Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

No, they're all gone—fortunately. We went through that one once before—page 526 of Practice, I think it is.

Tudge, Porter and Robert: these three names are the ones responsible for the legacy that is the last government's incompetence and its contempt and indifference towards Australian people and towards a strong and compassionate Public Service. Of course, we still have one more to go: the architect, the cheerleader and the chief proponent, the member for Cook, who still has the nerve to sit in this House. To ensure that I do maintain parliamentary standards, I do my best not to bring him up too much. I also do my best to help people, unlike the member for Cook. When the multiple reports of a failing system rolled in, he doubled down to attack the most vulnerable in our society, and he denied the pain and hurt caused to regular Australian families when he was held to account. If he'd done his best, he would have listened and acted. He wouldn't have put pressure on the Australian Public Service, which led to one of this nation's greatest failings in a government program. It not only negatively impacted Australians' lives but took them in the most unfair and egregious manner possible.

The robodebt scandal was the crowning spectacle of the last government and really encapsulated the then government's relationship with the Public Service—one where public servants couldn't speak out and where they had to act in the interests not of the Australian public but of the private vendettas of politicians. That is why I rise today to speak on the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 and why I'm so passionate about promoting a frank and fearless Public Service that is empowered to hold ministerial decisions up to scrutiny and to create policy that is effective in helping Australians thrive in their everyday lives.

The Public Service Amendment Bill is an important part of the Albanese government's commitment to implementing the Australian Public Service reform agenda. It is part of the election platform we ran on. It recentres the Australian Public Service on serving the people of Australia. A Labor government will always recognise the important work that our Public Service does and we'll always do our best to facilitate the important work of servicing Australians within our local communities. That is something those opposite failed to do for the nearly 10 years that they were in power.

When Labor left office we had been successful in increasing the number of employees in the Public Service. We knew the importance of that, as we'd just set up the NDIS and could see our nation's population increasing rapidly. Labor had the vision of sustainable growth, of building a system that would help Australians. When the coalition came into government they had a vision of cheap cuts and reductionist measures. They led their fear campaign with former Prime Minister Tony Abbott cutting 15,000 Public Service jobs. While we'd sought to make sure government programs and systems were appropriately supported and funded, the other side cut them by 25 per cent, thus sending billions of dollars into the hands of Liberal donors and consultants. These decisions made so many Australian professionals redundant and made the system overwhelmed and overworked. It was the first domino in a series of blunders that led to situations like the PwC scandal and the disastrous robodebt.

Through the lack of resourcing of the Public Service and outsourcing to the private sector, we saw an exponential increase in waiting times in Veterans' Affairs, something that our government moved quickly to fix. We saw understaffing and a lack of experience in the NDIA. The staffing caps put on the Public Service meant that the government outsourced government services to a private third party rather than relying on the professionals in the Public Service to ensure that programs were running smoothly. These short-term solutions only ever set up the government to become over-reliant on consultancies. Agencies that used to provide a third perspective now did the grunt work of the Public Service. It meant millions of taxpayer dollars were given to private third parties. With the former coalition government's PwC scandal, which has had far-reaching effects across our entire system, we saw what that got the Australian public. Only the Public Service, not private consultants, are bound by the values of impartiality, accountability, and ethical advice and decision-making.

This bill will bolster the government's commitment to good governance, accountability and transparency by building a Public Service that is fit to serve modern Australia—one that is capable of handling the issues facing Australians, proactively responding to Australians' needs, and increasing its own expertise and experience. This government knows that individuals that work in the APS do so because they want to serve the Australian public. If they were in it for money, they'd go to one of the private companies or firms.

We know that under the previous government the workers of the APS couldn't do the work that they wanted to do—the work that they valued. In the robodebt scandal, we saw Centrelink employees coming out and saying that what was happening was wrong. In an open letter in January 2017, Centrelink staff, through the CPSU, spoke out, saying that they knew what they were doing was wrong and had tried to report it but weren't able to get anywhere with their concerns. That's a very damning response by Centrelink workers—to come out, stand up and say that they knew that the government was doing the wrong thing—but the government refused to fix it.

So this bill makes sure that they are actually able to speak up and speak out and hold the secretarial positions, the public service and the ministers accountable for their actions. It will do this by adding a new value of APS stewardship, which all APS employees must uphold and which, by definition, means that the APS will build capacity and institutional knowledge and support the public interest now and into the future by understanding the long-term impacts of what it does. It will have a commitment to regular and independent reviews that will be released publicly and long-term insight reports that explore trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia, allowing for long-term planning and building on expertise within the service to prepare and gain the best outcome for Australia.

