Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I know there are millions of Australians who were at home watching the first part of my contribution to the Public Service Amendment Bill 2023, and they were anxious throughout the winter recess for me to continue my contribution on this important bill and to find out how it finishes. Allow me to indulge all of those people at home. This is a really important bill, and we are here in this place back debating this bill, the amendments to our Public Service, because we fundamentally believe in our Public Service. We believe in the importance of having frank and fearless advice coming to government, and we see the consequences of when that dissolves or when that is watered down.

Over the winter break we had the presentation of the royal commission into robodebt's report to the Governor-General, and I think for every member of this place it is a moment to reflect on when that breaks down, when the Public Service in this country loses its sense of ethics and loses its sense of what is in the national interest—led by a government who had an agenda to come after some of the most vulnerable people in our society, while also getting the advice that it was potentially an illegal scheme, yet choosing to pursue sending out automated debt notices to vulnerable people all around the country. Instead of having any shred of accountability, what the former government did was just continue with their program of targeting vulnerable Australians with their robodebt scheme.

This royal commission shone a very bright light on not only that awful piece of public maladministration but also the violations of many rights of Australians, where people deserve not to be intimidated or bullied by their government into paying illegal debt notices, where people should be free from that. You think about some of the ways in which they were frivolous with the expenditure of public money, when they spent $30 million on an airport that was only worth $3 million after they'd purchased the land off a Liberal Party donor, yet they went after people who had very little money and who were receiving public social safety net benefits. They were the people to which the former government, led by former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, former ministers Stuart Robert and Alan Tudge and many others, sought to administer this robodebt scheme.

We want to make sure we are investing in our Public Service. We don't want to see the mistakes of previous administrations, where they completely gutted the capability of the Public Service. We want to lift up the capability, the culture and the service the Public Service gives to not only the government but also, most importantly, the people we are all privileged to represent. That's what this bill is all about. The bill will strengthen the Public Service's core purpose and values, build its capability and expertise and provide institutional support for the indispensable principles of good governance, accountability and transparency.

Many of the measures in this bill go back to the recommendations in the 2019 Thodey review, which were given such short shrift by the previous government. The bill makes it clear that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. This will stop the dangerous trend in recent years of ministers trying to structure their departments to suit their political agendas and installing their acolytes at all levels of the Public Service. It was extraordinary that the former Prime Minister appointed his former chief of staff to lead the Public Service. It is hardly any wonder that we saw the Public Service being used in political operations and in political cover-ups as occurred under the previous administration.

The bill will install regular capability reviews as a requirement and will mandate at least one long-term insight briefing each year. This will allow better assessment of its performance and will give positive reinforcement to those members of the Public Service who are doing their jobs in the way they ought to be done. Australia is best served by a strong, independent, non-partisan and confident Public Service, by a system in which public servants know they can give ministers honest advice without the fear of political retribution or a rapid end to their Public Service careers. This will be a long process, because the damage done by former governments is immense. But this bill makes a start on a new generation of public service, and I commend it to this place.

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