nation it serves. We live in complex and troubled times. The Australian government is confronted with an ever-multiplying number of challenges. These challenges threaten Australia and its peoples at all levels and cannot be addressed or resolved easily. Think about what confronts us, what is in the forefront of our thinking as members of this place. There are climate change and the multiplicity of dangers it presents to our economy, ecology, energy policy, foreign policy, planning policies and management of emergencies and natural disasters. There is the state of our region and the wider world, where long-cherished and championed values are under threat on a range of fronts and dangers. We have an economy that without intervention has been leaving too many behind, creating insecurity in housing and other areas. We had a global pandemic which both dissolved and strengthened borders and barriers, highlighting deep-seated inequality across the world.

We have a government committed totally to confronting and addressing these challenges, but the capacity of our government and, indeed, any government to face the challenges of today is conditional first and foremost on the capabilities it possesses through its public service. After nine years of shameful neglect, we can't honestly say that the new government was left with those capabilities by our predecessors. This bill, alongside the many other important reforms that have commenced, will help address this.

At the risk of repeating some of the excellent points made by my colleagues in this debate, it's useful to examine some of the specific changes this bill will bring about. This bill will end ministerial interventions in employment within the Public Service. In talking about some of the positive things about our Public Service, I've yet to use an important word which describes what it should be: apolitical. One of the great strengths of our democracy and our country is that, despite a change of government and even the political direction the nation is heading in, a professional and apolitical public service remains in place to pursue and execute the agenda of government. This is so important and is an essential ingredient of our national strength and capability, but we have seen far too much erosion of this principle, and this erosion is often most egregious in the area of employment practices within departments. This bill will remove any ambiguity on this question and places a duty on ministers not to interfere in these matters.

It is also critical that we have a public service where all involved are empowered to make relevant decisions, yet we have seen a tendency take root for decisions to be escalated up the chain of command. This is done in the name of risk management, but, by taking decisions away from the most appropriate, lowest level and escalating them, additional burdens and roadblocks are created and incentives for personal development and good workplace culture are lost. In the workplaces where I had responsibility, what it often meant was that the experts were lost in that mix. The people who actually understood these areas best had their work signed off by people who did not understand it. This bill will empower agency and department heads to determine the lowest, most appropriate level decisions can be made at. This will foster a much more positive work culture and flow of work, creating efficiencies and productivity.

I have spoken at length in this contribution on the subject of public sector capabilities. Having represented so many specialist public sector professionals at an industrial level, my thinking is very much attuned to the attraction and retention of professional skills and capabilities in the Public Service. One of the conclusions I have come to having witnessed skills and capabilities being run down, devalued and discarded is that the solution to the capability question in the Public Service can only come from the top. It cannot be managed at the level of the workplace.

This bill will achieve this change. Under the terms of this bill, independent, transparent and regular five-yearly reviews into the status of available capabilities will be a requirement for each department and agency. The resulting reports from these reviews will then be published on the relevant website of the department or agency. This is such an important reform. It may not sound sexy or exciting, but these reviews will present a clear picture of the status of capabilities. Being forward facing and informed by identified strategic priorities, these reviews will also be an important way of identifying capability gaps. This will enable the recognition of those skills and capabilities already present in the department or agency, and will further empower the retention and ongoing development of those skills. I believe this is an important and worthwhile change.

All of us who are members of this place have chosen a career in public life at a time of heightened complexity and challenge. The decisions we make here will determine the success or failure of Australia. Of course, the same could be said of any cohort of representatives serving here over the past 120 years. But the confluences of challenges and opportunities are, in my view, more pronounced and impactful today than at any other time in our history. We look to government for solutions, for assurances that these challenges will not overwhelm us. But, even with the best of intentions, any government is both constrained and empowered by the capabilities, or lack of capabilities, of its public service. This is a government which is resolutely committed to overcoming these challenges, and the changes this bill will achieve will further empower our government to take Australia forward with confidence.

Finally, this bill will do so much for all those dedicated and hardworking public sector professionals that I was fortunate enough to get to know and represent over many years. Their commitment and abilities always impressed me, and the ongoing disrespect they faced motivated me to see change happen. As I said earlier, this bill will not fix everything but it's an important step on the journey to respect and recognition of our public sector professionals. I pay tribute to them and their contributions and dedication. I commend this bill to the House, and I call on all members of this place to support it.

Meryl Swanson (Paterson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This issue is of paramount importance not only to this place because of our nation's governance but to all Australian people, all people who seek service. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is a key component of the Albanese government's APS reform agenda. This bill is more than just an amendment, quite frankly; it's a significant stride forward in our commitment to fostering public trust, enhancing government accountability and promoting transparency in our Public Service. It builds on the essential findings of the 2019 Thodey review, which highlighted several areas of improvement within the APS.

This amendment bill aims to address the critique raised by the Thodey review that our APS requires a unified purpose, needs to shift from an internal focus and ought to recover capability in critical sectors that, quite frankly, have been dreadfully honeycombed over recent decades. It echoes the review's call for a trusted, future fit, agile and responsive APS that can effectively serve the evolving needs of our government and our ever-changing community, embodying professionalism and integrity in every endeavour.

The last few years have been a testament to and a test for our Public Service. The necessity of an agile and robust APS has never been clearer. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, geopolitical instabilities and economic volatility all underscore the urgency of a public service that can adapt swiftly and work towards common purpose. The APS values—those of impartiality, commitment to serve, accountability, respect and ethics—have proven essential during these challenging times, and I defy any serious and fair dinkum Australian to challenge that. For these reasons we are introducing this amendment bill. It's a piece of legislation that will institutionalise these much-needed reforms, making them a permanent part of the ethos that governs our Public Service.

Our ambitious APS reform agenda is articulated around four fundamental pillars: integrity, people-centricity, exemplary employment practices and enhanced capability. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, at its very core, supports these pillars. Firstly, this bill emphasises the new APS value of stewardship, developed through extensive consultations with over 1,500 APS staff right across the country. This value speaks to our commitment to preserve public interest, build that institutional knowledge and consider the long-term impacts of our decisions. It echoes the principles of conservation and cultivation and recognises our First Nation Australians time-honoured practice of stewardship over this land.

Secondly, the bill necessitates a unified purpose statement for the APS. Like any good team, everyone in that team always responds when they pull together with a common purpose, and if that can be shucked down to a statement that people can focus on and remember then that has proven capabilities. This statement is going to be reviewed every five years. I personally think that's a good thing because whilst there's nothing like a good old-fashioned Latin motto, a statement like this really does need to be contemporaneous with the values of the times. It's going to help foster collaborative leadership and align services across the myriad of departments that form our Public Service. It's going to give tens of thousands of APS employees a shared sense of purpose, embodying one APS approach.

Thirdly, the bill fortifies the impartiality of our public service, making it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This prohibition enhances the non-political and apolitical character of the APS and affirms the agency head's ability to act with integrity.

Moreover, the bill proposes amendments that encourage decisions at the lowest appropriate level, streamlining bureaucracy and fostering a culture of trust and empowerment within the APS. This is one of the critical changes that we are proposing in this bill. Rather than feeding decisions up, we're actually empowering down—and how often have you heard someone who is well and truly at the coalface of how something works make a suggestion, only to have that potentially snuffed out by those higher up or, indeed, claimed as their own work? It will be good to see people who have got those ideas, having those ideas fostered and them gaining recognition for them. I personally think this is a fantastic idea and I look forward to seeing how it lifts our Public Service.

This bill also mandates regular capacity and capability reviews, ensuring continuous improvement and adaption to our ever-evolving operational environment, and you only have to look at how this place has changed in just the last few years with the ebbs and flows of COVID—the perspex going up and coming down, the doors being opened and closed and all the other myriad of serious changes that had to be adapted—and the changes that had to be made by our public servants to ensure not only the continued function of parliament and legislation, but also to ensure the health and safety of those people who work here every day, and I personally thank them for that. They embraced those changes robustly and willingly, and they've done a great job.

Another important aspect of this bill is the publication of annual APS employee census results and the corresponding action plans. This measure seeks to uphold transparency and accountability and responsiveness within our Public Service and firmly positions the APS as a model employer.

Lastly, the bill introduces the requirement of at least one annual long-term insight briefing. These briefings, produced through public consultation, will provide valuable insights into Australia's long-term trends, risks and opportunities, fostering the APS ability to strategise effectively for the future. Australia is poised to face immense challenges in the coming decade, and it is therefore paramount that we support good governance and recognise the APS will continue to play an integral role in meeting the changing needs of government and the community.

I just want to take a moment to recognise my colleague and friend Anne Stanley, Chief Government Whip here in this Albanese government. Anne has instigated the Friends of the Public Sector parliamentary friends group. I went along to its very first function last week. It was terrific. In that room were some of the most caring and hardworking public servants. I don't want to try and rank the Public Service in any order of importance, but these were the people charged with the direct care of some of our most vulnerable children. I know that they spent the week meeting with members of the House and members of the Senate and talking through some of the challenges they face having charge of such vulnerable children. They made it very clear how difficult it is to recruit people into the jobs that they do. They also made it very clear how difficult it can be to retain people in these jobs. It is undoubtedly an incredibly difficult job.

The one thing that stood out most clearly for me, whilst talking to these people, was an overriding sense of commitment to the greater good. Not only did they have the sense of wanting to help and care and lift up very vulnerable children and occasionally make very difficult choices to remove them from dangerous situations; they expressed the overriding desire to lift those children out of danger and create a safe place for them immediately and in a broader context. I couldn't help but think about the people that I know in the ADF. What struck me the other night at the Public Service event was that I was hearing, whilst not the same detail, the same character coming through. That is one thing that I always pick up when I'm in the company of defence personnel—there is something that underpins their service to our nation. They're not doing it for the kudos and certainly not for the money or for the stature or for any of those things. There is a deep driving desire within the character and personality of these people to serve. In my interactions with public servants, in the last seven years that I have been here, I have gained such great respect for them.

In my previous role on radio and talkback radio, bashing a public servant almost seemed to be a national sport. People would often ring and have their two cents worth about the good, the bad and the ugly of the Public Service. Well, I have to say, since working in close proximity to incredible professionals not only in this building but also in the employee across the country doing a wide range of things, by far and above, the public servants that I have interactions with are true professionals. We should be very glad that we live in a country where we have people who are willing to take on those roles, who want to exemplify the best of the best, who want to work very hard for us all as the Australian public. I say to them that I hope this bill goes some way to correcting some of the issues that the Public Service has faced over the last 20 years, particularly.

I look to people like schoolteachers and nurses and ambulance drivers and people who work with children at risk. They're all in the Public Service. I can only remember a time when they were venerated in their professions. It absolutely disturbs me now, when I read stories of people being attacked by the public when they're just trying to do their job. I think it does start with things like this bill, which will put into the law of the land that the Public Service is a place where we want the best of the best, where we want respect to be built again, where we want trust to be placed again. I do think that this is a direct reflection of the Prime Minister's values. While he sits on this side of the chamber, I think ultimately he's actually very conservative in his personal views about manners and respect and he places enormous store in those. I know he wants our Public Service to be an organisation that is revered, trusted and respected by the Australian people as it should be.

