Libby Coker (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Public Service is one of the great institutions of our national life. It's values are basic to our national wellbeing. Our government recognises this, and we understand that the quality of our system of governance depends heavily on the integrity, professionalism and dedication of our public service. That's why I rise today to support the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, which aims to make crucial amendments to the Public Service Act 1999 and forms a vital component of the Albanese government's ABS reform agenda.

Much of our government's agenda in this space is driven by the recent Independent Review Of The Australian Public Service. Spearheaded by David Thodey, the review highlighted significant issues with the APS. The review revealed a lack of unified purpose, excessive internal focus and a decline in important areas of capability. To address these concerns, the review called for a trusted, future-ready, responsive and agile APS that will cater to the evolving needs of government and the community with professionalism and integrity.

We know that every single day countless Australians find our lives changed for the better thanks to our Australian Public Service. From the cafe owner who turns to Services Australia after their business has been swept away by devastating floods to a student immersed in a research project chasing up a book from the National Library, the APS steps in to support them. Consider a new parent, eager to ensure their parental leave payment is secure through myGov. They rely on the APS to provide advice and assistance. Think of a teenager, brimming with excitement about their first new job, who needs a tax file number. The APS guides them through the process, making it easier to kickstart their career. And what about retirees? The APS ensures they receive their Medicare rebate when they visit the doctor, offering them peace of mind in their golden years. Regardless of who you are or where you come from, the APS strives to make your dealings with government simple, straightforward and meaningful.

But, as the Thodey review made very clear, we need to restore our Public Service after a decade of jobs losses, funding cuts and privatisation of the sector. That is why this bill encompasses seven key recommendations of the Thodey review. These recommendations are addressed in four key priorities. Firstly, we seek an APS that exemplifies integrity in all its endeavours. Secondly, we aim to create a APS that prioritises people and businesses in policy and service delivery. Thirdly, we strive to establish an APS that serves as a model employer. Fourthly, we endeavour to build the capability required for the APS to perform its duties effectively.

This bill aligns with each of these priorities and serves as an important step towards restoring the public's trust and confidence in the government and its institutions. Importantly, the reforms proposed in this bill will reinforce the core purpose and values of the APS, enhancing its capacity and expertise, promoting good governance, accountability and transparency.

To ensure a cohesive and unified APS, the Thodey review emphasised the need to strengthen the APS's purpose and values, fostering a shared understanding of its role. The amendments in this bill fulfil this intent and support the government's priority of creating an APS that operates with integrity in all its actions. One significant addition is the inclusion of the APS value of stewardship. The APS values reflect the culture and ethos of the APS and outline the expectations for the relationships between public servants, the government, the parliament and the Australian community. The new value of stewardship, developed through extensive consultation with over 1,500 APS staff members across the country, represents a commitment to building capability, institutional knowledge and supporting the public interest in the long term. By mandating that all APS employees uphold stewardship, this bill strengthens the important role played by public servants as stewards who learn from the past, look to the future and preserve public trust while promoting the common good.

In combination with the inclusion of stewardship, this bill requires the Secretaries Board to oversee the development of a unified purpose statement for the APS. This purpose statement will provide a shared foundation for collaborative leadership, aligned services and coordinated delivery across the various departments and agencies of the APS. It will foster a sense of purpose in tens of thousands of APS employees, promoting a unified approach. This purpose statement will be subject to regular consultation and refreshment every five years to account for the evolving role of the APS.

Preserving the impartiality of the APS is vital to its effective functioning and to the maintenance of public trust. We know that political interference in APS employment matters would undermine this impartiality. To safeguard an apolitical approach to APS employment, this bill reinforces the provision in the Public Service Act that prohibits ministers from directly speaking with agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This reaffirms the apolitical role of the APS and empowers agency heads to execute their duties and powers with integrity.

