Acknowledgements
Thank you, Selina, for the welcome to country and also for sharing with us a path out of the Referendum and reminding us of the importance of the continued walk towards Reconciliation in this country. And I would also like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as the Traditional Owners on the land that we gather this morning, and I thank them for their ongoing custodianship, their care of this beautiful country that we call home. And I also acknowledge Aunty Agnes Shea, Selina’s grandmother, who we all miss and grieve deeply.
Thank you to the team at both the APSC and IPAA for putting on this morning’s event. I know there’s probably a lot of probably tired people clustered in this room. A lot of work goes into this, so I appreciate that, thank you very much. That video was excellent, so whoever, put that together, thank you very much. It really powerfully demonstrates the essential role and the varied role that public servants play in the life of this country and in the lives of the Australian people.
Before I begin, I'd also like to acknowledge the Assistant Minister, Patrick Gorman, who can't be with us today but is a huge help to me in my role as Minister for the Public Service, and I enjoy working with his team enormously. He's doing an incredible job with the State of the Service Roadshow and other areas of the APS portfolio. So, I acknowledge him.
Also, to the Secretaries here, Dr Glyn Davis, to Jenny Wilkinson to Dr Gruen, to Katherine Jones and of course Dr de Brouwer, who I work with very closely on APS reform. Thanks for coming. And Padma, sorry, Padma Raman, who I also work with so closely in my role as the Minister for Women. It's really great to see so many senior leaders here in the room and I think it speaks of the volume of the investment that we've all put into the work that the APS does, the important role, and how much we respect it.
Introduction
So, two years ago, when I spoke for the first time at an event like this as Minister for the Public Service – actually, at the IPAA National Conference – I did commit to providing a statement annually on the APS. This was really to share progress and outline our priorities as a government as we began the task of rebuilding the public service.
Today, in my speech, I'll be doing something a little bit different. I hope it doesn't make people too uncomfortable. This address will be perhaps a bit more pointed and a bit more political in context. And I don't do this just simply because I'm a politician and that's what politicians do, and you expect us to do that. I think the chat there is a change in tone and content of this year's speech because of how important the next six months will be, the election contest that we're heading into, when it comes to the future of the APS. I think it really will place the APS at a crossroads, and I can't really do this speech today without addressing that, as the contest goes right to the heart of and will challenge all the work we have been doing to put the APS on a more sustainable footing and to strengthen its role and its independence in our democratic system.
Within the next six months, there will be an election. We know the future of the public service will be at the centre of some of that election contest. A contest where the government will argue to enhance, promote and protect the role of the public service and the role it plays in our political system. And our opponents, who are openly campaigning on cutting 36,000 jobs, a cut equal to reducing the size of the APS by 20 per cent. Now, just to prove I'm not scare mongering here, I can give you a direct quote from David Littleproud, the leader of the National Party, who said: “the first thing we'll do is sack those 36,000 public servants in Canberra.”
Now, the Australian Public Service is in one way or another touching the lives of every single Australian. Services are provided by the APS as they enter and exit the lives of the Australian people at different points, as they need it.
So, when a baby is born, new parents rely on the public service at Services Australia to process their parental leave claims and issue that first Medicare card. When young Australians enter the workforce, teams at the ATO help them take that next step with their tax file number. When traveling overseas, it's public servants processing your passport application. And at our airports across Australia, its biosecurity officers and their dogs protecting our nation from pest and disease outbreaks that can threaten our agriculture and our unique environment. It’s AFP officers and staff across Defence and Home Affairs keeping Australians safe, protecting our borders and defending our national interests. Staff at the National Emergency Management Agency just heading into probably their busiest time of the year, and Services Australia help coordinate disaster relief response during times of need. It's public servants behind My Health Record that ensures that Australians can securely access their health data, and public servants right around the country regulate quality and safety for our loved ones in aged care and in the National Disability Insurance Scheme. It's public servants supporting the clean energy transition and ensuring the stability of our energy grid. The public service embodies what Australians value most, delivering those critical services, stepping up when times are difficult, and working together to build Australia's future with all those difficult and complex public policy challenges that are coming right at us.
Now, a lot has been done over the past two and a half years to ensure we are delivering on our commitment to invest in the APS and thereby deliver better services to the Australian people. When we came to government, we did inherit an APS with growing demands, increasing pressure, complex and challenging public policy dilemmas against a backdrop of diminishing or reduced resourcing to deal with all of that.