I commend this bill to the House. I look forward to these changes being implemented, but, more than that, I look forward to the changes that we so desperately need to see and that will come as a result of them so that we have that stellar Public Service. The changes that come from that and make Australia an even better place to live will be there for everyone to see and everyone to experience. I commend the bill to the House.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's a privilege to have been here for the member for Paterson's very eloquent and spot-on words about the Public Service and the professionalism and drive of those people who in their work seek to serve the public of Australia, which is what, obviously, the Public Service is about. Not enough is said about that incredibly important work, and not enough respect has been given to this in recent times.

I rise today to also speak in support of this Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. The bill represents an important step towards implementing the government's Australian Public Service reform agenda, which is aimed at ensuring that the APS embodies integrity, puts people and business at the centre of policy and services, is a model employer and has the capability to fulfil its responsibilities effectively. The APS reform agenda is informed by the recommendations of the 2019 report of the independent review of the APS led by David Thodey. This comprehensive review provided valuable insights into the strengths and challenges of our Public Service, and the government is committed to implementing the necessary reforms to address these issues.

I want to recognise the work of the Minister for the Public Service, Senator Gallagher, and the work that she has put into this reform agenda and this legislation. I would also like to thank the public servants who have themselves put the work in to prepare this legislation. I'm very proud to be part of a government that actually has an APS reform agenda, a government that respects the Australian Public Service. This should not be something novel, but over the last 10 years—with the absolute disregard that we saw for the Public Service and their critical role in our democracy, in the delivery of services to Australians and in providing the advice that shapes the policies that benefit the lives of all Australians and impact the lives of all Australians—it was really missing under the former government.

As the member for Canberra, around 27 per cent of my constituents are actually employed in the Australian Public Service. I am incredibly proud to represent these hardworking, dedicated people as my constituents in this place. I will always stand up for the Public Service, the important role it has, the individuals that make it up and the work that they do. As I've talked about before in this place, I saw this in my father's career in the Public Service. He really instilled in me the values of professionalism and the importance of frank and fearless advice and of the Public Service serving the government of the day and not being politicised. And I saw how incredibly hard he worked in serving the various governments that he served in his career.

I also saw this as an official at the Commonwealth Treasury, where I worked with some of the most inspiring, dedicated, intelligent people that I have ever had the privilege to work with. If there's ever any question of how hardworking the Public Service is, the process of working on budgets, which we have just recently been through, is a mammoth effort for people from a range of departments, not only—although probably in large part—the Treasury and the Department of Finance, who put incredible hours and work into that. I want to thank those public servants again for the work that they put into that and into each and every policy and piece of legislation that we deal with in this place.

I also see that dedication and professionalism in the public servants that we work with in this building every day, who enable this parliament to run, essentially enabling our democracy to function. We see the people who run the secretariats of parliamentary committees and the incredible, quality work that they put in. I want to thank the secretariats that I work with on the committees that I'm in for the incredible work that they do, giving us quality advice and bringing together a range of issues and stakeholders to participate in those committee processes. It's another really important mechanism of our democracy that couldn't run without public servants.

As the member for Paterson was saying, people join the Public Service because they do care about outcomes for Australia and the world. They care about outcomes for our environment, in health and in all the range of policy areas. They do it because they want to see improvements in those areas; that's what drives them. It should be a profession that is respected and upheld, particularly by people in this place, who see it firsthand, and ministers, who deal with the Public Service on a daily basis. So it was very disappointing to see disregard for the Public Service under the previous government. It's closely tied in with Canberra bashing. Let's not deny that that is a big part of it. It's bashing on our city and our Public Service and perpetuating myths about big government being slow to get things done, myths that it's an easy job and all of the things that we all hear too much of. It is a very important job that people do. They work very hard and deserve our utmost respect. So, as I say, I will always, as long as I am in this place, be incredibly proud to represent so many Australian Public Service employees in my electorate.

As I've said, the work of the APS is a solid foundation that we use to build the future prosperity of the nation, and it's all done by hardworking Australians who are too often unfairly maligned in this place by those opposite. We saw a prime example just a couple of weeks ago of the opposition's contempt for the Public Service in budget estimates—again, another important mechanism of our democracy, where questions can be asked of public servants about the budget. You would have thought that the opposition would have some serious questions about the budget, but we saw a range of ridiculous lines of questioning. I won't go into all of them, but one that really stood out was when a very senior public servant was criticised for not wearing a tie and was asked about that. While in one sense it's laughable, it does speak to a much deeper disrespect and disregard for the important work that these people do, the important role of the Public Service and the way that that role in itself should be respected.

For the last decade, under the previous government, we saw huge amounts of outsourcing. We saw arbitrary employment caps designed for political point scoring. We saw wage freezes. We saw speeches by the former prime minister, the member for Cook, which completely misrepresented the purpose and mission of the APS. Who can forget the Christmas social media video from the member for New England, declaring that he was sick of the government being in his life? It was an interesting comment coming from someone who had sought to be a member of parliament, given that that is the role of this place—to form governments and deliver the services, laws and policies that affect everyone each and every day. I would have thought a driving reason for most people to be here would be to see government make good policies, but then you have people saying they want the government out of their lives. This didn't stop him from forcibly relocating the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority to Armidale, in his electorate.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is there a point of order?

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just direct the member back to the bill itself, rather than commenting on other members of the House.

Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm sure the member for Canberra will continue her contribution relevant to the bill at hand.

Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I think it was pretty relevant. Also, the former Prime Minister used his speech at the Institute of Public Administration to claim that only those who have put their name on a ballot can truly understand the significance of accountability—again, I think, misrepresenting the role of the Public Service—and this is from someone who secretly swore himself into multiple ministries. So I am proud that with the formation of our government the neglect of APS has ended. We will never treat public servants or the expertise they provide the way that those now in opposition did. We will always respect and take account of their frank and fearless advice.

Integrity is a cornerstone of the Labor government's APS reform agenda. Recent events such as the robodebt royal commission and revelations about the role of consultancies in light of the PwC scandal have highlighted the need to strengthen integrity measures within the Public Service. This bill sets the foundation for broader reforms by introducing important new provisions. These provisions lay the groundwork for future legislation that will specifically target integrity concerns.

One of the key measures of this bill is the addition of a new APS value of stewardship, which underlines the importance of building capability and institutional knowledge within the APS, and which all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as the APS builds capability and institutional knowledge, and will support the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impact of what it does. This value emphasises the importance of long-term planning in considering the broader consequences of APS actions.

It is so vital that we recognise the long-term impacts of the work done by the APS, and this bill reinforces the role of APS employees in serving successive governments, the parliament and the Australian public. It complements the stewardship duties of secretaries, the Secretaries Board and the commissioner. It also introduces measures to enhance the work environment within the APS. It requires agency heads to create an environment that enables decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification. This empowers employees and fosters a culture of accountability and effective decision-making throughout the service. By reducing unnecessary hierarchy and empowering APS employees, this provision will ensure efficient decision-making processes and a more agile and responsive APS.

Furthermore, the bill empowers the APS Commissioner and the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to conduct periodic capability reviews of departments and key agencies. These reviews will become a five-yearly requirement for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. The reviews will assess organisational strength and areas for development, with reports and action plans responding to the findings required to be publicly released. This will enable continuous improvement within agencies and ensure transparency in their performance. Transparency and accountability are crucial in building public trust. That is why the bill includes provisions that require the Secretaries Board to request and publish regular long-term insights reports, which will provide information about medium-term and long-term trends, risks and opportunities affecting Australia. Additionally, agencies will be required to publish their annual APS employee census results, along with action plans that address the findings. This will foster a culture of continuous improvement, and ensure the APS listens to and addresses the thoughts, concerns and ideas of its employees. Extensive consultation has been conducted throughout the development of the bill, and a public consultation paper was released on 3 May, followed by an exposure draft and explanatory memorandum.

As I said, this bill is an important part of a broader agenda for reforming the APS and part of that is a sign that our government takes its role seriously and respects the people that work within the Australian Public Service. I am very proud to be part of a government that does this. It is critically important. Public servants do the work that perhaps is not seen every day but that impacts the things that each and every Australian benefits from every day, like keeping us safe, delivering services, providing the advice that creates the policies that will benefit all Australians, even our interactions with other countries around the world, our security, our defence. Public servants play an incredibly important role each and every day, and I take this opportunity to again thank them for all that they do. I again thank all the public servants, particularly in this building, that support the parliament to run every day. I commend the bill to the House.

Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Commonwealth Public Service Act 1902, the initial legislative instrument of the Public Service, runs to some 27 pages. They were simpler times. It empowers the appointment of fit and proper persons. There was once a view, since superseded, that the main thing when filling any office was just to find a good person. In 1902—let's not gild the lily—the 'good person' was a white, middle-aged male person, a subject of His Majesty, preferably an English gentlemen, a family man, preferably possessed of property and of the right background. It is still important to find a good person to fill any role, of course. As time has gone on, we have sought to be more explicit about our expectations of our Public Service. The 1999 act includes a statement of values:

The APS is professional, objective, innovative and efficient, and works collaboratively to achieve the best results for the Australian community and the Government.

The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, before the parliament, and other legislation which is part of the government's refresh of the APS, seeks to go further. As Minister Gallagher stated, the government has four priority areas for the APS: fundamental integrity; people and business at the centre of the work of the APS; the APS as a model employer; and an APS that is possessed of the capability to do its job and to do it well. It may seem a lot. It is certainly ambitious, and there will be some murmur from the benches wishing for a time when we could just choose a fit and proper person and look the other way. It is tempting to assume some tension between efficiency and accountability.

I met with former minister Robert Tickner today. Tickner chaired the committee that created the landmark 1989 report, The AuditorGeneral: ally of the people and parliamentreform of the Australian Audit Office. That report saw no necessary conflict between accountability and efficiency, and recognised that political decisions would determine the criteria by which effectiveness could be assessed. It counselled merely that if there were regulations that reduced efficiency for no good reason they should be removed.

Former WA Premier Geoff Gallop has had a lot to stay on this topic. In his book, Politics, Society, Self, he includes a speech he gave in 2008 entitled 'Putting the public back into the public service'. Saliently, Gallop notes that the last 40 years have seen a number of different approaches to the Public Service, some of which have not, in his opinion, served the public interest. He states:

Slowly but surely, society is rediscovering the power that can come from collective purpose and collective action. It means a more strategic approach to government generally, more concern for the long-term and for social and environment factors in the sustainability equation. It means a focus on results and outcomes as well as outputs and efficiency. It means joined-up government and new partnerships with the private and community sectors to tackle seemingly intractable problems in health and education.

Last year, as part of this legislative process, Minister Gallagher posed the question: what does good government look like? She quite rightly emphasised that good government delivers effective policy while being transparent and accountable to the public. Geoff Gallop succinctly reminds us:

… you can't have democracy without politics, you can't have politics without politicians, and you can't have politicians without public servants.

So we can reasonably ask: what does a good public service look like? I know from my experience of the Public Service, when I first joined the Department of the Premier and Cabinet in Western Australia as a graduate, I certainly had an expectation of the trusted place in which I was working. I looked forward to having the confidence to explore and understand the topics before me and then to be fearless in my representation of the way we should move and act on them.