Building the capability and expertise of the APS is crucial for its long-term effectiveness. The APS relies on talented and committed individuals as its foundation. To ensure its future readiness, the APS must continually enhance the capabilities of its staff, fostering a skilled and confident workforce that can deliver modern policy and service solutions for years to come. Collaboration with the Australian public is essential for problem-solving and co-designing effective solutions. The bill addresses the erosion of the APS capability by mandating continuous self-assessment, engagement with the public and remedial action. These reforms uphold the APS reform priorities of capability and a people-centred approach to policy and service.

The bill also introduces regular, independent and transparent capability reviews as a mandatory requirement every five years by each department of state, Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office. These reviews will evaluate strengths and areas for development, based on the agency's operating environment. Capability review reports and the subsequent action plans will be made publicly available, ensuring a culture of transparent and continuous improvement within the APS.

Recognising the need for long-term policy foresight, the bill obligates the Secretaries Board to commission regular evidence-based long-term insight reports through public consultation.

These reports will explore medium- and long-term trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia. By engaging with academia, experts and the broader Australian community, the APS can foster trust in its expertise and understanding of critical issues that impact Australians. Good governance, accountability and transparency are fundamental to the APS' functioning. Transparency sheds light on the APS culture and composition, prompting necessary changes to maintain an inclusive and supportive work environment for individuals from all works of life. Effective governance ensures the APS employees are empowered and supported in their roles, with opportunities for skills application and development. This bill addresses these objectives by requiring agencies to publish their aggregate APS employee census results along with action plans to respond to their findings. This fosters a culture of transparency and accountability, allowing agencies to listen and respond to the thoughts, concerns and ideas of employees.

To cultivate a culture of trust and support, the bill includes provisions to enable decision-making to occur at the lowest appropriate classification level. This measure seeks to reduce unnecessary hierarchy, empowering APS employees to make decisions, while ensuring that they are not escalated to a higher level unnecessarily. The aim is to improve decision-making processes, reduce bureaucratic bottlenecks, empower staff and foster professional development.

In closing, the challenges that Australia faces in the coming decade are immense. The APS will continue to play an integral role in meeting the evolving needs of the government and the community while upholding professionalism and integrity. The Thodey review provided a blueprint for ongoing transformation within the public sector, adapting to changing needs and circumstances. The Albanese government has responded with its ambitious APS reform agenda, and this bill represents a significant step towards enshrining important reforms. Through these measures, we can enhance and reinforce the public's trust and faith in government and in one of its most critical institutions, the Australian Public Service.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a longstanding minister in the Queensland government, I could point out to you 100,000 things we were doing wrong. When the government fell in 1990, I came in for an extremely rude shock because I saw what governments were like in Australia. Governments in the rest of Australia comprise what we now call 'wokes'—I call them 'double-degree done nothing in their lives'—and that group of people took over Queensland. I just want to speak from a point of view of my cousin brothers, my first Australian cousin brothers. I come from a town where we call ourselves 'Murri from the Curry' and we have great loyalty to each other. I identify very strongly with the Kalkadoon tribes that held European settlement at bay for 40 years—not a bad effort. I won't compare us to other people, but not a bad effort.

I went to a funeral on the weekend of one of the three great first Australian leaders. When I went to Yarrabah, the biggest community in Australia, of the public servants, there were 28 positions and 26 were held by whitefellas in a totally blackfella community of 4,000 people. As a result of this very great man, only three of them had the courage to stand up: Tommy Dyer, who died two weeks ago; Alfred Neal, who I am referring to here, who died last week; and the great George Mye in the Torres Strait. The rest of them were scared of the whitefellas and they were subservient to the whitefella public servants. They were very much a race under the control, direction and orders given by the whitefellas.

For those that want to argue that it's not as good now as then because we're getting pushed backwards again, when I came to this place, of the 28 public service positions that ran this community, 26 were whitefellas and two were blackfellas. Now it's the other way around, so don't tell me we haven't made progress. The Rosendale family are very famous. I think everyone in this place is heard of Noel Pearson. He's a Rosendale. The first First Australian, Aboriginal Australian, if you want to use that expression, to be elected to a parliament was a Rosendale from Hopevale. The deputy head of the department that I had was Lester Rosendale.