Further, to support good governance, this bill will require publication of the agency's APS census results and an action plan that responds to those results. This will foster a culture of transparency and accountability for continuous improvement within agencies. This government knows that to continuously build on and support a robust public service we need to protect the systems that allow them to do their job, which is servicing the people of Australia, speaking up when they can see something wrong and using their expertise to create the best outcomes for our people.

The Australian government knows that, for society to flourish and for a government to act effectively, you need a robust, experienced and independent public service—a public service that retains talent and fosters passion to give back to the Australian community—and you need a government that will support it. This government is committed to giving the support, which the coalition didn't give, to the public service. Instead of being generous—they could have given that support—they pursued their personal agendas, based on no evidence, to win a culture war against big government.

They pursued an agenda that meant Australian professionals lost their jobs. They pursued an agenda that cut an entire sector by 25 per cent. In an open letter to the Australian public through Centrelink staff—again, in 2017—they highlighted that 5,000 people had been cut from the Department of Human Services. Decisions like these mean things for our veterans. We often hear our people, as they stand here and wrap themselves in a flag, say how they love our veterans. I don't doubt that everybody genuinely does, but we've got to do something about it. When veterans are waiting for a thousand days just to have a claim heard—not paid out but heard—something is wrong. That something was that we cut the guts out of the APS.

Instead of having a service that acted with the integrity that Australians expected, the public service was forced to be at the beck and call of the ministers who oversaw programs. As La Trobe University's Darren O'Donovan, who was a senior lecturer in administrative law, illustrated on the 7am podcast: 'They purposefully tested a program that played on people's shame of receiving debt notices and similar communications from Centrelink.'

From this program, the Income Compliance Program, which later became known as robodebt, was born—a program that was built on guilting Australians with shame, that actively sought to hurt Australians to get money for the government and that ultimately succeeded in generating shame, which ended Australian lives. Justice Murphy, who was the judge presiding over this case, described the scheme as a 'shameful chapter' and a 'massive failure' of public administration. I've never heard an apology from those that were responsible. I bet a few of them still sit there and think that it was successful due to the raising of $1.8 billion, that it was a shame it was completely unlawful and put 435,000 vulnerable Australians in a difficult position. In fact, we saw the current Leader of the Opposition calling the royal commission into robodebt 'nothing more than a political witch-hunt'. But it had gone some way to giving 435,000 Australians their voice back after being hounded by a government that supposedly represented them over that 4½ years. As a sitting member during this period, I worked with many constituents who were targeted by this unlawful scheme that was overseen by the previous government.

I saw the mental toll that this incorrect and impersonal hounding did to everyday Australians. When we reached out and tried to advocate for them, we were stonewalled. The department had their hands tied behind their backs, and the former minister, the disgraced Alan Tudge, got up on A Current Affair, threatening to jail anyone who owed the government money. One day I would like to see people like that jailed for their decisions that caused so much pain and suffering, and that, in fact, ended people's lives. There should be accountability for those people who made those bad decisions and then tried to be tough about it. I watched as full-time students were, due to administrative errors, told they owed thousands of dollars, despite providing evidence and proof of their studies; and regular people who had been overpaid by the system but had already been proactive and settled debts. I still have mountains of correspondence in my office that we went through, detailing the stress and mental damage that the government refused to take responsibility for. They went into details about their feelings of hopelessness and distress that affected not only them but their families. And of course we remember those who took their lives due to the persistent pressure from a system that lacked integrity and compassion.

In particular, my office worked with a constituent called Debbie. She had left her job after an experience of sexual assault while working as a prison officer. She worked hard to rebuild herself and to heal, to go back to study for a Diploma of Community Services, and she was working to get herself a home. She was, at the time, fostering a 13-year-old child when the letters came. She detailed to me the extra stress and the triggering nature of the letters and how the cold and cruel nature of the way the government treated her left her vulnerable. She explicitly said that if our office hadn't stepped in to advocate for her she would have been one of the victims who took their own lives.

This Public Service amendment in front of the House today is the start to making sure something like robodebt never happens again. We want to make sure that the Public Service is built for the Australian people and that public servants are enabled to do the work they have expertise in, in bringing quality policy to protect Australians and help them thrive. Quite often we hear people saying that they're just cardigan-wearing fat cats, but if you have a look across the Public Service and see the people involved—whether they're nurses or our staff that we deal with here in the parliament—they are, most importantly, the people that are doing the policy and doing the work for the Australian public each and every day. They don't deserve to be hounded. They don't deserve to be browbeaten. They deserve to be supported and given the opportunity to do what they do best: stand up, deliver good policy and make sure that they work in the best interests of all Australians. That is why it's so important that this bill has a speedy passage.

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