In 2022, the APS was struggling with under-resourcing. Years of sidelining the important role the APS plays as an enduring and independent entity, quite separate to that of executive government, had taken its toll. There was a failure to recognise that the APS was not solely a delivery arm of executive government decisions, but that it has a broader and just as important role as an independent institution that serves the Australian people, that's there to confront our most difficult problems, and to do so across the generations, to outlast governments and parliaments, and to always be there working in the interests of the nation.
As an incoming Minister, I could see the results of a decade of underinvestment in the APS. And I don't use the term underinvestment in simple dollar terms – it was much more than that. Core capabilities outsourced, service standards in decline and Australians waiting too long for essential services they relied on. Now, these outcomes weren't the fault of the APS. They were the direct result of choices made by a government that valued expensive outsourcing over internal expertise and artificial staffing caps over actual service delivery outcomes. Where the championing of not growing the APS beyond 2006 levels was somehow seen as something to strive for, without any acknowledgement that the job of the public service was getting more demanding and more complex as Australia's population and economy grew.
And we all learned the real story of the true impact of the staffing cap when the Audit of Employment found what we had all suspected but couldn't pinpoint – in keeping the size of the APS artificially low, a shadow workforce of 54,000 was really underpinning the service, costing taxpayers $21 billion every year. At its extremes, this included consultants sitting on department executive teams, consultants writing cabinet submissions and core public service work outsourced at premium rates while Australians waited longer and longer for services. Across the APS, departmental spending actually rose by 35 per cent between 2013 and 2022, but ASL actually reduced by 4 per cent. Costs went up, public service numbers went down, but people were still employed to do the work, they were just off the books.
Now we will continue to call out this ridiculous claim that's not supported by any evidence that the ASL staffing cap was keeping costs down. It's simply not true. Now, some of the other issues we inherited included a biosecurity system left vulnerable and underfunded, with the Department of Agriculture operating a loss and would have gone broke without a bailout.
Our energy system was struggling to cope with demand pressures and lack of new energy supply into the grid. Critical agencies like Home Affairs suffered cuts that compromise their ability to combat organised crime and human trafficking through our immigration and visa system. Three independent reports confirmed the failings and broken elements of the migration system that required immediate fixes.
And then, of course, there was Robodebt, the poster child of this false economy and poor culture of a timid and reduced public service, unwilling or unable to stand up for itself against the instructions of the executive government of the time. From Opposition, we saw some of the obvious problems across the APS and we made no secret of our plans to reinvest in the public service and to seek to repair that damage.
Under the Prime Minister's leadership, we made specific commitments to rebuild the APS. We promised to abolish the staffing cap that had distorted the workforce. We committed to audit government spending and reduce external labour use. We pledged to be a model employer, to improve pay and conditions and to reduce the reliance on consultants and where appropriate, convert insecure external arrangements into permanent public service jobs. Now, these weren't just campaign promises. They were a recognition that good governance and good government requires a strong public service. And as Australia's population and economy has grown, it follows that we need to continue to develop and grow a fit-for-purpose public service.
Now, the job of today's APS is much bigger and much more complex than it was 20 years ago. New technologies, global challenges and changing threats mean our public servants are taking on responsibilities that didn't even exist two decades ago. New functions, such as the NDIS, have required the public service to grow. Australia faces the most complex strategic circumstances since the Second World War, and that's why we've undertaken a huge amount of work, led by the Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, and Minister Pat Conroy to support the work of the ADF, including additional investment to make sure they can acquire and deliver on those new capabilities to keep our nation safe. And this has required more public servants to manage these more complex projects.
And as Australians and most politicians have accepted the science of climate change, the public service has had to grow to respond to and deliver an effective transition to a net zero economy – one that supports jobs, that seizes those economic opportunities that come from our natural assets, whilst also doing the hard but important work of stabilising the energy grid to keep the lights on and the air conditioning running across the country. Services Australia had to grow in line with increased demand for services as the combined impact of our aging population and new support payments like Paid Parental Leave have driven a 35 per cent increase in Medicare and Centrelink claims since 2012. That's around 121 million additional claims processed in the last year alone.
The idea that we can deliver these expanded services, policy and regulatory responses with a workforce the same size as two decades ago is simply unrealistic. It ignores how much our nation has grown and changed, and the increased expectations from the community that services will be delivered and policy challenges dealt with.
Coming into government, we set out a clear reform agenda early on. In my first speech, I outlined four fundamental pillars in the area of what we will focus on for public sector reform.