This is Greg Wallace, who was on 60 Minutes twice because he instituted Work for the Dole in Australia. We approached him to have run for us in the Senate, and I said, 'Look, we've got little chance of winning, but it will give you a platform.' This is what he said when he had the Australian press there at his press conference—we're talking about the Public Service here—'When I was CEO at Napranum, all the CEOs in Cape York were blackfellas. Now they're are all whitefellas. We had 36,000 head of cattle with blackfellas in the Cape York. Now we've got none. When I was CEO at Napranum, we could walk into the council chambers, fill out a form and get an inalienable freehold title.' I personally would walk in and I could get a two-acre allotment or a 10,000 acre allotment so long as no-one objected, and then there was a process. But I think there were a thousand leases that went out, and I get very embarrassed because they call them 'Katter leases'. I'm embarrassed because I had nothing to do with that. Not at any stage did I have anything to do with it.

This brings me back to the concept that we are going to have a Voice, and what are we talking about here? Obviously we're talking about a governmental type department based, presumably, in Canberra. If it's going to be a Voice in Canberra, presumably it will be based in Canberra. When I went out and asked people what they wanted, they wanted self-management. They didn't want anyone telling them what to do in Yarrabah. They wanted to have their own government there. The committee comprised people that had played rugby league, had mustered cattle or had cut cane, so I knew they'd all consider a blackfella the same as whitefella. They'd have no racial difference in their heads. They voted unanimously to give the people self-management. The duly elected community council in Yarrabah had the powers, really, to pass any laws they wanted to pass, because there were no regulatory provisions in the act. It just said, 'You've got a responsibility to deliver four services: roads and pathways; water; sewerage; and rubbish. That's it. You've got those responsibilities. What you do after that is up to you. If you want to pass a law saying people walk backwards in Yarrabah, go right ahead. That's what self-management is about.' We're not talking about a faraway group of people who, I just think, will be what we have here. I'm sorry to tell you. What we have here are a bunch of wokes—double-degree, done nothing in their lives.

If I go through the Queensland cabinet, Bjelke-Petersen was the biggest contractor. He was as big as Theiss before he went into parliament. He built the third peanut thresher in Queensland. He created the town of Hopevale. Pastor George Rosendale and the Bjelke-Petersen were missionaries in the Lutheran Church, and, of course, they'd all been rounded up and put in jail during the war, so when they got out, they wanted a home. So they went to Hopevale, which was created by him. So I thought, 'This bloke. Wait on. He's as big a contractor as Theiss. He's a pioneer in peanut processing in Australia. He pioneered the clearing of timber to make way for food production and profitability. He pioneered a dozen areas and, when he was on the council there, he performed.'

Bill Gunn started with nothing and ended up with three small holdings and two butcher shops. He was a very successful man. His daughter was married to one of the Bowies up in the Torres Strait. If ever there was a good fighter for the Torres Strait it was my deputy premier, Bill Gunn.

I could go through the whole cabinet, but 13 of them had cut cane by hand as young men—13 of the 30! How many people in here have ever done a day's work with their hands? How many of you have ever done that? It was a different group of people altogether. Those people gave to Queensland, and probably the towering figure, outside of Bjelke-Peterson—maybe as good as Bjelke-Peterson—was Sir Leo Hielscher, the head of the Public Service. We come in here talking about public servants, but this was a man who, along with the Premier, created the coal industry of Australia. This country only has two sources of income now: coal and iron ore. They're worth $120 billion. The next thing down is probably aluminium, cattle or gold, at about $15 billion. Our country has staggered to a point where we are so lacking in 'Australianism', in patriotism, in self-reliance and self-belief, that we can't even see which way we should be travelling. To give all of your gas away for 6c a unit and then buy it back for $49 a unit—a $120 billion-a-year industry and you gave it away! You people in this place gave it away—you people, the Queensland parliament and the New South Wales parliament. I tell you what: you wouldn't have got it from the chief public servant of Queensland, Leo Hielscher. They went to him because they wanted to export bauxite, and Leo was said to kill himself laughing at the concept that they would mine bauxite. He informed them: 'We don't export or mine bauxite; we produce aluminium. And if you're not going to process it here in Queensland, well, you won't dig it out of the ground in Queensland.'

