Andrew Charlton (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023 to amend the Public Service Act 1999. The Australian Public Service plays an essential role in assisting the government of the day and in supporting our communities. The Public Service is the policy engine which drives Australia forward. From education to health, social services and economics, our communities rely on the Public Service, and we are grateful to them for the work that they do. There is almost no institution more important in our democracy than our Public Service. They are the ballast in policymaking. They are the people who formulate new ideas, who give frank and fearless advice to the government and who are responsible for policy development and implementation. If you look around the world, Mr Deputy Speaker, you see that those countries that have a successful and strong public service are those countries that are themselves successful. It is an essential ingredient in a modern and successful democracy, the engine of reform and delivery for the people that every government in the world serves.

This government has shown its support for the Public Service. Unfortunately, the support and gratitude that is provided on this side of the House is not shared by the former government and those on that side of the House. It's indeed unfortunate that this legislation is even needed today. For nearly a decade the Australian Public Service was gutted and its employees neglected by those opposite. Mr Deputy Speaker, let me give you some of the startling facts, the extent to which the Public Service was gutted and neglected over the course of the last terms of government. Between 2013 and 2019, the number of public servants per 10,000 Australians fell from 69.78 to 56.7. That's a massive decline in the size of the Public Service in Australia, a gutting of the Public Service in many different departments and sections of our government. In many cases it was a hollowing out of capability and a replacing of that capability with consultants and labour hire.

This began right back in 2013 with the Abbott government. The Abbott government embarked upon a war on the Australian Public Service. In his brief two years in office, Mr Abbott took out 15,000 APS jobs. There were 15,000 fewer APS jobs after just two years of the Abbott government, with valuable public servants shed in so many areas. There is nothing wrong with efficiency. There is nothing wrong with ensuring that the Public Service is doing its job with the fewest people possible. But that is not what happened under the Abbott government. Under the Abbott government, the Public Service was systematically targeted and gutted to the tune of 15,000 APS jobs. It came at the cost of services and it came at the cost of policy development and delivery.

The Morrison government also showed contempt for the Public Service. They spent 70 per cent of a $20 billion fund on outsourced service providers—a shadow workforce of 54,000 people, which they kept secret from the Australian people. A quarter of this fund was used for outsourced contractors and consultants. In a desperate attempt at budget repair, they attempted to cut $3.3 billion from the Public Service. This was a government which attempted to sideline and neglect the Public Service. The former prime minister, the member for Cook, would berate the Public Service, telling them that they lived in the Canberra bubble and existed in silos. He referred to the bacon-and-eggs principle, saying that public servants didn't really have a stake in good policy design. He said that the Public Service should focus on implementation, not on policy development—that policy development was the job of politicians, and public servants should be responsible merely for implementation. What disrespect for this institution, which over centuries has provided frank and fearless advice. That is what they are there for—to provide advice, to develop policy solutions and to propose them to governments. And it shows an incredible lack of self-knowledge to have the former government tell the Public Service that they would take care of policy development and that the Public Service should focus only on implementation. For a government that was focused on slogans, memes and polling to suggest that they were the source of all wisdom in policy development was an outrage and an insult to the Australian Public Service and to the people that they so loyally and capably serve.

Another area where the former government showed contempt for the Public Service was in appointments. They consistently filled Public Service roles with former staffers, mates and cronies. For the role of the Secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, the top bureaucrat in the land, they appointed the former chief of staff to the Prime Minister. From there, down into the Public Service, they made appointment after appointment on political grounds rather than merit grounds. What could be more destructive to the Public Service? What could be more demoralising to public servants than having those senior roles filled by mates of the Liberal Party rather than capable colleagues from across the Public Service who have worked their whole lives for the betterment of Australia?

Tony Abbott waged a war on the Public Service, seeking to root out people who he deemed to be political people—people who he thought had served the Labor government or were too close to the Labor government. He put an axe through the senior ranks of the Public Service to purge it of people who he thought were insufficiently loyal to him. Again, it was a disastrous act, a disrespectful act, a loss of capability for the Australian Public Service and a terrible message to give to loyal people who work hard for our community every day.