The first was having integrity in anything and everything we do. Second, putting people and business at the centre of our work. The third, being a model employer. And fourth, building the APS’ capability to do its job well. And whilst there is much more to be done – I feel like it's all it's probably a piece of work that's never complete – we have made significant progress against all of these areas.
And to those who care deeply about the APS – and I see many of you in this room, what it does, what it is and who it serves, its independence and its enduring intergenerational responsibilities – I really have been honoured to work with all of you.
Integrity in anything and everything we do
So, to go to our first pillar of reform, integrity. The Robodebt Royal Commission showed us what happens when integrity systems fail. An illegal scheme that saw innocent Australians hunted down by their own government, threatened with jail times for debts they never owed. Robodebt was trumpeted at the time as a $4.8 billion savings measure, but instead the pursuit and illegal persecution of vulnerable citizens delivered a minimum $1.8 billion, bill to the taxpayer.
But Robodebt wasn't just a policy failure. The tragedy of Robodebt was born out of a system where speaking up was discouraged and independence was compromised, where public servants who tried to raise concern found their voices silenced. That's why one of the most significant reforms to the APS in this term, the Public Service Amendment Act, put integrity at the centre of everything we do.
This legislation is enshrined stewardship as a core APS value, recognising public servants as guardians of the public interest, responsible for leaving the service stronger than they found it. This is about building a culture where integrity isn't just a word, it's a part of everyday decision making, where transparency drives better performance, and where our most senior leaders are assessed not just on what they achieve, but how they achieve it, where the independence of the public service is protected with requirements that ministers cannot direct agency heads on employment matters. And where the APS Commissioner, back at the centre of government, quite rightly has the power to investigate Code of Conduct breaches by current and former agency heads, including secretaries.
These reforms matter because integrity isn't optional. It's essential and ongoing to delivering services Australians can trust. But I know that rebuilding trust requires more than just strong frameworks, it requires excellent service delivery. Australians need to know that the APS will be there for them, ready and able to deliver when they need it and what they need.
People and business at the centre of everything we do
And that's where the second pillar comes in, putting people and business at the centre of everything we do. When we talk about service delivery, we're talking about moments that matter in people's lives. A parent awaiting their paid parental leave application to care for their newborn, a veteran seeking support after serving their country, an elderly Australian accessing their pension.
When we came to government, these essential services were not delivering. Veterans could wait over 100 days or even up to two years just for claims to be allocated for processing. Families couldn't get through to Centrelink. But with the extra investment in people, the APS has turned this around.
Today, veterans’ claims are allocated within two weeks.
PPL claims that took 31 days now take just three.
Youth Allowance claims that took 28 days now take 10.
Centrelink and Medicare calls are answered faster.
And these improvements matter now more than ever, with rising cost-of-living pressures, Australians can't afford to wait weeks for support they're entitled to.
But these gains are also fragile, and they can be taken away much quicker than the time it takes to turn the performance around.
So, let me be blunt. A promise to cut 20 per cent of the current public service – or 36,000 public servants – will compromise the work the APS does and the services it delivers. There will be longer wait times for payments, fewer staff to answer calls, reduced capability to protect vulnerable Australians. There will have to be cuts to Defence and border security and biosecurity staff, delays to environmental approvals, making business wait longer. And a return, I imagine, to more expensive consultants and contractors actually doing the core work that can't be pushed away.
As I've mentioned earlier, in Veterans’ Affairs, they've cleared the backlog of 42,000 veterans’ claims, with 97 per cent of them now completed.
The NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission has increased banning orders against dodgy providers by 35 per cent and issued 160 per cent more compliance notices this year. Public servants have doubled the average on time rate for environmental approvals and recently, one large solar farm was approved within 20 working days.
More than 500,000 attempts by cybercriminals have been blocked from using Australian stolen identity documents.
And at Services Australia alone, the 3,000 additional frontline staff have delivered remarkable results in the first year, half a million claims resolved in just 10 weeks, 1.2 million Centrelink claims and Medicare activities processed, and 1.7 million customer calls answered.
And I acknowledge the work that outgoing Minister Bill Shorten has done to drive these improvements by arguing that we need to invest in people to deliver the services, and never forgetting the people who use the services, that they are the priority.
Being a model employer
But these improvements aren't just about having enough staff. They also came about because we were able to attract the right people to want to work and stay in the APS, which is why our third pillar – being a model employer – is crucial to maintaining these improvements. And it is critical to being a contender in the global race for labour and skills.
