James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 and commence by saying that both of my parents, for periods of their careers, served in the Commonwealth Public Service. I am a great advocate for a fierce, frank, fair and impartial public service, serving the interests of the nation and serving the interests of the government of the day, but also being enduring. As much as it is very important that we have elections and a democratic process to ensure the people of this country are choosing at regular intervals the composition of this parliament and the government, it is equally important that we have an enduring continuity that's provided to government from the Public Service. It's extremely important that we take every opportunity to undertake any reforms that enhance and modernise the public sector, and I commend the contribution from the Manager of Opposition Business, where he has indicated that we are a very good faith party when it comes to discussing legislation like this with the government. And we hope that the government are prepared to engage with us in the debate around this bill about ways to potentially improve and enhance it.

Of course, it was the coalition government that undertook the review that David Thodey conducted in the interests of identifying opportunities to enhance and improve the way in which the governance of the APS is structured and ensure that everyone working in the APS is very happy and comfortable and has a pride in serving in the APS because there is that robustness in place.

There are some technical parts of this that I won't delve too deeply into, but one of the principles that is touched on in this amendment regards something that a lot of people in the public probably don't recognise: it is vitally important that politicians don't interfere in or have a role in the way in which employment decisions are made within the APS—apart from with the heads of departments, which, quite rightly and appropriately, are accountable to the political leadership. It is not the place for political leadership to influence the way in which employment decisions are made within the departments. It is vitally important to have that fierce, frank and fearless advice from the public service. We don't want a circumstance where public servants feel that they should tell ministers and political leaders what they want to hear, rather than what they need to hear. That is one of the great things about an enduring public service: you can rely on them—you should be able to rely on them, and I believe in this country you can rely on them—to always ensure that ministers and decision-makers are being given the information they need to make the best decisions possible.

There are some notable examples of very poor decision-making and that was absolutely because those principles weren't followed. One of the great scandals in the history of the Commonwealth government, in the Whitlam government, was the Khemlani loans affair, when proper due process was completely abandoned. Let's just reflect on what happened there. Sir Frederick Wheeler was an extremely famous, lifelong Commonwealth public servant who, in 1971, was appointed as the Secretary of the Treasury and served with great distinction and knighted for his service to the Commonwealth and the Public Service.

Rex Connor, the minister at the time, decided that the usual way in which the Commonwealth raised funds through borrowing didn't need to apply to him, that he had a better way of going out and obtaining funds for the Commonwealth, completely outside a provision of the Constitution, I might add, and completely outside the proper processes, not only of the loan council but of the parliament in decisions to encumber the government with billions of dollars of debt—and I use the term 'billions' in 1974 terms, not 2023 terms—billions of dollars of borrowing outside proper processes of the Commonwealth Treasury. What happened was a very dubious decision of the Whitlam government, not full cabinet, from recollection, where a small group of ministers decided that Rex Connor should be given authority to engage with a gentleman named Tirath Khemlani, who would go out and raise billions of dollars for the Commonwealth outside the proper structures of government and the proper structures of Treasury.

It got worse, of course, because not to be outdone by Rex Connor, the Treasurer of the day, Jim Cairns, also engaged in the process of signing a letter authorising borrowing money in the name of the Commonwealth government without even getting the Prime Minister of the day's—Mr Whitlam—approval, without any process whatsoever. That's the way the Whitlam government ended up conducting itself, deciding they could just borrow money and give letters of authority to people to traipse around the planet, saying, 'I act on behalf of Rex Connor or Jim Cairns, the Treasurer of Australia, and I'm here to engage in a loan agreement with you for billions of dollars for the Commonwealth of Australia. I don't feel the need to inform my cabinet colleagues or have proper approval of executive council. I don't feel the need to engage with the Treasury department,' which are pretty experienced in borrowing money from the Commonwealth of Australia because no-one but them was ever doing it until these two characters came along.

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