This was the Public Service—an honourable group of people led by a very great leader, Sir Leo Hielscher. They created the tourism industry, and I'm not going to go into the detail of how they did it. They created the coal industry. They doubled and trebled the size of the cattle industry. They doubled the size of the cane industry. If you love your environment and trees and all of that sort of thing, well, we did some truly wonderful things there. One of them was that we created the prawn and fish farming industry of Australia. Joe Baker, at the Australian Institute of Marine Science—some would describe him as a raving greenie, but he was a very close friend of mine and a very great rugby league player. Joe wanted us to cut back on fishing in the sea, so he instituted the prawn and fish farming industry. Yes, alright, there may have been benefits to the ocean—I disagreed with him on that, but maybe there were. In any event, we instituted the industry. There wasn't a single farm in Australia and now there's $2,000 million a year coming in from prawn and fish farming. The point I'm making is that it wasn't just the members of parliament; the Public Service reflected the same attitudes and values as the members of parliament.

I'll return to the First Australians, as I start to conclude. Greg Wallace said: 'When I was CEO at Napranum, all of the CEOs were blackfellas. Now, under the Labor Party'—he didn't say that, but of course that's what he meant; he's running for us in parliament!—'the CEOs are whitefellas again. We're back where we started from.' Every single community had a market garden so we could combat malnutrition. The much-maligned Christians—a lot of people in this place hate the word 'Christianity': 'Oh, terrible! Love your neighbour and do good to other people—isn't it shocking!' A profound idea, that one! It's unfortunately true—and as a published historian I can say this, and as a person who lived out in the bush with my partner, whose mother was one of the few piccaninny survivors from the battle on Battle Camp Range. Some may call it a massacre. I know what I'm talking about here.

The First Australians would have been all but annihilated if it hadn't been for Christian missionaries coming in—

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

The member for Kennedy might refer to the bill at hand.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and saying: 'No, you're not going to do this. We're setting up protected areas and you're not going to set foot inside them.'

Tracey Roberts (Pearce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Public Service is one of Australia's biggest employers. It has careers to suit just about anyone at all stages of life, from school leavers and graduates looking to start in the workforce through to senior executives and professionals who shape the future of Australia. The APS is governed by a legislative framework that includes the Public Service Act 1999, the APS Values and the APS Code of Conduct. This framework and its policies set the standards and obligations for conduct, performance and behaviour of APS employees and agencies and the APS as a whole. It helps them identify and manage risks, make ethical decisions, and work with integrity, which in turn helps to maintain public trust in APS agencies and its employees.

The Albanese Labor government is taking the next steps in rebuilding the Australian Public Service by introducing a bill to amend the Public Service Act 1999. This bill and the Albanese Labor government's broader APS reform agenda are about restoring the public's trust and faith in government and its institutions. The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 will strengthen the APS core purpose and values, build the capacity and expertise of the APS, and support good governance, accountability and transparency. The bill will: add a new APS value of stewardship; require an APS purpose statement; make it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters; encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level; make regular capability reviews a requirement; require annual APS employee census results to be published along with an action plan responding to the results; and establish at least one long-term insight briefing each year. Many of the proposed changes align with recommendations from the 2019 Thodey review. Since the Thodey review was released, Australia has faced a COVID-19 pandemic and geopolitical and economic disruption, and we have gained new insight on integrity issues affecting the Public Service. The bill advances the Albanese Labor government's APS reform agenda, which is designed to address the challenges facing the APS now and into the future. It will amend the Public Service Act 1999 to deliver enduring transformational change and ensure the APS is well placed to serve the Australian government, the parliament and the Australian public into the future.