All of this, of course, brings us to the robodebt scandal. Australians will never forget robodebt. In 2020, the member for Cook said of the Public Service that he wanted a laser-sharp focus on serving the quiet Australians. Yet, throughout his prime ministership, there were Australians crying out for help. They were not Australians who were served; they were Australians who were harmed. There were over 400,000 victims—over 400,000 Australians—with $1.8 billion taken from them.

Two thousand people died after receiving their robodebt advice from Centrelink. How many of these were the so-called quiet Australians? How many cries for help did the former government choose to hear and choose not to hear? How many people did they choose to ignore? Robodebt will forever remain a shameful chapter in our nation's story—a time when the government of the day targeted its most vulnerable citizens and wrecked the lives of thousands of people and their families.

That's why the robodebt royal commission has been so important. The robodebt royal commission heard from over 100 witnesses, from victims to public sector workers. We heard from Centrelink employees who tried raising concerns about the program but were ultimately ignored. They were ignored by the philosophy of the former government that the Public Service was there merely to implement, not to develop policy or to advise. The outcome of that dictum was very directly the robodebt disaster. Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes described the scheme as both a 'crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal'. It was a shameful chapter and, in her words, a 'costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms'.

The royal commission has been dismissed by those opposite as a witch-hunt, and they have accused the Minister for Government Services and the Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme of politicising the issue. They could not be more wrong. The robodebt royal commission goes to the heart of our democracy and its hallowed institutions. The robodebt royal commission shows what can happen when the Public Service is sidelined, ignored and denuded of its capability. The robodebt royal commission shows us what we must never do again, and it motivates us to rebuild the Public Service and to support the Public Service. The royal commission will go down in history as having exposed the sheer scale of neglect and apathy from the former government.

That's why this bill today is so important. One of the key lessons of the five-year robodebt saga was the importance of integrity in government and ensuring a robust public service. The bill in front of us today presents an opportunity to renew the role of the Australian Public Service. Amending the Public Service Act 1999 is an important part of the Albanese government's agenda in reforming the Australian Public Service. This bill has four fundamental areas of focus: first, to ensure that the APS embodies integrity; second, to put people and businesses at the heart of the Public Service's work; third, to ensure that the Australian Public Service is a model employer; and fourth, to ensure that the Australian Public Service has the capability to perform its work well.

Currently, the Public Service operates under five core values: impartiality, commitment to service, accountability, respect and ethical operations. This bill introduces a sixth value: the value of stewardship. Stewardship is about more than supervision; it's about building capability and institutional knowledge. It is about supporting the public interest and ensuring that the APS is future fit for its important work. Stewardship aims to strengthen the APS's core values and principles and encourage a culture of transparency and accountability. Time and again, the former government betrayed this principle. Whether it was the billions of dollars cut from hospitals in 2014, the neglect of Public Service advice over many years or the use of contractors—labour hire firms running rampant in the public service: the shadow workforce being built from contractors. All of that was exactly the opposite of stewardship. It was the antithesis of building capability and custodianship. What we're suggesting is that we should reduce unnecessary hierarchy to create greater efficiency within the APS and give our respected employees a greater voice.

This bill will also require departments to conduct capability reviews every five years. This would an involve an assessment of an organisation's strength, areas for further development and medium- and long-term risk analysis. Importantly, all these findings would be made public, consistent with the principle of transparency and accountability. We need to ensure that we restore public trust in the Public Service—trust which has eroded over the last decade of apathy and neglect. The amendment would reduce unnecessary hierarchy to empower our Public Service employees. To instruct each agency to develop an action plan to continue to improve its capability and expertise into the future, the release of the agency's APS census results would also be made public. Again, this is a key lesson from the Morrison government that this Albanese government is learning from and rising above: the importance of transparency and accountability.

On top of stewardship, this bill strengthens the APS's core values. Amending the Public Service Act would require the APS to promote a new purpose statement—one which agency heads would be required to uphold in the long term. This is a bill that recognises the importance of the Public Service in our democracy. It values them. It values the contribution they make to policy development and policy implementation. I commend it to the House.

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