Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On Thursday of last week, I had the privilege of speaking at theMandarin conference on rebuilding trust in the Public Service. The Public Service is important to me and to the Australian people as so many of us rely on it for the delivery of essential services that keep our nation functioning. Public servants are crucial to our national security and our democratic reality. They're crucial to health, education, agriculture and the environment, to name just a few key areas. That's why it's so important that the government continue its efforts to bring core government responsibilities back in-house to the Public Service.

Progress to that end is being made. It was reported in the Australian yesterday, in an article by Matt Bell entitled 'Big four denied federal contracts', that Australia's four big consulting firms—EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC—have seen the value of contracts awarded to them by the government of the Commonwealth fall in value by almost half. This has coincided, I'm very pleased to say, with more than 3,000 labour hire and external workers being converted into full-time APS employees, serving their nation with pride and integrity in a stable, safe and secure job.

That is not to say that there's no place for external consultancies. Experts should remain key to service delivery, particularly when their function is a non-ongoing, non-core APS service. I know of many small to medium sized enterprises in Australia who help provide key insights in their area of expertise to the Australian Public Service, and I congratulate them. The system must be populated with people who are going to serve the interests of Australia, not be replete with conflicts of interest.