Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Public Accountability and Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the parliamentary secretary and the minister for their responses. Can I follow up the issue of the Living Murray Initiative, which the parliamentary secretary responded to. He indicated that around 300 gigalitres—obviously there are some qualifications on the estimate—are likely to be recovered by 2009 through efficiencies and he then spelled out the path that the government is going down and the steps it is taking regarding buying water achieved as a result of efficiencies. My question is: has the government, as part of that exercise, done any estimates about water likely to be recovered through that process? Obviously that is germane to how we are going in relation to the target of 500 gigalitres by 2009. I would be interested to know whether the parliamentary secretary is able to provide any information about what kinds of dividends might be achieved as a result of going down the path that he proposes.

In the absence of colleagues I will take the opportunity to raise with the minister an additional issue concerning the Australian Public Service Commission. The Australian Public Service Commission is referred to at page 312 of the budget papers. One of the issues that has come to my attention recently is that the Public Service Commission has issued a new circular which relates to the citizenship requirements for Commonwealth public servants. Two sentences which previously made clear that the employment of noncitizens could only be done in exceptional circumstances have been deleted from that circular. One of the sentences is:

Preferably, this would only occur on the basis that the person is actively pursuing the acquisition of Australian citizenship.

The other sentence which has been deleted is:

... it is expected that a decision to engage a non-citizen would only occur for sound reasons and not as a matter of course.

This is clearly a watering down of the requirement for citizenship of employees in the Australian Public Service. My question, having regard to this circular, is: how many noncitizens are presently employed in the Australian Public Service and does the government have any view on or any figure of how many are likely to be employed as a result of the change in guidelines outlined in the circular?

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