I had the opportunity to work on issues such as native title and was very proud to be part of the lead negotiating team representing the state government on the Ord native title negotiations, at the time the most complex negotiations. One of the ways in which we were able to deliver on a successful consent determination and negotiated settlement was by being empowered, as the public servant and lead of that team, to engage with local Indigenous communities—Miriuwung, Gajerrong and Gija people—to understand what they saw as the best method of being able to engage and negotiate without feeling any sense of power imbalance with the state. I then felt strength to be able to go and speak to the then minister for native title, Eric Ripper, and put to him a new model of negotiating with Indigenous people. That model was completely new and innovative at the time, but now it's common practice for all negotiations across the nation. That was to be able to have Miriuwung Gajerrong and Gija people nominate individuals to represent their different groups of both genders, and of different demographics as well, to be able to have equal input and sufficient time, and to be resourced to be able to negotiate equally at the table with the state. Pat Dodson was selected as their person to negotiate with the state on their behalf, and that began a fantastic journey.

The reason I'm saying this is because I was empowered as a public servant to be able to identify the best way forward. I felt the courage and the strength from the nature of my position to take that forward to the relevant minister of the day and trust that he would listen to me without fear or favour as to what my advice was to be. Thankfully, he acted on that, and it resulted in the most significant determination of the time and has set the course of how we negotiate going forward in all native title negotiations.

That's just one mere example. I have many other I could draw on from working in economic policy and state security emergency management, where being able to trust and rely on your public servants to do the work, to engage with community groups, to talk across agencies, to remove those silos—which frustrate politicians, I'm sure—and to make sure that we actually work through what the implications will be for the society at large, not just for the government of the day. These are the roles of the public servants, and it is incumbent upon them to deliver that because the capacity of the parliamentarians in this room to do it alone is obviously not realistic. The reality is that it's the public servants that hold the knowledge and expertise to do it justice. For me, the bill before us is absolutely the right direction to ensure that the Commonwealth Public Service is fully resourced and enabled to do what it should, my experience at the state just demonstrates the power of making that happen.

But there are others perhaps more qualified than me to look at the role of the Public Service and how it should perhaps operate. For example, in 2019 the UK-based institute for government delivered a report entitled the International Civil Service Effectiveness Index. This report seeks to answer that question: what does a good public service look like? It ranks some 38 countries, including Australia, across a range of measures. The 12 indicators employed by the study are: capabilities, crisis and risk management, digital services, fiscal and financial management, human resource management, inclusiveness, integrity, openness, policy-making, procurement, regulation, and tax administration. Australia does what we might call well enough on that index, lying in an overall fifth place. But as Andrew Denton and Chris Harriot remind us, 'I don't care, as long as we beat New Zealand.' Unfortunately, we didn't beat New Zealand—they came in second, with the UK at the top. The Thodey report refers to New Zealand's experience, but perhaps we need to continue to look at the structures and measures taken there and in the other countries that trump us in this index—being the UK, Canada and Finland—to see how much more there is we can learn.

On the upside, Australia's fifth placing on that index is not based on an outstanding position in any single measure but rather a good all-round performance with above-average scores on all 12 indicators. I call this an upside as it suggests a good foundation on which to base further improvements such as this legislation will bring.

This bill will add a new value of stewardship, reminding public servants, politicians and all who deal with them that the APS serves the people now and for the future. It will require the development of a unifying purpose statement, clarify the relationship between ministers and agency heads to reaffirm the apolitical nature of their positions, and install regular capability reviews and medium- and long-term insight reports. It will require publishing of APS employee census results and action that will then follow. It will empower employees and reduce the bureaucracy.

As the Prime Minister said today in question time, public service is an honourable profession. We value our public servants and we seek to do what we can to enable them to better fulfil their vocation. This bill is part of that effort. I commend the bill to the House.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the honourable member for Newcastle.

Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the kindness, Deputy Speaker! I am delighted to speak on the bill, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, before the House of Representatives this evening. It's a bill that makes amendments to the Public Service Act and is a really key part of the Albanese Labor government's reforms to the Australian Public Service and the big reform agenda that we have for the Public Service.

The Australian Public Service is vital to the running of our country. I am especially grateful to all public service sector employees for the work they do. There are literally millions of Australians that rely on the Public Service to ensure their lives are the very best they can be. They are delivering important programs in every city, every town and every region across Australia. It's an enormous task. Thousands of Novocastrians would interact with the APS each and every day, speaking to Centrelink officers on the phone or visiting the office, receiving subsidised medicines through the PBS, applying for passports, going into the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, the NDIS—each and every one of these agencies are employing exceptional Australian public servants.

The APS is keeping our borders safe. In my port city of Newcastle, the APS officers at Border Force are there being very vigilant in monitoring ships coming in and out of the Port of Newcastle. It is the busiest port on the eastern seaboard of Australia—23 ship movements each and every day, at least. There is a lot to keep an eye on there.

The veteran community in not just my electorate of Newcastle but my neighbouring electorates of Hunter, Shortland and Paterson are relying on the Department of Veterans' Affairs office, which is located next door to my office in Newcastle—as is the veterans counselling service Open Arms. All these people are dedicated to the delivery of really high-quality programs and services to our community. Every single one of the 151 members in this House is, I'm sure, deeply indebted to the service that is provided by Australian public servants.

My electorate knows too well just how important the public sector is. We also know how decimated it became under the former government, who reduced capability and who outsourced billions of dollars of work to consultants and contractors. That was deeply damaging for our Australian Public Service. It left the staff in electorate offices like mine—and I'm sure members opposite would now have to attest to the fact that it left staff in electorate offices everywhere in this country—having to really step up and fill the gaps where services were not being delivered. There was such a high level of unmet need because of the lack of staff in some of the government agencies around the country. Over the course of the last decade, people in Newcastle were really struggling to get the responses that they needed and deserved from a number of government agencies. That put a lot of pressure on staff in electorate offices to try to get the sort of response you need from Centrelink when you're seeking an urgent payment or from Veterans' Affairs as you're trying to progress an important claim through their channels.

At its heart, this bill—and indeed the Albanese Labor government's broader Australian Public Service reform agenda—is about restoring public trust and faith in government and its institutions. We know that that trust and faith have really plummeted. Some might even say they were at record lows. It is vital to the health of democracy, to the operation of parliaments, to have a really strong and robust Public Service. The reforms in the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 will help strengthen the Australian Public Service's core purpose and values. They will help build the capability and the expertise again within the Australian Public Service and support good governance, accountability and transparency. These are really critical, important pillars that underpin the Australian Public Service. If the Public Service is not about good governance, accountability and transparency, then we have a problem—and indeed there is a problem, which we are trying to fix right now with this bill tonight.

The Albanese Labor government understands acutely the importance of training and upskilling the capacity of the Australian Public Service and ensuring that people feel motivated to stay in the sector so we're not just having a churn-through of public servants who are either burnt out because they're overworked and under-resourced, or they just don't feel valued and don't feel that their work is held in high regard sometimes. It's important that we turn that around right now. Coming from Newcastle, I understand, like any member coming from outside of a capital city understands, the value of keeping jobs in the regions. There are thousands of jobs in my electorate of Newcastle through the Australian Public Service. As I said, it's not just capital cities that get to benefit. Every one of our electorates has got deeply committed public servants operating and keeping the wheels turning in our communities.

That's why we in Newcastle are so excited to be launching a partnership with the University of Newcastle and the Australian Public Service to boost regional jobs and create really important digital opportunities. The University of Newcastle will be one of four locations around Australia to host an Australian Public Service Academy campus, as part of the Australian government's Data and Digital Cadet Programs. Newcastle's campus location will provide opportunities for students to earn as they learn, and we all know that's an important matter for many, many students now. They'll be able to work as an Australian Public Service employee while they are completing their bachelor degree program. Successful candidates will be offered a part-time role in the Public Service while they study, with a remuneration package of up to $60,000 per annum plus 15.4 per cent superannuation. What a wonderful opportunity for young Novacastrians. No longer do you have to leave Newcastle to train to be a quality public servant; you can now do that with this partnership with the University of Newcastle. You can get great on-the-job experience whilst doing so, but also, importantly, be remunerated for that work experience. We're not asking people to do unpaid internships here, and these are important matters for any Labor government.

We know that, like the private sector, the Australian Public Service is struggling to find enough people with those technical skills to fill the data and digital roles. The academy program is a significant partnership that is directly responding to the need to address a national skills shortage while also keeping workers in the Australian Public Service. And it means that Newcastle locals wanting a career change can upskill in data and digital roles within the Australian Public Service at one of the Newcastle university campuses. It allows Novocastrians to stay in Newcastle while taking part in training opportunities, and it will attract aspiring public servants to get the right skills to have the very best chance at jobs in the Australian Public Service while continuing to contribute to the Newcastle community. So, we'll be doing great things for our young and not so young Novocastrians who are looking for job changes. We'll also be attracting people to Newcastle from our region of the Hunter, ensuring they've got a great platform from which to be able to join the Australian Public Service and get skilled in some areas of great skills shortages for Australia.

In total there are 300 flexible data and digital training and entry-level employment opportunities that are going to be offered across Darwin, Newcastle, Launceston and Townsville. These are terrific opportunities for Australians. Some of the potential data and digital careers in the APS include data analysts and scientists, cybersecurity analysts, user researchers, software engineers, web developers, programmers and system designers. The Data Cadet Program will be open to Australian citizens who have completed at least one year of a bachelor's degree program and have at least one year remaining in that course. The Digital Cadetship Program will be open to Australian citizens who have completed at least one year of an ICT or technical bachelor degree and have at least one year of that program remaining.

I know that the University of Newcastle is very keen to welcome the minister when the cadet program does launch, and I will also be very excited to see that day. We all look forward to seeing how this program will be able to benefit workers, benefit the public sector and benefit the region as a whole. It's good for government, good for good governance, great for regional economies and really good for young people looking for a secure, purposeful job where they will be able to exercise influence and help shape what this nation looks like going forward.

The Public Service Amendment Bill that's before us this evening will strengthen the Australian Public Service's core purpose and values and build the capability and expertise of the APS by, as I said, supporting good governance, accountability and transparency. I cannot stress enough how important all of those measures are. It's a bill that will add a new Australian Public Service value of stewardship. It will require an Australian Public Service purpose statement so that nobody can be under any misapprehension as to what their purpose is in the Australian Public Service. It will make clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. It will encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level, and this is important in distilling skills and confidence in our younger, emerging public servants. It will make regular capability reviews a requirement. It will require annual Australian Public Service employee census results to be published along with an action plan responding to the results, so people will see their feedback being delivered and see what actions are being taken. And this bill will also establish at least one long-term insight briefing each year. Many of the proposed changes align with the recommendations from the 2019 review.