To strengthen the APS core purpose and values, the bill will add a new APS value of stewardship that all APS employees must uphold. Stewardship will be defined as the APS builds its capability and institutional knowledge, and will support the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. The bill will require the Secretaries Board to oversee the development of a single, unifying APS purpose statement, and review it once every five years. All agency heads will be required to uphold and promote the new APS purpose statement in addition to the APS Values and APS Employment Principles. The bill will clarify and strengthen provisions in the act to make it clear that ministers cannot direct the agency heads on individual APS staffing decisions. This will reaffirm the APS's apolitical nature.

To build the capability and expertise of the APS, the bill will make regular, independent and transparent capability reviews a five-yearly requirement. Capability reviews will assess organisational strengths and areas for development, with reports and action plans responding to findings required to be publicly released. It will 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 the APS can build trust in its expertise and an understanding of cross-cutting issues that matter to all Australians.

To support good governance, accountability and transparency, the bill will require publication of agencies' APS employee census results and an action plan that responds to results. This will foster a culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement within agencies. It will require agency heads to implement measures to enable decisions to be made by employees at the lowest appropriate classification for these decisions. This will ensure decision-making is not raised to a higher level than is necessary, reducing unnecessary hierarchy and empowering APS employees.

Many of the proposed amendments were recommendations of the 2019 independent review of the Australian Public Service, the Thodey review, or go to its intent. Specifically, it speaks to recommendation 5, which, as the explanatory memorandum says:

… called for the core principles and APS Values to be strengthened, by reaffirming the important and enduring role that all APS employees play in serving successive Governments, the Parliament and the Australian public.

Recommendation 6 was to:

… develop and embed an inspiring purpose and vision to unite the APS in serving the nation.

Recommendation 32:

… called for the APS to adopt best-practice ways of working and improving decision-making, by ensuring Agency Heads empower APS employees to make decisions appropriate to their classification.

Recommendation 2a:

… called for regular, future-focused capability reviews to build organisational capacity and accountability, by establishing the power for the Commissioner to cause a capability review …

The review also called for the need to:

… strike a better balance between short-term responsiveness and investing in the deep expertise required to grapple with long-term, strategic policy challenges.

Recommendation 2b, 'fostering a culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement within agencies', is being addressed through the publication of the APS employee census results.

Other amendments have drawn on observations about public administration from governments at the state level or from overseas. The government will continue to consider and progress the recommendations of the Thodey review as part of its ongoing APS reform agenda.

We all have something to contribute to ensure enduring reform. In particular, I would like to highlight the Western Australian government's Future enabled: a strategic narrative of professionalism, purpose and pride in the Western Australian public sector. This narrative recognises the need for the public sector to not only be consistent and reliable but also be innovative, transformative and adaptable to meet new and rising challenges. Likewise, the WA government's Agency Capability Review program drives excellence and continuous improvement in the public sector. These reviews provide the agency with a clear understanding of its current capabilities including both strengths and areas for improvement.

What I would like to leave you all with is this: reforming such a large and complex organisation takes time and sustained effort, and we all have a very important role to play. This bill seeks to support the many public servants who work incredibly hard to provide the best service that they possibly can—in particular, the many who worked through the COVID pandemic and back-to-back natural disasters, who, as a result, have seen grief, distress, anxiety and upset. They have borne witness to people struggling with these challenges, who often think their challenges are insurmountable and who feel helpless.

We acknowledge the dedication and the commitment of all those who work in the Australian Public Service. They deserve an agile and responsive system, one that will enable them to support others. They deserve a strong, robust framework of support as they continue to work in our cities, in our towns and in our regions right around Australia. It is on this basis that I commend the bill to the House.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the proposed Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. This bill offers small steps to improve the Australian Public Service at a time when we have a crisis of confidence in its governance.

The Australian Public Service includes all entities employing staff under the Public Service Act 1999—currently about 160,000 individuals. They administer the services which collect our tax, monitor our borders, procure and distribute our medications, administer our health systems, care for our elderly, monitor our schools and our universities and look after the disabled and the unemployed. We need them. We should respect them. We need to be able to trust them.

