Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care) | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023. This bill amends the Public Service Act 1999. It's yet another contribution to the Albanese Labor government's strengthening of the Australian Public Service, reforms that are long overdue.

I cannot overstate the importance of a Public Service that is empowered to properly do its job. A core part of this job is the ability to provide frank and fearless advice, and with all the revelations we continue to learn of the previous coalition government's decade of wreckage this only becomes more evident—what happens when the Public Service is outsourced to private consultancies and what happens when the Public Service is not empowered to provide advice, not given the leeway to be frank and fearless or, when it does provide advice, to be ignored.

We need an Australian Public Service that is responsive, responsible, valued and trusted, trusted by the government and the people of Australia. This bill is important because it will strengthen the APS' core purpose and values. It will build the capability and expertise of the APS and support good governance, accountability and transparency.

I have enormous respect for our public servants, and since becoming an assistant minister, particularly, I have had the privilege to work with and receive advice from many talented and capable people in the department. Fostering those relationships is important so we can not only support those employees to perform their roles but, above all, get better outcomes on the ground for the people in our communities.

In my previous role as ACTU president, through the mighty CPSU, I had the privilege of meeting and interacting with many wonderful public servants at all levels of government, people who care deeply about their roles and the people they serve. In 2019, the independent Thodey review of the APS made a number of recommendations. It called on bold action to ensure that the APS could become a high-performing institution. It called for deep cultural change. Clearly, it all fell on deaf ears. It's now nearly 4½ years later and the pattern is clear. The coalition let another important report gather dust. They ignored the advice and failed to deal with the consequences.

This Labor government is absolutely committed to strengthening the Australian Public Service, because after a decade of coalition destruction and distraction we know that it sorely needs it. Just a few months ago, an audit of the Australian Public Service found that the Morrison government spent $20.8 billion on outsourcing Public Service provision and external consultants during the 2021-22 financial year alone. In one year, $20.8 billion! The audit found that the equivalent of around 54,000 full-time staff were employed as consultants or service providers. All the while, they maintained a cap on public servant staff numbers, aptly described by our Minister for the Public Service, Senator Katy Gallagher, as a 'mirage of efficiency'.

Labor has long been committed to addressing this inconsistency for the betterment of the Public Service as well as the economy and the Australian community that the Public Service serves. And we have already taken action. In the last budget we converted around 3,300 external labour arrangements into permanent public sector jobs. These are full-time roles that should have been just that, all the while, but the former government was more than happy to outsource them at a cost. Converting just these jobs into full-time positions has saved $800 million in the budget, not to mention regarnishing some of that skill and knowledge that is so important for our Public Service. And now, unfortunately, we know exactly what happens when the capability of the Public Service is systematically undermined. We know what it looks like when ministers such as the member for Cook or the former members for Sturt and Aston either do not seek or simply refuse to listen to advice from their departments. And we know the pain and tragedy this can cause the Australian people.

I am of course referring to the findings from the royal commission into the coalition's illegal robodebt scheme. From its inception in early 2015 and through various iterations, until it was paused and later scrapped in 2019, robodebt unlawfully raised $1.8 billion of debt against approximately 435,000 vulnerable Australians. In November 2019 Services Australia stopped the use of averaging Australian Taxation Office income data as the sole basis for raising debt. On that day, ministers and senior public servants would have to have given evidence in the trial of the class action. The Commonwealth finally admitted it had no legal basis to raise those debts. Justice Murphy, the judge presiding over the case, approved the largest class action settlement in Australian history. He described the scheme as a 'shameful chapter' and a 'massive failure in public administration'.

I remember, when I was first elected, the stories from constituents who would come to my office and tell me what they were experiencing as a consequence of this illegal and shameful scheme. It was distressing. One poor woman had folders and folders of payslips, affidavits, letters of support and other evidence. She literally fell over my office doorstep laden by the reams of paper and burdened by anxiety and depression. She literally screamed for help. Desperation was driving despair. She felt hounded and dehumanised. She was ultimately exonerated, but the scars remained.

Now, nearly four years later, the royal commission has delivered its report, and it was crystal clear in its assessment of the former government and their failures. It repeated the sentiment Justice Murphy made in 2019, stating:

Robo-debt was a crude and cruel mechanism, neither fair nor legal, and it made many people feel like criminals.

In essence, people were traumatised on the off-chance they might owe money. It was a costly failure of public administration, in both human and economic terms.

This is what happens when the Public Service is completely disempowered. It is what happens when you do not support a Public Service to provide fearless, independent advice. The Australian people do not need an army of yes-men. They do not need policy dictated down from ministers to public servants, who fear that they cannot say no or provide advice to the contrary. Indeed, the robodebt report says:

It is remarkable how little interest there seems to have been in ensuring the scheme's legality, how rushed its implementation was, how little thought was given to how it would affect welfare recipients and the lengths to which public servants were prepared to go to oblige ministers on a quest for savings.

I thank and applaud the Prime Minister and the Minister for Government Services, Bill Shorten, for pursuing justice for the robodebt victims, for giving them a voice in this House. The robodebt royal commission report stands as a stark reminder of what happens when the APS is stripped of its core functions, devalued and undermined. This bill is just another facet of our reform agenda for the APS, a beginning of restoration, of trust, of capability and of culture. We've seen a decade of the coalition's diminishing of the Public Service and an excessive reliance on outsourcing, on consultants and contractors, for anything and everything that should be core business of a strong Public Service.

The report was extremely comprehensive, and it's right that we take our time to consider its recommendations. Given the findings of the robodebt royal commission report, it is clearer than ever that we need our Public Service not only to be an effective and trusted institution but to have a clear, common purpose. This bill delivers a number of reforms that will strengthen the apolitical role of the Public Service, reaffirm its impartiality and foster a culture of integrity. We must never let a situation like robodebt happen again, and it is clear that significant reform to the Public Service is a critical part of this. It must be done and it must be done right.

See this speech in context