When we came to government, the APS was struggling to compete for talent. Decades of outsourcing had created a precarious workforce. Pay and conditions varied substantially between agencies and our workforce didn't reflect the diversity of the community it served. We knew that to deliver better services, we needed to fundamentally change how we employ people by starting to create secure jobs with 8,800 public servants now doing the work that was previously outsourced, because you can't build capability when your workforce is constantly changing.
On pay, for the first time since 1995 – so, almost 30 years – we completed centralised bargaining across the APS. That bargaining successfully delivered real wage increases for public servants with an 11.2 per cent pay rise over three years. We've also agreed on 59 common conditions across the service, reducing the fragmentation of pay and conditions that had built up over decades. And through this reform, we've cut pay disparities across APS agencies from an average of 25 per cent to just 13 per cent, with nearly 8,000 employees across 80 agencies who received additional payments to create that greater pay consistency.
But being a model employer means more than just fair pay. It means supporting our people to build rewarding long-term careers whilst balancing their other responsibilities. And that's why all APS agencies are increasing parental leave for both parents to 18 weeks, and why we've introduced consistent, flexible arrangements across work arrangements across the service. This flexible work approach is delivering efficiencies as well, with desk vacancy down and property cost per head also down.
Most importantly, we're building a public service that truly reflects the community it serves. Women have now reached parity at almost every level. Our gender pay gap is just at 4.5 percent, it's less than half the national average and we could abolish it entirely if more men wanted to go and work in that great department of Services Australia. Through our SES 100 initiative, we've increased First Nations leaders from 54 to 85 in just one year and I really thank the APSC for the extraordinary work they have done there. I'm confident we will hit 100 in the first half of 2025.
And we're extending this commitment to diversity in leadership roles to our new APS Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Employment Strategy. Whilst overall, the service broadly reflects the population, with CALD employees making up 25 per cent of the APS at senior levels, the CALD representation drops to just 11 per cent.
This needs to change. Because, as I told the Neurodiverse Community of Practice last week, the APS is at its best when it reflects the full diversity of the community it serves. And the results speak for themselves, with 82 per cent of staff expressing satisfaction with their employment conditions, which is the highest satisfaction rate in years.
Building capability
Which brings me to the fourth and final pillar, building the capability we need to serve all Australians no matter where they live. When we commissioned the Audit of Employment, the results were shocking. For every $4 spent by agencies on departmental purposes, $1 was going to external labour. We weren't just losing money under these arrangements, we were losing the skills and the knowledge that Australians count on.
So today, we are rebalancing the mix of public servants and external labour to rebuild capability. At the same time, we have delivered $4 billion in savings from reduced spending on external labour since coming to government. We’ve almost halved spending on the big firms, reducing it by almost a billion dollars in just two years. And through the Strategic Commissioning Framework, agencies have identified over $500 million of work to bring back in house in 2024-25.
This means that core public service work, like developing cabinet submissions, drafting legislation and leading policy development, can and is being done by public servants again. We're also keeping interesting and important projects in house too, through initiatives like Australian Government Consulting, which so far has delivered 15 engagements including projects in strategic policy and organisational transformation across major departments like the Department of Health and Aged Care and the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations, as well as with smaller agencies like the Mint and the Net Zero Economy Agency.
In just a little over 12 months, the AGC has displaced over an estimated $3.6 million in external consulting spend. And it is growing quickly, starting with 20 staff in its first year, demand has exceeded supply and they are now on track to have 40 staff by the end of their second year. This is important, because the challenges facing Australians are becoming more complex and more interconnected. From climate change to economic transformation, their impacts are felt differently in different communities.
And that's why it's important that we have an APS that is truly national. With staff in 583 locations across Australia, 63 per cent of our workforce is located outside of Canberra, including nearly 23,000 employees in regional areas. In fact, almost three quarters of the new public servants employed as part of our reinvestment are outside Canberra.
So, when 36,000 jobs are threatened with cuts, we know that almost two thirds of them, or around 22,700, would have to be cut from the regions and other state capital cities. Regional APS jobs are important employment bases in regional communities and these public servants bring unique local insights to national challenges. They are a fundamental part of good government and the guarantor of quality services where people live that Australians depend on every day, no matter where they live.
Now, the Opposition has been clear about their plans. I'll give you another quote: “there will be 36,000 public servants that will go.” The Shadow Treasurer describes the recent investments in the APS as “unnecessary spending”. Now, for me, who's been around the tracks for a while, it's the same old lazy playbook. And sure, it's good clickbait, I accept that. And it's easy to run a line on, especially if you drop and do a bit of Canberra-bashing in the grab.