A number of recent studies have found that APS capability is no longer fit for purpose, that it needs renewal of its fundamental structure, hierarchies and practices. To that end, a report was commissioned in 2018 by the Turnbull government to consider reform of the Australian Public Service. When presented in 2019 by David Thodey, that report noted a weakened Public Service resulting in weakened service delivery for Australians, and it called for service-wide transformation. It said:

To achieve this aspiration, the APS will need to undergo a significant transformation, guided by the recommendations in this review — uniting through a clear purpose, building its professionalism and expertise, embracing data and digital, looking out and working with partners to solve problems, getting rid of the excessive silos and hierarchy, and strengthening service-wide leadership and governance.

The report made 40 key recommendations, which it suggested would trigger and sustain far-reaching change when implemented. It identified strong support for change, but it also forecast the need for a deep commitment from the APS and from its leaders, with strong endorsement from the government, for that reform to succeed. Further, the report suggested that very significant financial investment was needed: $100 million to kickstart the transformation and then $1 billion a year to supply better service outcomes through digital transformation and other public capital.

During the 2022 election campaign, the Australian Labor Party did commit to improving the APS. That commitment has led to this bill. The reform agenda is informed by the 40 recommendations of the Thodey report, but this proposed legislation directly addresses only six of those 40 recommendations. The government budgeted in October 2022 only $72 million over three years to strengthen the capability of the APS and then a further $18.5 million over two years in May 2023.

The Thodey report called for service-wide transformational change, but this is not delivered by this bill. With this bill, the government is outlining plans and budget support for only very modest improvements to the capability of the Australian Public Service. Four key reforms of the Thodey report are missing from the bill: measures to strengthen the power of the APS Commissioner, legislation clarifying the distinct rules of the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as opposed to the APS Commissioner, measures to strengthen the merit based process for secretary appointments and constrain the capacity of the Prime Minister to terminate employments, and a measure requiring consultation of the Leader of the Opposition before appointment of the APS Commissioner.

The employees and officers of the Australian Public Service are obliged to serve the government of the day with integrity. They have to provide frank and fearless advice on matters of public policy, from national security to fiscal policy to social security, across all of the machinery-of-government arrangements. They are a vital part of our government, and yet, in a recent study, we found that only three out of 10 people trust their government's systems.

In essence, the Thodey report identified two principal concerns with the Australian Public Service: firstly, the increasing trend of outsourcing core Public Service work to contractors; and, secondly, the increasing politicisation of the Australian Public Service. Last year, one in four people employed by the Australian government was an external contractor. The Morrison government spent an appalling $20.8 billion on external contractors last year. Rather than incremental change as we have with this bill, we need transformational change to our Public Service. Recent research confirmed 'citizen satisfaction with service delivery experienced is directly related to the level of trust and advocacy in government.'

Paradoxically and quixotically, that report was undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Most people in this House and in this country know of the recent allegations regarding PwC's breaching of confidentiality agreements around government plans for multinational tax laws. Four of every five Australians now want PwC banned from further government contracts. This bill will do nothing towards that end.

Last week we heard from the Australian National Audit Office of the subversion of the Morrison government's Community Health and Hospitals Program. It reported that the public servants of the Department of Health acted unethically and unlawfully in that they consciously and deliberately decided not to develop opportunity guidelines for government grants. Further, despite the absence of legislation that could reasonably be relied on to authorise expenditure on some grant proposals, the Public Service intended to, and did, execute grants despite the absence of a legislative authority to do so. This bill will do nothing to address the Public Service deficiencies identified in that report.

Finally, and most egregiously, we've recently heard of the failures of robodebt, an unlawful method of automated debt assessment and recovery employed by Services Australia as part of its Centrelink payment compliance program. Robodebt was a case study in bad government and Public Service failure. We have to learn from the lessons of robodebt, but this bill will do nothing to facilitate that. It's premature that we're seeing this limited and uninspired legislation before we see the report of the robodebt royal commission. I support my colleague the member for Curtin in her suggestion that we should delay this legislation until we have that report.