This is an important part of the Albanese Labor government's reform agenda for the Australian Public Service. There is still much work to be done, but I cannot stress how important these jobs are for regions like mine. We will be doing absolutely everything we can to strengthen the APS and their capacity and capability in every town and city across Australia.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm going to start off by making a statement that I assume those on the opposition benches will refute, that they will disagree with. Over the last nine to 10 years, the coalition government diminished the important role of our Public Service. What I mean by that is that the Australian Public Service—and this is factual; I don't know if they can refute this—became far too reliant on contractors and consultants. We were simply outsourcing our policy and our policy development work. The workforce also was being casualised. There was a lack of interest in investing in and nurturing our public servants. Again, this is a truism: the Public Service is far too critical to have been distorted and changed in this way. Our Public Service is where we, in government, receive frank and fearless advice. That's a critical function of our democracy. In recent years, as we worked through the pandemic, natural disasters, increasingly economic instability, we've seen how important it is to have a public service that works in unity and acts swiftly.

We've also learned how important public trust is. According to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, only 41 per cent of Australians trust governments to do the right thing. That's not good enough, and I think the opposition would agree with that. This government, the Albanese government, is all about enhancing our transparency and our accountability. In this case, we're being more open about the state of the Public Service, and we'll begin to help build up the community and public trust again in the Public Service and therefore in our government.

I was a public servant. So there's no conflict of interest in my speech, I was a public servant; I still am, as a member of parliament. We all are. But I was a public servant in the Public Service for a number of years, so I know how important the work of the Public Service is. We really couldn't function if we didn't have public servants. The vast, vast majority do fantastic work. So much of our everyday lives and the lives of Australians are intertwined with the functions that the Public Service deliver and the policy work that they develop. Whether it's getting your tax return, receiving your Medicare rebate or checking for paid parental leave on myGov, these are all Public Service functions, and they're critical to our day-to-day lives.

Of course, there are healthy goals of a high standard in the Public Service. I remember when I was at DFAT for a period there was a view that we were much better than Treasury and all the other departments! And I'm sure Treasury would have thought they were the better public servants. But all of us were striving to provide quality advice and quality policy, to do our best to the highest possible standard in providing that frank and fearless advice. Of course, the APS, the Australian Public Service, contributes to our national interest in that critical way. It's integral to our national policy development. It's the driving engine room. It churns out the ideas, the policies and the priorities that should be considered by the government of the day.

The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is a key part of the Albanese government's APS reform agenda. It's an agenda that acknowledges the need for ambitious reform of the APS. That's why today I'm speaking in support of this bill, because I believe we do need to reform and rebuild the APS. These reforms are being introduced to help us start that process. This will help us reform and improve our Public Service after years of neglect and years of diminishment under the previous government. It will help us, of course, increase the numbers of the Australian Public Service, but that is just one part of it. It will help us build trust in government and the Public Service and the work that they do.

There has been a fair bit of media about outside consultants recently. They do have an important role to play, don't get me wrong. There are certain policy areas and other areas of expertise where outside consultants can play a very important role in providing value-add to the work of the Public Service. There is no doubt about that. But it is, I think, quite ridiculous when everything starts to get outsourced—pretty much every function—to consultants, and the work of those Public Servants is completely diminished. We don't need to look far to see why this may be a problem. We've seen the recent PwC case, and other cases as well, highlighting risks around confidentiality and conflicts of interest. It's also not smart from a budget perspective, because in Australia the big four consulting firms increased their work, or the costs into the budget, by 400 per cent between 2012 and 2022 period. It's not a coincidence when it comes to aligning those years with the coalition being in government.

The diminishment of the departments first started, I think, even earlier than that, when there were changes made during the Howard years around contracting senior public servants at a high level—deputy secretary and secretary—to two or three year contracts. I'm a bit old-fashioned. I know the US system is quite different to ours. When there is a change of administration there is a turnover from probably assistant secretary or first assistant secretary above across all the systems of the US government. They are clearly called political appointments; they are Republican or Democrat party appointments to those senior positions. That's how they do it. Our system, based on the Westminster system, has had a tradition of a public service that is frank and fearless and non-partisan: frank and fearless in their advice and non-partisan in their posture, regardless of who holds the Treasury benches, the government benches. The Howard era was where we started to see some of the diminishment occur—that non-partisan independence that we value start to be chipped away slightly.

This bill amends the Public Service Act 1999 to enable transformational change. It supports the APS to best serve the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public. The proposed amendments were recommendations from the 2019 Independent Review Of The Australian Public Service, the Thodey review, and support the intent of that review. The review established that the APS did not have a unified purpose, was too focused internally and lost capability in critical areas. This bill does a few things. It strengthens the core purpose and value of the APS, builds the capacity and expertise of the APS and supports good governance. We will be introducing a new APS value of stewardship, which all APS employees much maintain. It will ensure the APS purpose statement will be reviewed every five years and will have the Secretaries Board oversee the development of this. We will also ensure all agency heads uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement. This is in addition to the APS values and employment principles. Having a purpose statement provides a common foundation for collaboration, provides a shared sense of purpose and encourages a 'one APS' way of working. In other words, in short: break down the silos between the departments.

Finally, we will strengthen provisions within the act to ensure that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. The new wording and language will be stronger, so it is clear that the onus is on ministers not to direct an agency head. We will do this to ensure the APS can continue working in an apolitical way and to enforce a culture of impartiality in the Public Service. This creates clear limits on inappropriate involvement by ministers in APS employment matters and ensures integrity in the Public Service.

Integrity is very important to this government. These reforms feed into our broader work with the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which will work across government to introduce corruption measures, improve protections for whistleblowers and establish a code of conduct for ministers and staff. Strengthening the core purpose and values of the APS is critically important. The APS is complex. It's made up of dozens of departments and agencies, and these reforms will help the APS to operate in a more integrated way.

We will complete independent capability reviews every five years for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These reviews will assess strengths, identify areas for improvement and create reports and action plans to respond to findings. These reports will be released publicly because the Albanese government feels strongly about the importance of transparency. We will also ask the Secretaries Board to commission long-term insight reports to assess medium- and long-term trends as well as risks and opportunities facing Australia in the policy space. This also provides the APS with an opportunity to engage with academics, experts and the broader Australian community on long-term policy challenges facing our country.

Collaboration and partnerships are key to tackling long-term policy challenges. Reforms such as the APS Academy are already helping to boost capacity across the service. These reforms help the APS build ongoing capability and expertise in staff. This will ensure the Public Service continues to manage modern policy and service solutions in the long term. The APS was too reliant on consultants; we've established that. This government is working to develop an in-house consulting model for the APS to strengthen its core capacity and functions, giving it more of the flexibility that's needed within the Public Service.

There is so much expertise within the APS, and we need to create the opportunities to better utilise the expertise of the wonderful staff that work so hard in our Public Service. We want to ensure that agencies' APS Employee Census results are published, in addition to action plans. This is information, through data collection, about the attitudes and opinions of APS employees. It provides us with an opportunity to hear from employees and allows them to share their experiences. This will foster a sense of accountability and ownership over the mission we're all working towards, which is to make good policy for Australia, and encourage continual improvement within our agencies. We want to ensure workplaces in our country are inclusive and respectful, and we need to model this within the APS.

There will also be measures introduced by agency heads to allow employees to make decisions at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions—we don't need unnecessary hierarchies—and this will reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks and help with staff professional development. We want to support APS employees to feel empowered, to feel heard, to feel like they belong and the work they do is valued.

We've listened to others, and we're trying to ensure that the APS can operate in the best way possible to serve the Australian government, parliament and public. This has been a collaborative process. We've worked with employees, representative groups, agencies, experts, the public and interested parties, including the Community and Public Sector Union. This bill supports the broader Albanese-government APS reform agenda, which aims to ensure the APS stands for integrity in all that it does, puts people and business at the heart of its policy and its services, is a model employer and has the capability to do its job well.

The broader goal of this bill and the government's broader APS reforms is to restore public trust and faith in the government and its institutions. The Thodey review called for a Public Service that is trusted, future fit, responsive and agile to meet the changing needs of government and community. The view of public servants by Australians across the country—some of the cliches and stereotypes about public servants clocking off at five to five might have been true back in the sixties or seventies, but I know for sure that, even when I was in the Public Service, people were working long hours and doing what they needed to do to get the work done and the advice to the government of the day. Their work was quality work, and their commitment should not be questioned.

This bill delivers on the key recommendations of the Thodey review—being future fit, being even better than it is today, breaking down the silos. We need an APS that acts with agility, with a common purpose and with the existing values of impartiality, commitment to the service it provides, accountability, respect and ethics, and it will only be further strengthened by these reforms. It is critical to this government, to our parliament and to our community that we have an apolitical impartial approach to the work that the APS does. And it is important that APS employment remains apolitical and merit based. There is no place for political interference within our Public Service. These reforms will strengthen transparency, prevent political interference and enable the APS to do what it does best—provide quality policy advice to the government. It will allow the APS to do what it does best—give us frank and fearless advice and help us as a government to help the community to have better lives.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his contribution and, whilst I wasn't in the chamber for the entirety, there wasn't much that I disagreed with, if anything. I know how much the member for Lyons is champing at the bit to also speak on this very important bill, a bill which now is taking up all of the time of the parliament. People listening must think, 'What is this bill of such significant proportions that every single Labor member is coming in and spending 15 minutes of their time to talk about?' Well, it's the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, the resumption of debate on the second reading and the amendment that has been moved.

Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Critical.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'Critical' I hear the member for Wills say. Indeed, it is so critical that we are going to take up 5½ hours of debate, as every Labor member is told to go in and speak about this critical—as the member for Wills calls it—bill. Indeed, the Public Service is critical. I acknowledge the role that it plays and I very much concur with the member for Wills when he said that public servants work hard. They do. Whilst I the appreciate that, at times, public servants are criticised for being in the big Canberra bubble, the bureaucracy, by and large, they do work very, very hard. They get things done for and on behalf of Australians and we thank them for that. Whether that means that every Labor member needs to come in here and speak on this bill for 15 minutes, well we know why they are doing that. I will tell you why they're doing it, because they have got nothing else to do. So the manager of government business has told them, 'Get in there.' They are getting their talking points from the Labor dirt unit and they're being told to get up and speak for 15 minutes.

Those opposite could invoke the spirit of Albert Gardiner—known as 'Jupp'—a New South Wales ALP senator. He gained some fame—some might call it notoriety—by standing up in 1918 and delivering federal parliament's longest speech, 12 hours and 40 minutes. The combined Parnell-Bressington filibuster in the South Australian upper house went for over 13 hours. But what Senator Gardiner's speech did was force the introduction of the time limit on future speeches. More is a pity, because I reckon the people out there listening to the broadcast would love to hear the member for Lyons speak for a dozen hours, and I reckon he would be capable. I reckon he would be up to the task. Being a former journalist like myself, I reckon he would love that. He would relish that role.

I digress and I don't want to play down the importance of the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. There are some things it does which are certainly very important. Noncontroversial, as we would argue, it creates a new APS value of stewardship. It creates a requirement for an Australian Public Service purpose statement to be developed by the Secretaries Board. It clarifies the operation of section 19 of the Public Service Act to provide that ministers must not direct agency heads on individual employment matters for the Australian Public Service. It requires agency heads to implement measures to create a work environment that enables decisions to be made by APS employees at the lowest appropriate classification. It provides a mechanism for the APS Commissioner to, at any time, cause the capability review of an agency other than the Australian Public Service Commission. I say this because I don't want somebody to stand up and say 'he is not being relevant'. I will continue so we can prevent that. It requires the Secretaries Board to request and publish regular long-term insights reports to make available information about medium and long term trends, risks, opportunities which affect or may affect Australia or Australian society—very important—and information and impartial analysis relating to those opportunities, risks and trends. It requires agencies to publish annual APS employee census results. It makes technical amendments consequential to the making of the Public Service Regulations 2023 following the sunsetting of the Public Service Regulation 1999—Commonwealth law.