But history has shown with job cuts of the size that are being talked about, we know that it will be the Australian people who pay the price in the end, one way or another. And while there is no doubt that the next six months will be dominated by political debates, including those about the future of the APS, we will continue to press on with the important work of APS reform, because we know the challenges ahead are real, just as the opportunities are, and they will require resolve and leadership and continued investment.
The future
For example, if you just look in the space of AI, it's no longer a question of if, but how AI is adopted into the work of government and business. And we have to make sure that we have a public service capable of rising to this, with a public service that can harness those opportunities to deliver better services and more responsive policy in a way that is safe, responsible and proactive.
We know there are huge opportunities that come with access to more data – and I pay tribute to the work that Dr David Gruen is doing and his team at the ABS – and how we can use that data to better inform policy decisions, and the evaluation of those decisions to make sure we are delivering efficient and effective public policy.
And how do we make sure that we have a public service that attracts the skills and the talent we need for the future? These are big, big dilemmas, and I know a lot of people in the room are working on them. A lot of work is being done to build the workforce the APS needs now and into the future through initiatives like the data, digital and cyber workforce plan, which will be released next year. And that will outline a comprehensive strategy to attract and retain the workforce required to keep up with technological change and growing demand for digital services. There'll be increasing flexibility in the use of merit lists and pools to enable better internal mobility for employees across the APS and maintaining our nationwide license for the Skills Framework for the Information Age, which is helping the APS to better understand the skills needed across digital data, cyber and AI.
And there is plenty more to do to make sure that we have the public service that reflects the Australian community we are here to serve. This means increasing representation of CALD employees at the SES level, continuing the SES 100 on its path to achieving a 100 First Nations employees in SES roles, continuing to support flexible work with appropriate guard rails and a distributed APS, so that we attract people from regional Australia. Supporting people with a disability – who have so much to offer – to join and stay within the work of the Australian public service.
And we still have more to do to strengthen integrity in everything the APS does. We've just completed – well, I should say, the APSC has just completed a consultation process on introducing own motion powers for the APSC Commissioner to investigate alleged Code of Conduct breaches by current and former APS employees, extending APS values to other PGPA bodies, and improving management of post-employment conflicts of interest, to avoid conflicts where senior or specialist people may leave the APS and move into a new role that is directly related to their previous APS employment.
And we've got a bit more to do to work through this feedback and to build a workplace where integrity isn't just aspired to, it's actually fostered, encouraged and modeled.
Now, earlier in my speech, I spoke about how public service touches the lives of Australians at various stages of their lives, from babies to supporting families in crisis, helping young people enter the workforce, preparing for a holiday, or ensuring dignity in retirement.The trust Australians place in their public service shows the real impact of this work. A few weeks ago, Assistant Minister for the Public Service, Patrick Gorman released the Survey of Trust in Australian Public Services, which showed that nearly three in four Australians trust the services they personally use, and more than three quarters are satisfied with the outcomes of their interactions with public servants.
Overall, trust in government services stands at 58 per cent, which is still above the pre-COVID levels. And I can't help but think there's probably a bit of marking down there in relation to politicians in that figure. These numbers tell a powerful story. They tell us that when we invest in our public service, in its people, in its capability and in its integrity, it is able to do a better job of serving the Australian community and that is repaid and acknowledged by that Australian community. Over the past two years, APS employees have shown exactly what those investments and numbers mean. You've cut wait times for critical payments, you've improved supports for vulnerable Australians, you've delivered better services in communities right across our nation.
And this success belongs to each and every one of you here today and watching online. Your dedication, your professionalism and your unwavering commitment to serve the Australian people makes our country a better place. The trust that Australians have in their public service is built on the work that you do each day in communities around the country, and it's built on thousands of interactions when you've been there for Australians when they need it most. When I look at everything that the APS has achieved over the past two years, I honestly couldn't be prouder to serve as your minister.
I know that the APS will be front and centre at the next election campaign, not by choice, but by decisions of others. And as the APS rightly stays silent on these matters, as minister, I do stand ready to defend what has been achieved to date, but could so easily be taken away. Not just because I'm the minister, but because I believe it truly matters. A strong, independent and capable APS is worth fighting for and I'm not going to sit by and allow a lazy, arrogant and reckless anti-APS campaign to be waged without a strong rebuttal.
The Albanese Government has always understood that delivering for Australians requires good government, and good government needs a strong, independent public service. That's why we prioritised, from day one, a commitment to rebuild the APS.
We will always back a strong public service so that we can continue building a better future for all Australians.
Thank you very much.