The Grattan Institute reported last year that one in five federal board positions are handed to politically connected individuals. That includes 22 per cent of the 320 members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. For many years we have seen successive governments hand out powerful, well-paid positions to friends, supporters and party loyalists—indeed, to the victors have gone the spoils. At a state level this reached new heights when John Barilaro invented his own cushy job—a new nadir, or peak, depending on how you see it, of creative corruption. I wholeheartedly support my colleague the member for Mackellar on her separate private member's bill regarding the importance of independent, nonpartisan scrutiny of senior Public Service appointments. Again, this bill does nothing to address that issue.

In 2019, Prime Minister Morrison told this country that ministers determined policy for public servants to deliver. He discounted, he did not value, the frank and fearless advice and the competence and integrity which a well-staffed, well-funded and independent public service can and should provide. We shouldn't be debating this legislation today; we should be debating a much bigger and much more imaginative piece of legislation with the ability to guarantee for us real change and real independence for our Public Service so that we can rebuild trust in our systems and in our government. It's a great shame that this bill will not do that.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

ANN () (): I'm pleased to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. It's quite sad that we have to do this, but the previous government under prime ministers Morrison, Turnbull and Abbott simply degraded the Public Service. We saw the arbitrary staffing cap imposed in 2015, and labour hiring and privatising and outsourcing in the Public Service. The Australian Taxation Office, Services Australia, the Department of Veterans' Affairs, Defence—tens of thousands of people being engaged, with billions in contracts being engaged by the former government in labour hiring. Many of the people assessing claims for Veterans' Affairs under VEA or DRCA, and many people dealing with Centrelink claims, Medicare rebates or indeed applications for visas, were not experienced public servants; they were outsourced through multinational labour hire companies. And this continued to grow and grow and grow.

The previous government ignored David Thodey's review back in 2019, so we are left with the situation where the recommendations of the Thodey review are being implemented by this government. A change of government was necessary. We saw its various stages. The Department of Veterans' Affairs was in a position where 50 per cent of the people that were dealing with claims were labour hire. The evidence that was given to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide of the impact on people's lives is troubling—it's really disturbing. If you get the Public Service wrong and you treat public servants poorly, if you don't listen to impartial, honest, fearless and frank advice, if you degrade the Public Service, if you labour hire and outsource it, there are consequences for people's lives, and the royal commission that's currently looking into veterans and defence issues, mental health, suicidal ideation and the tragic suicides of defence personnel and those who have served our country in uniform is clear evidence that government decision-making and the votes that we cast in this place and in the other chamber have an impact on people's lives.

This bill, in and of itself, may look a bit sterile. It may look like it's not something that's very interesting. It's not a page turner, if I can put it like that, having read the bill and the explanatory memorandum and everything I can about it. But it has a real difference to make for people—the people engaged with government, the people who go to that portal each and every day, the people whom we deal with in our electorate offices who have challenges working with government, the people who had delays in citizenship applications that we're now addressing, the million people seeking the visas that failed to be processed under those opposite. The legislation before the chamber today has a real impact on people's lives, and that's why I'm pleased to speak about it. It's part of the necessary agenda of this government. It will make a difference. It is about rebuilding the Public Service.

The CPSU and the Services Union have been talking about this for years. I give them thanks and I praise them for their advocacy and the work they've done in this space. This particular legislation is a bill to amend the Public Service Act 1989. Millions of Australians interact with the Australian Public Service each and every day. They think that on many occasions they're dealing with a public servant, but they're not; they're dealing with someone who is not an experienced public servant and probably doesn't have the skills and the ability and the training and the expertise to deal with their claims. They deal with public servants on the phone for support. They receive subsidised medicine through the PBS. They apply for a passport.

The Albanese government is delivering on its promise to rebuild the Public Service. We have said that. We made commitments in the last campaign and we're doing it now. After a decade of neglect, we're cleaning up the mess left by those opposite, who gutted the Public Service, reduced its capability and outsourced billions of dollars of work to consultants and contractors. At its heart, this bill is about broad APS reform to restore the public's faith and trust in government, the Public Service and the institutions of government and make sure that the service delivery that I talked about before is delivered fairly, on time, with expedition and with expertise so that it strengthens the core purpose and the values of the Public Service and builds its capability and the skills necessary in the APS to provide the kind of good government that we think is necessary and that the public expects, and that's a government of honesty, transparency and accountability.