Now, I know that all of those things are important. I get that the Public Service is important and does its due diligence and duty. This bill is important because we want the law to be updated. I get all that. I understand that. But what we've seen is the unedifying spectacle of having no Labor members on the speaking list—or very few—and all of a sudden the list is as long as Donald Bradman's batting average. From a very low starting point, it is now as long as the number of centuries he scored in first-class cricket. We're playing a bit of bazball here. Actually, we're probably not seeing bazball, because we're not actually getting things done in a hurry—more is the pity. We're not seeing Labor get on with the job of doing what they're supposed to do, and that is govern and bring legislation in. We were criticised so much during the last parliament—unfairly, with absolutely no justification—for not bringing in legislation in the House, but Labor is doing exactly what they criticised us for doing when we in fact weren't doing it. They're filibustering. They're sending in every member to speak about the Public Service as though it were the most important thing gripping this nation. I'll tell you the most important thing gripping this nation right now. It's cost of living.

People listening to this broadcast are probably wondering: 'Why aren't they talking about my electricity bill? Why aren't they talking about the labour shortages? Why aren't they talking about cost-of-living pressures? Why aren't they talking about how hard it is for business to keep its doors open?' What are we talking about? When ordinary, average, everyday Australians just want this parliament to work on making sure that their cost-of-living pressures are reduced, no, we're talking about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. Now, I appreciate that the Public Service is important. I get that Labor has put more money into making sure that there are more public servants. They've done it in your state, Deputy Speaker Vasta; the Queensland Labor government spent all that money, all those mining royalties, and have put in a whole lot of public servants. If they're police, ambos and firies, well and good, but the trouble is they're not. But I digress.

What we saw last week on 1 June was that we had a long, long list. At the risk of holding up a piece of paper when I shouldn't, there it is. This list meant that the opposition members who wanted to talk about the appropriation bills—they're the budget bills. With the budget bills, you get to speak about how important the budget is to your electorate. You get to speak about the things that are good. You get to speak about the things that you don't necessarily like. But no; for the first time since I've been here and no doubt since you've been here, because we've been together in this place for a long time, Deputy Speaker Vasta, the appropriation bills were guillotined. That is code for gagging. The opposition members were gagged. They gagged the members for Canning, Casey, Sturt, Independent teal Mackellar, Riverina—that's me. I was gagged. I couldn't speak for the first time.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Should have got in early!

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mallee did get in early, and good on her, because her people were able to listen to what she thought about the budget. Her people were able to know that they are going to hurt from that budget. They are going to hurt from water cuts. They are going to hurt from the truckie tax. They are going to hurt from higher electricity bills. 'Where's the $275?' they're all asking. At least the member for Mallee was able to enunciate and clearly articulate exactly what she thought about the budget, but all of these other members weren't: O'Connor, Moore, the Greens leader, the member for Melbourne—they gagged him too. Good luck with your preferences next time there. There was the Independent from Indi and the member for Brisbane—not that I value what the Greens say, but I will stand up for their ability to say it, and they're right to say it in the house of democracy every day of every week. There were the members for Barker, Capricornia, Lyne, Cowper, Grey and Hughes, and the Centre Alliance member for Mayo. There were the members for Petrie, Nicholls, Fisher, Bowman, Groom, Wannon, Banks, La Trobe, Wright, McPherson and Hume—the Shadow Treasurer, because he was gagged, was not allowed to have his say on the member for Rankin's budget speech. What a disgrace that is! The member for Hume, the shadow Treasurer, should've been able to speak on that.

There were the members for Deakin and Lindsay, the Katter Australia party member for Kennedy, and the member for Monash. And, let's face it, there were probably more as well.

To be fair, and I'm always fair, as the member for Lyons knows, there were Labor members who were also not allowed to speak on it. But, in good, disciplined Labor fashion, they would've just copped that. They would've accepted that, but some of them—no doubt all of them—have been up, even though they were not allowed to speak about the member for Rankin's budget speech. But guess what? I bet you they're in here talking about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023.

Do you know who misses out? It's not the ALP members. Quite frankly, it's not the LNP members or the Independents or the teals. It's the people of Australia. They deserve better. They expect better. They demand better. And they demand better of this place. It was supposed to be a nicer, more polite way—

Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gentler.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and this proves that it is gentler—thank you, Member for Mallee. It's supposed to be a more gentle place as well, but it's not because, when you can't actually get up and speak on the budget bills and speak to your electorate and have your electorate listen to how the budget will affect them, more's the pity.

There were some things in a budget which the member for Mallee and I probably agreed with. There were some things in there which will, yes, make the lives, the lots and the livelihoods of people in regional Australia a little bit better. I tell you what: there was a lot there which was not good at all. But I wasn't able to enunciate that because I was gagged, as were all of those other members who did not get the opportunity, and that is just so wrong. That is so wrong. Yet here we are on a Tuesday evening. We're going to be talking till the adjournment, and tomorrow we'll be resuming, and what will we be talking about? It'll be the Public Service Amendment Bill.

We won't be talking about the cost of living. We won't be talking about Labor's broken promise—the $275 that they said, without clarification, every household would be getting off their power bills. No, we won't be talking about that. We won't be talking about the truckie tax. We won't be talking about why the cost of groceries is higher every time people go to the supermarket. We won't be talking about all the things that matter to ordinary, average, everyday Australians who are doing it so tough. But what will we be talking about? The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023.

And when those Labor members go back to their electorates next week and they bump into people in the street and they go into small businesses which won't be having their instant asset write-off in an unlimited fashion—it's only $20,000; that was in the budget, but I wasn't able to talk about that. When they go into those small businesses or into that pharmacy, good luck there. I hope you've had your flu jab. They'll be shutting soon because of the 60-day dispensing rules. When you go into those small businesses and people front up to you and say, 'Well, what did you do in parliament last week?' I want you to look them in the eye and make sure you earnestly say, 'I spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, because that's really going to affect your life. It's really going to make a difference in how you live your life in coming days and weeks and months and years.'

Never mind the budget. Never mind what went on in the member for Rankin's speech. You spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. And when they say, 'Well, what did that involve?' you'll be able to say, 'Well, in 2018 the coalition government commissioned an independent review of the Australian Public Service to ensure it is best placed to serve Australian governments and the Australian people into the future, and Mr David Thodey AO, former CEO of Telstra and then chair of CSIRO, was appointed to lead the review. The review received more than 750 submissions. It involved more than 120 round tables,' and they'll say, 'Well, you should go down to the racecourse because you read that like a race caller.'

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spoke on the appropriations. I got in on time.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well done you! How lucky were you! You got in early, but so did everybody else. But they weren't allowed, because they cut it off unfairly—unjustly cut it off—because the appropriations normally have more time. I'll tell you why I know Labor cut it off—because there wasn't that much good in it to talk about. There wasn't that much good to share the love and to go around the nation, as Josh Frydenberg did when his budgets came down, to talk about what we were doing for small business, what we were doing for power prices, which came down in our term of government. We helped Australians—families, businesses, farmers—to get ahead. But what did you do? What did you do after a year of government? You spoke about the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023; that's what you did.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's always a challenge following the member for Riverina because he always sets a trap for me. He throws me off my game. So I've always got to respond to the ridiculous claims he makes. What he conveniently forgets to tell the House is the opposition voted for the motion to set the time limit on the appropriations debate. So it wasn't the government gagging debate. It was a joint decision by the House, including those opposite, to set the time limit.

If he wanted to speak so badly on the budget, he could have got in early, like the member for Mallee did—due diligence to the member for Mallee, speaking on behalf of her electorate—but, no, he left it to the last minute. For somebody who thinks this bill before the House is not that important, he's spent his full 15 minutes talking about it. And the man can talk under water, under wet concrete, I reckon.

He did mention one thing I'd like to talk about before I get to the substance of the bill before us. He said that this government is not getting things done in a hurry, that we're not getting on with legislation. That got me thinking about what occurred in the Senate yesterday. Here we had a bill ready to go, a $10 billion housing package, voted down—or blocked, rather—by those opposite and by the Greens in the Senate. It was ready to go. If that had being passed by the Senate yesterday, appropriation for that fund would have gone through and those houses could have started to get built. So that is getting things done. The people stopping getting things done are those opposite, the member Riverina and also the members of the Greens.

Things that this government has done over the last year: aged-care wages; better pay and condition legislation; the legislation for an independent corruption commission; cheaper medicines; and fee-free TAFE. The list goes on and on of what this government has achieved in our first year. Unlike those opposite, we haven't been popping the champagne corks and we certainly haven't been breaking out any cigars, despite the success of the budget with the first surplus in many years, because we know there's so much work to do. There is so much work to do on behalf of Australians who are doing it tough with the cost-of-living crisis. We acknowledge that there is one but we also know it's a global issue. Countries around the world are facing higher interest rates and higher inflation. It's a shared problem, and Australia is weathering the problem better than most.

Before us today, we have the Public Service Amendment Bill. The member for Riverina took great delight in throwing some shade on this bill. But I just say to every public service worker in this country, thank you for the work you do. To the Clerks here—I know they're not members of the APS but are of the parliamentary services—to the attendants, to the security guards—everybody who works in this House—the Comcar drivers, thank you.' When I think of the multitudes of people who work for the public sector and the incredible work that they do, whether they're backline or frontline staff, thank you for the work that you do.

I think in my home state of Tasmania—and I'm sure I'm going to miss a few people out here—of biosecurity, health care, education, child protection, Indigenous rangers, Centrelink, NDIS, Veterans' Affairs, border security, AFP, defence personnel, intelligence personnel, our security agencies, and the numbers of public servants and public sector workers who work behind the scenes diligently doing all that really important admin work, often a thankless task. They're often derided in the public sphere by people who should know better—people in positions of national leadership—for the work they do. There's this false narrative that runs around about how much better, supposedly, small government is than so-called 'big government'. But I tell you what, for business to work best, you need an efficient and effective public sector. When you drive down the efficiency and the effectiveness of the public sector, when you hollow out the public sector, the private economy also falters. The regulations don't go through, the applications take longer to be approved, the reviews take longer—all the necessary checks and balances start to grind to a halt. It affects productivity. So there's a wonderful symbiosis between the public sector and the private sector.

Under the former government we saw a false narrative. They used to champion how many fewer public sector workers there were under their watch, but what emerged, of course, was the phenomenal growth of contractors and labour hire. What would normally have been done by public sector workers was being done by those in the private economy, often for lower wages and fewer conditions. I know personally of examples where staff would be employed by an outsourced provider of aged-care services and would have a Commonwealth crest on their name badge and would go to people's homes on behalf of My Aged Care. For all intents and purposes, anybody would think they were dealing with a member of the Public Service, but they weren't. These were members of private operators who were contracted by the department to offer those services and those workers were on less secure conditions. They didn't get the 15.4 per cent superannuation—they got the nine per cent superannuation at the time—and, of course, if the contractor lost their contract with the Public Service, they had no job security. But they were expected to do the same job as Commonwealth public sector workers.

