OLIVER PETERSON, HOST: The Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese and the Member for Perth is Patrick Gorman, who joins me live on 6PR today. G'day, Patrick.
PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER AND ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE: G'day, Oly. Good to be with you and your listeners.
PETERSON: Yeah, good to have you on the programme. Any information you've got about this fire currently burning in Kings Park? It is obviously part of your electorate.
GORMAN: It is part of my electorate. I've obviously got the same advice that the Department of Fire and Emergency Services has given to all of us, which is it's a 'Watch and Act.' Stay away from the area and the Park is closed. It's pretty concerning. Like pretty much anyone in my electorate, you can see the streams of smoke going up into the sky and obviously many people are there pretty much every day of the week. So, people are hoping that what we see is that there's less damage than what it looks like at the moment.
PETERSON: Yeah, Five scrub fires as well, Patrick, it does sound like - my words, not official words - yeah, that does sound like it could be arson if there are five scrub fires being ignited just before three o'clock.
GORMAN: Yeah, well, I obviously I'm not going to jump to conclusions. But I note that I've seen reports that there is the Arson Squad there, looking at that. What can you say to that stupidity, wherever it occurs? And any arsonist activity is too much. But right now, I think we just hope that they can get it under control quickly. And without either destroying any of the parts of the Park we love, or indeed the habitat for the native animals that actually help keep our environment here in Perth healthy and lively.
PETERSON: Yeah, well said. Now today, both yourself and the Minister for Finance, Katy Gallagher, have released some new instructions for the public service to limit the use of contractors and consultants. Is this a response to the PwC tax scandal?
GORMAN: Well, it's a response to sort of what we've seen over about 10 years of just more and more core government work being pushed out of the public service on to contractors and consultants. There's the example that you mentioned in PwC getting lots of work. But there's a lot of other examples where we've seen, what we see as the core work of the public service - that is preparing policy advice, writing submissions for Cabinet, drafting legislation - all those things should be done by public servants, not consultants. And so we're just really going to clamp down on this and give clear instructions to the heads of public service agencies, that this is work that is done for the taxpayers, and it should be done by people who only have the taxpayer interest at heart. And that is the public service.
PETERSON: Has it been outsourced before? Because you simply just didn't have, or the public service just didn't have the people capable of doing it, Patrick? Does it mean you're gonna have to boost the Public Service workforce?
GORMAN: Well, we're already paying for this work to be done. I think that's the important thing for your listeners to understand. We now are having a question about well, 'who is the most appropriate person to be doing the work?' And I think what you want is that long-term capability within the public service. So that they can give the best advice to myself, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Finance, to make the best decisions, and people who are there as long-term public servants with lots of corporate knowledge, so we get the right sort of decisions. And to get more experience. Because obviously, it's a huge part of the workforce, even here, Oly, in Western Australia, there's about almost eight thousand Commonwealth Public Servants here in the West. So we're talking big numbers of people who are our friends, family and neighbours, we want to back them and back the work they do. And that means having an independent, apolitical, professional public service that can give us advice, whatever the world throws at us.
PETERSON: So why do you think so much was outsourced? And obviously, you've only come to government in the last year and a bit, Patrick, but then why did the former government decide to outsource so much of this work?
GORMAN: What I saw under the former government was that, at times, I don't think they had the level of respect for the public service, and they thought they could get better advice by going to the private sector or elsewhere. What I've seen is actually that that just cost billions and billions of dollars, and didn't always get us great outcomes. We've got big policy challenges for this country, in everything from education, making sure we get the right skills mix and get people the skills we need. We've got challenges when it comes to the strategic environment we find ourselves in. I just think we need professional apolitical public servants doing that work. Because what we have seen is that the capability of the public service has been a bit hollowed out. And I don't think taxpayers are getting the best value for money as a result. And that's the other part of this; is we actually know that what we've seen time and time again is that contracting out doesn't always give you a better outcome when it comes to the bottom line.
PETERSON: Patrick Gorman, thanks for your time today. The Member for Perth and Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister.