Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 is the next step in rebuilding the Australian Public Service after, frankly, a decade of degradation, disrespect, disregard and decay. I thought of those four 'd' words, but, having listened to the previous contribution, I'd have to add 'denial'. I've said before that Christopher Pyne sent that member here to make us miss Christopher Pyne, as he would certainly win the boring Olympics! But really, that level of denial about the decade that is gone, the privatisation by stealth, the attacks on the Public Service's independence, the politicisation, the appointment of mates, the overuse of consultants and the logo fetish without taking any responsibility. He waffled on for 10 minutes about the Whitlam government 50 years ago—nothing about robodebt. I'm still waiting for anyone over there to apologise for that disgraceful scandal in public administration perpetrated on their watch. They want to talk as if that's somehow the fault of the Public Service.

Great societies have great public services, and great public services need great public servants. It's an honourable profession. If there's one word that I'd use to characterise how the government should see its responsibilities with respect to the Australian Public Service, I'd say 'stewardship'. That means understanding that the Public Service is a form of societal capital. It's been built up over years, decades or indeed a century, and the government of the day must understand their responsibility to leave the Public Service in as good or better shape than they found it for the governments, the societies and the community that comes afterwards. The Public Service is Australia's institutional memory. Really, you cannot contract out your brain, much as this mob have tried with the overuse of the big four consulting firms to do things which can and only should be done by skilled public servants. As the previous speaker said—I couldn't disagree with a lot of the substance, it's just the denial about the level of responsibility which the previous government bears for the state we find ourselves in—it's the Public Service that society rightly expects to remember the public policy lessons of decades past. Only the Public Service should and could be expected to remember the lessons of royal commissions from the 1920s and the 1930s, the history of relations with foreign governments and so much more. Only the Public Service, not private consultants, is bound by those eternal values of impartiality, accountability, ethical advice and decision-making.

I want to read a quote from a book by Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land. It's just a few sentences:

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

Frankly, if anyone thinks that governments are going to be challenged, provoked and advised in that way with a set of foundational public values by the big four consulting firms or so-called independent contractors then they've got rocks in their head. It is the role of the Public Service to give governments frank and fearless advice, whether they like it or not. We hear the words, but the former government set a culture of fear and disrespect and disregard over the Public Service so that, as we saw through the robodebt royal commission, they were frankly too scared and cowered to give the government advice which they needed to hear. Those values of public service and advising in the public interest contrast with the record of the Liberals: of privatisation, of contracting out, of wasting literally billions of dollars on overheads for labour-hire workers, casual workers and the big four consulting firms—a global cancer on public services right around the world—and of casualisation. Their record is the very opposite of stewardship.

Probably the tool which is most responsible for the situation we find ourselves in was Tony Abbott's policy of staff caps, continued by all of them for 10 years—the ASL caps. It was privatisation by stealth. Here's a fact: when Tony Abbott and the Liberals were elected, their one policy for the Australian Public Service, literally their only policy, was to cut the number of public servants by 15,000. Why? It bore no relationship to service models, delivery, outcomes or society's needs. It was because that was the number that we had when John Howard left office. That was it. That was the rationale. So in all the time after John Howard left office in 2007 to when we came to government, the population of the country had grown, we had an ageing population, we had the new NDIS, we had deteriorating strategic circumstances requiring more investment in defence and myriad needs, yet in real terms the Public Service was cut by 25 per cent.

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