Some years ago—I hope I'm not speaking out of turn here—I spoke to COMAR drivers and learned that traditional COMCAR drivers were employees of the public sector, but then the former government decided to contract out to a new mob. They brought in a labour hire company to put in new drivers on labour hire conditions, which were pretty much that, if you worked a shift, that was your only contracted work. Your work ended at the end of that shift; you had no ongoing entitlement to work, even though you were a casual driver. That was a loophole out of the casual provisions, where even casual drivers had to have protections for leave entitlements and so forth. So these sorts of things were going on even in the remit of this building and this city. There was a complete devaluation of the importance and the value that the public sector can bring.

That brings me to the guts of this legislation, which is about properly valuing the role of the public sector. But before I get onto that, I want to talk about the importance of the regions, because my colleague, the member for Newcastle, talked about this. I've talked for some years now about rebuilding the regions and the importance of stopping the hollowing out. It's a natural consequence of economic change. With transport and everything else, people don't live in country towns much anymore. They gravitate to the big cities, and they'll often commute in and out. One way to try to arrest some of this is to reinvest in public sector jobs in the regions. They can provide economic anchors. They are good, well-paid, often secure jobs, and they provide a vital service. Aged care, health care, education, Centrelink, Australian government services—all these sorts of jobs can provide economic anchors for regional towns, and then you can grow from there. I thank the member for Newcastle for reminding me about the importance of the regions and what role the public sector can play in the regions.

That brings me very briefly to my hometown, Sorell, where we've had a one-person desk for Centrelink for some years now. I was very pleased during the election to secure a commitment from Mr Shorten, now the Minister for Government Services, to enlarge the Sorell Centrelink office to six full-time staff. So a fast-growing region of Tasmania, one of the fastest growing population areas in the state, will finally get a fully staffed Centrelink office when that is built and staffed in the months ahead.

Canberra is absolutely unfairly derided, nationally. I've been coming here for seven years as a member of parliament. I've been coming here for many years previous to that for family reasons. It's a wonderful city, with wonderful staff not just here in Parliament House but also across the city.

I've talked about the false economy of outsourcing, the less secure and less well-paid, but there is a lot of work to do to regain trust in the public sector, and that's what this legislation seeks to do. I hesitate to talk about this because it does cast some shade on some sections of the public sector, but I don't think we can have this debate without talking about robodebt because that was a grand failure. If there is a grand failure under the former government then robodebt is certainly it. The testimony that has been heard at the royal commission is that we had middle-level and low-level public sector workers, who should have been valued for their expertise and their advice, telling their superiors and supervisors: 'You can't do this. It's illegal. You can't do it. We're advising you. It shouldn't happen.' But they were ignored. It goes to their importance—the role, expertise and advice of our public sector workers should be valued. They often know the best of what is needed and yet they weren't listened to. The top managers reckoned they knew best, they were trying to keep their ministers happy at the time, and robodebt is perhaps one of if not the biggest scandal this country has ever faced, where a government of the day actually engaged in what can only be described as criminal behaviour, actively stealing from its own citizens through either neglect or wilful neglect at the very least.

The Public Service Amendment Bill before us represents a significant milestone in the Albanese government's plan to rebuild and reform the APS. It seeks to restore public trust and faith in our government and government institutions. One of the primary objectives is to establish a clear and unified purpose for the APS. The Thodey review highlighted the need for a shared understanding of the APS's role and purpose, emphasising the importance of a collaborative approach across various departments and agencies. We all know that siloed thinking can really—I don't know how we get across it, to be honest, because it's really difficult. If we knew how to deal with siloed thinking, we would have dealt with it before now, but, gee, we've got to keep trying because siloed thinking really gets in the way of progress in a lot of areas, and at least it's being addressed here. The bill addresses this by requiring the Secretaries Board to develop a single, unifying APS purpose statement which we review every five years to ensure continued relevance. By articulating a unified purpose, the APS can work as an integrated organisation focused on serving the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public. This shared purpose will guide the APS in delivering policies and services that do meet the evolving needs of the community. Agency heads will be mandated to uphold and promote the APS purpose statement, along with values and employment principles, further reinforcing a cohesive and collaborative approach. To enhance these core values and culture, the bill introduces a new APS value of stewardship.

There's a lot in this bill. I know the member for Riverina wasn't a huge fan. He derided it, much to his discredit, but it's an important bill. Getting the architecture of this stuff right is important. That's what this government do. We're not into showboating. We're not into doing welding with our helmets off—those silly photo ops! I just had that vision of the former prime minister with his helmet off while he was welding, with the sparks, and I thought, 'No, we're not into that.' We're into doing government right because it is important to get the structures right. It's not sexy, it's not something that makes good headlines—it's just good governance. It's just competent government, and that's what we are about—calm, collected government, doing the right thing for the right reasons.

A key aspect of the bill is to safeguard the impartiality and apolitical nature of the APS. It clarifies and strengthens provisions in the act to reinforce that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual staffing decisions. That's important because, as we know, there's a very unwelcome trend in the US, in particular, where the public service is increasingly being politicised. Even the FBI and police agencies are being derided by political leaders and being heavily politicised. We don't want to see that culture take hold here, so we need to protect the impartiality of the public sector. The bill takes note of transparency and other issues.

Before I finish, I will give a shout-out: on 23 June, it's United Nations Public Service Day. In advance, happy public service day to all our public servants all across the country.

Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to discuss the transformative power of the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, a bold initiative set to overhaul the Public Service Act 1999. This reform is vital to ensure the Australian Public Service, or APS, continues to serve the government, the parliament and, most importantly, the Australian public effectively and efficiently into the future.

The purpose of this bill is to provide the necessary support for the APS's core principles and values. To achieve this we are introducing an APS value of stewardship that 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.

For those who have served as union delegates—shop stewards, in the past—this value is not something we are strangers to.

This crucial amendment underscores our commitment to the strengthening, and the capability and institutional knowledge, of the APS. It underlines our unwavering support for public interest now and for future generations. The essence of stewardship lies in understanding the long-term impacts of our actions and decisions. It is an affirmation from the policymakers that the interests of the public today and their children and their children's children are at the forefront of every decision made.

In line with this, the bill is stipulating that the Secretaries Board will oversee the development of a single unifying APS purpose statement, reviewed every five years. This statement will solidify the role of all agency heads, and they will be required to promote it in conjunction with the APS values and employment principles. Having a sole unifying purpose for the APS will bring together various agencies which perform different tasks under one umbrella. It will emphasise that, even though these diverse departments differ in their day-to-day tasks, their motivations and objectives are one and the same. A unifying APS purpose statement, which will be regularly reviewed, will also mean that this purpose is regularly looked at and kept up-to-date with time. We believe these changes will enhance the apolitical nature of the APS and ensure transparency in decision-making, empowering the APS to navigate the challenges of the future.

One crucial aspect of this bill is the facilitation of independent and regular capability reviews, which will be required every five years for each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These reviews will focus on organisational strengths and areas for development, with reports and action plans made publicly available in response to the findings. This not only ensures accountability but also creates a platform for continuous growth and development.

Moreover, the bill mandates the Secretaries Board to commission regular long-term insight reports to explore medium-term and long-term trends, risk and opportunities facing Australia. This is a visionary step ensuring the APS is future ready, able to build trust in its expertise and understanding crosscutting issues that matter to all Australians. In this fast-paced world, the future often arrives a lot quicker than we anticipate. A nation that is well-equipped with the foresight to understand what the future might look like is a nation that will always be forward-thinking, dynamic and progressive. Mandating the Secretaries Board to regularly explore long-term trends will mean that Australia will never be caught by surprise and is well-equipped to deal with any challenge that may arise.

Further, the Public Service Amendment Bill will aim to instil a culture of transparency, accountability and continuous improvement within agencies. It will do this by requiring a publication of agencies' APS employee census results and an action plan that responds to these results. This approach will not only keep the agencies accountable, but also create a transparent mechanism for the continuous improvement of our Public Service.

To ensure effective decision-making and empower APS employees, agency heads will also be required to implement measures to allow decisions to be made by employees at the lowest appropriate classification for those decisions. We are of the firm belief that this approach will reduce unnecessary hierarchy, empowering APS employees and allowing them to bring their diverse experiences and perspectives to the decision-making processes.

Now, you may ask where did these amendments come from? The proposed changes were primarily drawn from the recommendation of the 2019 independent review of the Australian Public Service, also known as the Thodey review. The amendments were also influenced by insights into public administration from state-level governments and from overseas. Over the past few months, we have engaged in extensive consultation with various stakeholders, including APS employees, the CPSU, agency heads, experts and interested parties, including the public. This collaborative approach has yielded valuable insights that have shaped this bill.

A public consultation process on the proposed amendments was held and over 1,500 responses regarding the stewardship value alone were received. Further consultations with the APS agencies, HR areas, academics and employee networks help shape the broader legislative reform agenda. The proposed amendments respond to various recommendations from the Thodey review. For instance, the introduction of the APS value of stewardship and the APS purpose statement respond to recommendations 5 and 6 of the review. We have also addressed recommendation 32 by encouraging decision-making at the lowest appropriate level, creating a culture of empowerment and distributing responsibility within the APS.

As we move forward with the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, it is crucial that we continue to prioritise the welfare and development of APS employees. This involves addressing recommendation 15, which proposes a new workforce strategy to futureproof the APS. In line with this recommendation, we are seeking to enhance the capability of our APS workforce. We aim to invest in ongoing training, upskilling and continuous learning programs by ensuring that our workforce has the necessary tools, resources and skills to deliver excellent service and meet the changing needs of our citizens.

Turning to recommendation 24, we are also considering ways to better recognise and reward high performance within the APS. It is our firm belief that a culture of appreciation and recognition can motivate employees to strive for excellence, thus fostering innovation, collaboration and a commitment to service. Moreover, we are looking at ways to attract top talent to the APS by leveraging the appeal of the Public Service and by improving our recruitment and onboarding processes. We can ensure that the APS is filled with capable, passionate individuals who are committed to making a difference in our country. Furthermore, to reinforce a culture of integrity within the APS, the government proposes to empower the independent reviewer to investigate and address breaches of the APS code of conduct. We see this as an integral step to building trust and ensuring ethical conduct across the APS.

We are also taking into account other recommendations, like the introduction of the independent reviewer and the commissioning of long-term insights reports. We believe this will enhance transparency, ensure accountability and drive continuous improvement. At the heart of these amendments lies our commitment to better governance, public service innovation and improved delivery of services to the Australian public. We are invested in creating a culture of robust stewardship, evidence based decision-making and forward thinking in the APS.

Moving forward, we have proposed an independent reviewer, who will assess compliance with the new APS values, employment principles and code of conduct. This role, filled by an independent statutory officer, will ensure that the principles and code are respected and complied with, promoting a culture of integrity, accountability and trust in the APS. Lastly, but most significantly, the bill introduces a provision that would allow the Public Service minister to determine that a non-APS body or a group of employees within a non-APS body is a part of the APS. This provision seeks to provide flexibility in the coverage of the Public Service Act, allowing for a more adaptive and responsive APS.