There's the provision for the new APS value of stewardship. There's a requirement for an APS purpose statement. There's strengthening of the relevant provisions in the Public Service Act to make sure that ministers can't direct agency heads on employment matters, and that's so important in terms of integrity. It's about making sure that those people who make decisions at lower levels can do so without fear of retribution.

It is making sure that we have capability reviews on a regular basis. It is making sure that we publish annual APS employment census results. It is ensuring that we have at least one long-term insights briefing each year.

The challenges we face are immense. Listen to those opposite. There are not many speakers from those opposite, but, when I listen to their speeches, I do wonder why some of them actually decided to engage in political representation, which is a form of public service, because some of them were ministers. They dealt with the Public Service. They know the value of the Public Service. They know the integrity of the Public Service. They know the competency of the Public Service. If you have served in any ministerial capacity, from an assistant minister to minister to cabinet or prime minister, you know how capable these people are and how competent they are.

It is very, very important that we have people who can deal with the public in this way. But those opposite constantly denigrate them. I cannot believe the way that some of those opposite have spoken on this bill, belittling the importance of the bill and belittling the importance of the Public Service, because that is what we are engaged in—public service. There are many people in this place who, if they were interested in financial security, would not have run for politics, but they are interested in public service, because we think that is an honourable profession—serving the public as a parliamentarian—and those opposite degraded public service generally.

We saw some egregious examples of failure under those opposite. Robodebt was a classic example, a massive failure of public administration with catastrophic consequences. I saw it day in day out in my electorate office, a scheme that, through the royal commission hearings, we have learned had shocking details, with three ministers and one former prime minister required to take the stand to explain their role about what they knew and what they did, showing the great power and value of these inquiries. We watched the public servants on the stand, with one official after another official not want to deliver bad news to the Morrison government—ministers were focused on delivering government service—but they were not able to give robust and competent legal advice. Ministers were not wanting to know. The former minister for government services, the former member for Fadden, invoked cabinet solidarity as an excuse for making false statements about the legality of the scheme.

So reform of the Public Service is absolutely critical. Robodebt might just be the worst example of everything that was rotten about the previous government and its arrogant minister who knew everything. It is an attitude of the Public Service we need to reform, and this bill is a step on the road to reform. Devaluing and debasing the APS was also about the politicisation of public appointments. We saw repeated audits from the Auditor-General in relation to a whole bunch of funding arrangements of those opposite—car parks, regional sports—in a whole range of areas where they were criticised by the Auditor-General in report after report. There are consequences for that. People lose faith in government when those things happen. You could not make that stuff up. It simply would not have happened in a professional and responsible government. So the legislation is critical.

We have lost a decade and we have seen the cost of those failures each and every day in health, in Medicare, in aged care, veterans' affairs, the NDIS, the NBN, energy and climate, the environment and Indigenous affairs, housing, arts, immigration, overseas assistance, and in areas of data and digital. Those are just a few areas. As MPs, we have borne the brunt of the previous government's failure, because our electorate officers were busier than they would otherwise have been if the previous government had not failed. Our officers were dealing with a huge volume of constituent inquiries relating to failures and delay from government agencies. If only those agencies, those public services, had been properly resourced and empowered to do their jobs, we would not have had to deal with quite so many matters. Never again can we allow those opposite to try and get away with the propaganda of being the superior economic managers—what nonsense, complete rubbish. Under those opposite, there was budgetary vandalism. They ignored the big challenges, thinking they could get away with it.

They kicked the can down the road for another government to deal with the cost of delay. We can't let this go on. That's why this legislation before the chamber is so important. I support it. I think it is absolutely crucial that we engage in Public Service reform. This is about the integrity, honesty and transparency of government. I support the legislation. I think it is absolutely crucial for the benefit of the Australian public.

Debate interrupted.