To conclude, the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is not just about legislative changes; it is about investing in our people, fostering a culture of trust and accountability, and shaping the future of the Australian Public Service. We believe these proposed changes will provide a solid foundation for the APS to continue to deliver efficient and effective services to the Australian public. This bill reflects our vision for a forward-thinking, innovative and adaptive Australian Public Service committed to serving the interests of the Australian people. With these amendments, we are repositioning the APS for the challenges of the future, ensuring it remains a global leader in public service delivery.

I would lastly like to thank all the APS employees in Australia, a huge thank you, for all the hard work that you do, and I commend this bill to the House.

Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with pleasure that I rise to speak in favour of the Public Service Amendment Bill. We all interact with the Australian Public Service at various points in our lives, whether it be something as basic as visiting a doctor and relying upon all of the systems that the APS manages that allows doctors to provide the services, whether it be visiting a library or whether it be receiving support payments. There are so many services that people in our community rely upon and those services rely upon not only policy design and implementation by the APS, but, at the coalface, as it were, APS staff to actually help people navigate those systems.

I see this every day first hand, but I saw it in particular when floods ravaged a part of my electorate recently. Services Australia staff were so instrumental in helping people receive government benefits. Services Australia staff walked through the suburbs, going street by street, house by house, finding people and helping them to navigate online government systems. And then staff from Services Australia and other Australian Public Service departments came to that community and were physically there to answer questions. They placed themselves there in a community that was in so much trouble. Those staff provided such assistance to those people in need.

When I was thinking about the APS and its role in our lives, it occurred to me that the APS provides so many services on a daily basis but also other services that so many of us rely upon that are more momentous, more once-in-a-lifetime and everything in between. It really is a cradle-to-grave institution. The other thing about the APS when one thinks about its role in our own lives, in our communities and in the nation is that it really is something that is there as a steward across multiple governments, across multiple generations. That is why the reforms that we're looking at today are so critically important. This bill is going to be part of the government's broader agenda of building up the APS's capability, of making sure that it is suitably forward-looking and focused on the long term so that it can meet society's current and emerging challenges.

I started my career in the APS—my first job in the APS was in the Attorney-General's Department—and so many of the issues that we are dealing with today and, in fact, across this parliament are matters of proper governance and integrity, which are so integral to the issues that I was dealing with as a young lawyer back at the start of my career. When I reflect on the issues that I was dealing with back then, it is very gratifying to see that this government is progressing issues relating to integrity and good governance, so important to underpinning the work of the APS.

The second job that I had in the APS was in the Department of Finance, and again this makes me think about some of the very important reforms that we're re dealing with in this bill but also, more broadly, across the government's priorities. The Department of Finance is one of the central agencies that thinks about the APS's capability in a whole-of-government sense. In a sense, the Department of Finance is there to help the government think about how to marshal its resources and deal with, on the one hand, all the various trade-offs that it needs to make, the finite resources that it has and the finite funding and spending envelopes, and on the other hand the many things that it wants to achieve. But the other thing the Department of Finance does and did when I was there is, in a sense, mirror the Public Service and constantly think about the Public Service's capability. How is it able to best achieve the various objectives and outcomes that it's seeking to achieve? A lot of the reforms we're talking about in this bill tonight resonate very strongly with me and my experiences in the Public Service.

There are five APS Values in which public servants are committed to service, and that goes back to what I talked about earlier: that public servants are there in our lives. They're there in our lives in a daily way. They're there in our lives on our most momentous occasions. They're often there in our deepest and darkest hours. The values include that public servants be ethical, that public servants be respectful, that public servants be accountable and that public servants be impartial. They are all absolutely critical values, and I saw these values in practice. I saw how important they were to underpinning the rigour of the advice that the APS was providing to the government of the day but also to underpinning the way in which the APS dealt with people in the community, because the jobs of so many members of the APS are to help people very directly. So many tens of thousands of people in the APS are there at the coalface, where impartiality, respectfulness and accountability are so important.

Of course, I also think those values underpin some of the other overarching concepts we often think about when we think about the APS. Some of its best attributes are that the APS be frank and fearless and that the APS help governments think through how they actually implement the policy priorities that they have. Governments often will come into power with a very well formed agenda. But even when governments have thought through a lot of their policies, there's so often a great deal of complexity in actually implementing that, and it is absolutely critical that public servants have the capacity to help governments think through all the nuances and complexities of how to take a policy and make it into something that can be implemented in a practical and effective way. That's where the frank and fearless advice becomes so critical. That's where providing workable options becomes so critical. That's where having the capability to undertake rigorous cost-benefit analysis and where undertaking very detailed consultation processes throughout the community become so critical. That's why it's important to look at the reforms that we're looking at today in the broader context of some of the challenges the Public Service is facing. A number of speakers have talked about the fact that the Public Service has seen an erosion in some of its capabilities—through outsourcing to consultants is one example; just through a lack of funding in some areas is another.

I do want to go to the initial paragraphs of the report of the Thodey review. Early on, the report's authors say they are not undertaking these reforms because the APS is broken. The report says:

… there are many examples of excellence across the service. But the APS is not performing at its best today and it is not ready for the big changes and challenges that Australia will face between now and 2030.

I believe that that is actually a fair representation of where we stand now. I don't believe the APS is broken, but I do believe that, given the complex, long-term and dynamic nature of some of the challenges that our community is are facing, we need to strengthen the APS, and that's where some of these changes come in.

I want to put the changes that we're talking about in the context of the Albanese government's broader APS reform agenda. Priority 1 is that we have an APS that embodies integrity in everything that it does, priority 2 is that the APS puts people and businesses at the centre of policy and ideas, priority 3 is that the APS is a model employer, and priority 4 is that the APS has the capability to do its job well. What we're talking about in this bill dovetails all of the priorities that the government has set out and, indeed, helps it to achieve them. I won't go through all of the recommendations and the different elements of this package, but one of them, clearly, is adding stewardship as a sixth value:

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.

I want to refer to a few of the reflections on and responses to a survey that was undertaken of APS officers as to what it meant to add stewardship. I might say that that survey indicated that adding stewardship resonated very strongly with public servants, which says a lot about how important this will be as a sixth value.

It also said that, overwhelmingly, the responses indicated that it will help the APS to look ahead and provide advice that considers the long-term interests of Australians. A majority of the respondents in the survey of APS officers indicated that stewardship to them meant taking care, thinking long-term, taking into account future generations, maintaining knowledge within the APS and responsibly managing the issues under the responsibility of the department. When it came to public servants thinking about what it meant to act like a steward, they provided a number of responses. I will mention a few of them. There was mention of providing frank and fearless advice in relation to long-term impacts. For me, even that phrase indicates that it dovetails with and supports some of the existing values and adds that long-term perspective to what the APS already does. There was mention that it supports staff to grow capability and to meet challenges. To me, that response indicates that adding stewardship is going to help the APS to think about their own staff in a more long-term way, investing in them over the long horizon. It was mentioned that it will help to maintain information and good record keeping, absolutely critical for good governance, and that is will also help to build better and longer lasting systems. That survey, to me, was very insightful in that it added a lot of meat to the bone on what it means to add stewardship.

When you think about some of the challenges that we're dealing with today, like climate change, long-term changes in the labour force, the jobs of the future and how we prepare current people for those future jobs, that is all going to require long-term thinking. Of course, it's always been important that public servants think about the long term, but, given where we are and given that some of the challenges that we're facing now—an ageing society, climate change, the workforce of the future—some of these changes will have impacts over multidecades and multigenerations, so it is absolutely critical that we add stewardship.

Another important element of the reforms that we're considering today is that we add a purpose statement—that, alongside the addition of the value of stewardship, a purpose statement be developed that will create a unified vision of what the APS aspires to do. I think that's absolutely critical, and it takes me back to my days at Finance, trying to think about the APS in that whole-of-government sense. That reflects the fact that a lot of the challenges that we're facing aren't just long term but will affect so many different departments and agencies at the same time. Work of the future, the ageing of society—these are challenges that will affect multiple departments and agencies, so it is absolutely critical that we think about the APS in a more holistic way, and, also, that we undertake a capability review. Again, I go back to that statement that I just read out from the Thodey review: a capability review that isn't motivated by some sense that the APS is broken, which it isn't. The APS does so much and has done so much for so long that is at a very high standard. What it does reflect is the fact that we need the APS to be even better, particularly given the challenges that we will be facing.

In conclusion, the APS is a ubiquitous institution in our lives, in our community, in our nation. But it's also an incredibly important institution. It's there on a daily basis for our everyday events, but it's also there at so many of the most important times of our lives. It's there to help pick us up at some of the most difficult times of our lives. It's also an institution that is permanent, that does have stewardship of so much in our community. It outlasts the government of the day. It is there for multiple generations. It helps the multiple generations that are alive now and it thinks about the many generations that are yet to come. That's why it's so important that we make sure that the APS thinks about the future in a long-term way—that it has stewardship at its core—and also that its capacity is strengthened so it is able to deal with the very complex challenges that our society faces.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my honour and pleasure to follow the member for Fraser and his thoughtful contribution on this bill, which will directly affect the Australian Public Service. As a former member of the Public Service, his knowledge of the intricacies of the service that it does was worth listening to in this place this evening. I want to say a couple of things up-front about the Australian Public Service. Where the APS is public facing is where trust in governments is built or is undone. I think of the number of people in my community who want to talk to me about bringing back the Commonwealth Employment Service. When I listen to them talk about this, I always hear a time where they really trusted the Public Service. They trusted them, they were prepared to put their lives in their hands, they looked to them for support and for guidance. We hear it all the time in our electorates: 'Bring back the CES'. There's a real sense in the Australian public that the Public Service is what we need more of, not less of.

I think about that often, that in Australia there is a long-term sentiment around the Public Service. As I say to the staff in my electorate office, where the public comes into contact with the Public Service, and they are often the public-facing public servants, they are often seeing Australians on their worst days. If you think about Services Australia, someone's walking through the door coming from a traumatic place—a loss of employment, a loss of life, coming to report a death, coming to change an application process because a dependent has left home. There is a myriad of reasons why the public are interacting with the Public Service, and I think about the quality of our Public Service and how good we need that Public Service to be because they could be dealing with Australians having the toughest day of their lives.

I think about the feedback I've had in the past nine years about those interactions, and it doesn't fill me with inspiration. It doesn't fill me with inspiration because, in my community, there is a reflection in a loss of faith in the Public Service. Australians have felt put upon; they have felt they have not been dealt with fairly. And this is not a surprise if we think about the robodebt scandal over the last few years, if we think about the number of people we've seen in our offices across the last nine years who felt that they didn't get a fair hearing at Services Australia. Those two things are a clear contrast, but also give us some real insight.

As a government, we were always set to look at the APS and to look at that loss of faith in the Australian Public Service by our constituents, by the members of our communities. We were bound to address it—aside from the Thodey report, which compels us to address it. In reflecting on the member for Fraser's contribution, I am also reminded harshly of the member for Riverina's contribution earlier this evening. Let me say, through you, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Goodenough, budgets reflect priorities; speaking lists reflect commitment. Putting it bluntly, it is true that the opposition has left the field on this bill. We have government member after government member engaging in this place with legislation that we feel strongly about. And we feel strongly about it because it goes to the core of our democracy. A loss of faith in public institutions is a threat to our democracy. Chaos does not bring us prosperity, and a lack of faith in the public does not build our country. It tears it down.

My community cares about the Australian Public Service because they rely on the Australian Public Service. When I think about those words, 'the Public Service', which is how I've always referenced it, I also think about that other commonly used word, 'bureaucracy'. The word 'bureaucracy' is often used in a derogatory way. When I think about the conversations I have in my electorate, when people are unhappy with the Public Service, they call it the 'bureaucracy'. They're 'having trouble dealing with the bureaucracy' or they're 'finding it difficult and confronting and dealing with the bureaucracy is impacting on their mental health'.

This bill goes some way to making a pivot in this space, turning this ship around. It does so thoughtfully. It does so as part of this government's reform agenda. It does so in response to the Thodey review from 2019, which concluded that the APS lacked a unified purpose. It said it was 'too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas'. And I'm thinking about the member for Fraser's contribution and that blue-sky thinking that we ask the APS to do. We ask them to do public-facing work with people on their worst days. We ask them to do the blue-sky thinking that's going to take this country forward. And we ask them to do the difficult work of looking at policy ideas, tracking them out, trying to predict the shortcomings, trying to predict and fix things before they're actually attempted to be implemented. It is an absolutely critical service to this parliament, an absolutely critical service for all of us as members of here representing our communities.

The bill delivers on several important recommendations of the Thodey review. It takes a look at the existing APS values to be impartial, to be committed to service, to be accountable, to be respectful and to be ethical. To model these values and embody integrity, the APS needs to be honest, truly independent and empowered to provide the frank and fearless advice that we've been hearing about all day and to defend legality and due process.

To engage in this legislation is to cast our minds back and to think about what we've seen across the last decade. I can't help but go back to the robodebt scandal and how different many lives in my community would have been if the APS had felt empowered to provide frank and fearless advice, if they had felt empowered to defend legality and due process. That's how the public feel about that process. They feel that they weren't given due process by the Australian Public Service. Not to put too fine a point on it, the APS needs to be delivering services with empathy and in a spirit of partnership with the Australian public and with this parliament.

Reform of an organisation the size of the Australian Public Service is going to take time and is also going to take sustained effort. Our agenda in this space and reflected in this legislation has four priorities—that the APS embodies integrity in everything it does, that it puts people and business at the centre of policy and services, that it's a model employer and that it has the capability to do its various jobs well. The heart of this bill supports these priorities. What's driving us in the introduction of this bill is restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions. There is no more important thing that we are putting before this House.

The reforms in this bill will strengthen the APS's core purpose and values, build capability and expertise, and support good governance, accountability and transparency. To strengthen the APS's core values and purpose, it's going to develop a purpose statement. It's going to introduce stewardship as a new value, but, more importantly, it's going to establish a purpose statement. This is something that I have done in the schools that I worked in before coming to parliament—pulling a community together and asking those questions: What is our core purpose? Why are we here? How do we wrap ourselves around this core purpose? How do we get that core purpose? For us, in education, of course, that core purpose is to support every student to reach their potential. The APS will go through this process, and it is an affirming process. I've done this with more than one body of staff in schools. It's an affirming process to think about the core purpose, to make a fresh statement that everybody in the organisation agrees to about what that purpose is, and then to have that as the lens through which you see the work that you do every day. As one of the regional directors in state education would remind us every day, if our core purpose is to improve student outcomes, what have you done today to improve student outcomes? I wish the Public Service well on their venture into creating a shared sense of purpose, with tens of thousands of APS employees reinforcing a one Australian Public Service approach—one that has at its core a partnership with parliament and a partnership with the public.

One of the other things this bill introduces is limitations on ministerial directions to agency heads. This speaks to allowing the Public Service to be impartial, to being apolitical and to having a merit based approach to employment matters, devoid of political interest. It will strengthen the relevant provision in the Public Service Act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions, something that appears in this chamber to be a small thing but which is a huge thing because it goes to that notion of true independence. It will reaffirm the apolitical role of the Australian Public Service and provide confidence to agency heads to act with integrity in the exercise of their duties and powers.

The bill will also go to building capability, expertise and thought leadership. Talented and committed people are the foundation of the Public Service, and to be future fit they need to continually build the capability of staff into a skilled and competent workforce to rebuild it as a robust and trusted institution. The bill will ensure that the Australian Public Service maintains a culture of continuous improvement, something that anyone who has worked in a forward-thinking organisation in the last 20 years has some understanding of. The Member for Fraser and the Thodey report say that, if the Public Service isn't broken, as is asserted, we would still be asking for it to adopt a culture of continuous improvement, because why wouldn't we aspire to continuous improvement?

I want to finish with some thoughts of my own: that I'm not surprised about the speaking list. If the member for Riverina is listening, he might find me later to have a conversation about it. I'm not surprised that there's a speaking list of that length on this side, because this side is committed. If we add reduction of staff in the APS, the development of a lack of agency in the Public Service and a lack of trust to the list of the mess that we were left and that we have turned our mind to and tonight taken action on—work left undone by those opposite—it is not a surprise that many on this side are lining up to speak on this important piece of legislation.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Public Service is really the engine of government in Australia. Most Australians would interact with the Public Service on a daily basis. Going to the doctor, visiting a hospital, our kids going to school every day, any interaction that you have with the departments of taxation or immigration, getting a passport—all of these are vitally important services that Australians rely on every day for a good quality of life and to get by. With that in mind, when a new government comes to office, it's appropriate that we have a look at whether or not the Public Service, those that are interacting with Australians on a daily basis, are meeting the goals and aspirations that the Australian people expect of a public service. I think it's reasonable for the government to ask regularly: what do the Australian public think of our Public Service, and what do they expect in terms of the services that are delivered by public servants in their interests? That's really what the Thodey report and the inquiry that was conducted were all about.

In my view, there are a number of traits that the Australian people expect of a good public service. Firstly they want the public service to be impartial, to advise and act in the interests of Australians, not one particular political party or another, and for public servants to provide fearless and frank advice to governments and members of parliament about what they believe is in the best interests of the Australian people. They want a public service that is accountable, that is transparent, where Australians understand and can see how decisions are made regarding policies that affect them. They want a public service that is efficient and effective. At the end of the day, the Public Service is driven by taxpayers' dollars being expended, and the Australian people rightly expect that those services are being delivered in an effective and efficient matter, getting value for taxpayers. And, of course, they want the Public Service to be respectful and ethical, to operate to ensure that the views of all Australians are catered for and it's done in a respectful and ethical way. As society evolves, so should the Public Service. The services that Australians now rely on on a daily basis today are very much different to those relied on by the Australians of 20 years ago. We all now get public services through our phones. The myGov app is a classic case of the Public Service evolving in the service that it delivers to the Australian people.

The independent review that was conducted by David Thodey produced a number of findings, and those findings concluded that the APS, the Australian Public Service, lacked a unified purpose, was too internally focused and had lost capability in important areas. The review called for a public service that is trusted, future fit, responsive and agile, to meet the changing needs of government and the community with professionalism and integrity. This bill delivers on several of the important recommendations that were made through the Thodey review. It recognises that the case for reform has only strengthened in recent years.

What does this bill do? This bill implements a number of those recommendations. Firstly, it adds a new APS value of stewardship. What does that mean? It means ensuring that the APS is capable and is responsive to the needs of the Australian people. We all know that organisations—be they community sporting bodies, corporations, companies, small businesses—have a set of values that the organisation or the individuals in that organisation operate by. Governments have values that we operate by. So too should the Australian Public Service. One of those values is stewardship on behalf of the Australian people.

Another element of this bill is requiring an APS purpose statement, ensuring that there is a common foundation and there is an alignment of the services that are delivered through the Australian Public Service across the full gamut of different departments that operate on behalf of government. This bill also makes it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. That goes back to the principle that I stated earlier that the Australian people expect from their Public Service—that it is impartial, that appointments to the Public Service and promotions through the Public Service are based on merit, not on political interference. That is a fundamental tenet of a good public service in any political system.

This bill will encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level. That is all about ensuring that APS staff are properly trained and have the confidence to make decisions on a daily basis to ensure that we get more efficient and effective outcomes for the Australian people. There'd be nothing worse than someone going into a Services Australia office seeking the rectification of a problem with the delivery of their pension, disability support payments or rent assistance, or applying for a passport or settling visa—issues such as that—and knowing that the decision-maker that they are meeting with can't make a decision, because they haven't been adequately trained and don't have the confidence to make that decision. We want to make sure that decisions are made at the lowest appropriate level.

Regular capability reviews will be a requirement under the new legislation. There will be a five-year requirement for each department to review the capability of the people working in that department and whether or not it's meeting its stated aims. The Australian Public Service employee census results will be required to be published along with an action plan responding to those results, and that goes to the issue of transparency and accountability in the services that the Australian Public Service is providing.

Establishing at least one long-term insight briefing every year will ensure that the Public Service has a longer-term vision for service delivery on behalf of the Australian people. We all know that innovation has disrupted society in every way, and it also has affected the way that public services are delivered. I mentioned myGov as a new innovation that allows greater and more efficient access to information for Australians. Nearly all Australians have a tax file number or some form of account with a Public Service agency that can ensure that they get that access when they need it. And that's a service that has had to evolve to cater for the changes in innovation. Public Service departments can't rest on their laurels. They can't say: 'Okay, now we've got an app and everything is hunky-dory. We don't need to do anything in the future.' You need to anticipate where the next evolution in online services is going to come from.

I've mentioned transparency, which is very important in terms of the delivery of public services and, importantly, in the advice that's given to government. We saw during the period of the previous government that decisions were made by government where funds were allocated through particular grant programs and the advice of the Public Service was rejected and replaced with political decisions. One of those—probably the worst case of this—was the sports rorts saga, where we had a public fund to which Australians and organisations could apply for the allocation of public money, but it was basically manipulated by the former government to serve political purposes rather than outcomes that were in the best interests of the Australian people. The Australian Sports Commission, based on the guidelines of the fund, made recommendations to government, but those recommendations were ignored. It was only uncovered through the senate estimates process. The Australian people have the right to expect that when decisions like that are made, there are reasons given for why the public servants' advice is not taken. That is a reform that has been adopted by the Albanese Labor government to provide more transparency and accountability to the Australian people in the making of those decisions.

The government is also very keen to rebuild the Australian Public Service. In the area that I work in, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, we've seen what it means when a government cuts the number of staff that are working to deliver that important service to the Australian people. We're talking about one of the most important cohorts of Australians: veterans. The previous government had an arbitrary staffing cap on the Department of Veterans' Affairs. When the demand for services for the processing of rehabilitation claims through the Department of Veterans' Affairs increased, because the service went online, the government didn't provide the staff to deal with that increase in demand. They had a cap. As a result, the backlog built up and we saw the mental health consequences for veterans. It was unfair and it was wrong. The new government has acted to remove that Public Service cap to invest in the Public Service, to ensure we have enough people to process those important applications for veterans. That is what this bill is all about.

Debate interrupted.