Latest news with #AustralianPublicServiceCommission
Sydney Morning Herald
01-07-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Anti-corruption body wastes time with a triviality
On the eve of its second birthday, the National Anti-Corruption Commission was able to celebrate by announcing its first finding of misconduct against a public official. But do not get excited – it is pretty low-level stuff: a senior public servant (their name has been concealed) inappropriately placed her sister's fiance into a job. This is pretty ordinary work, and not an especially spectacular start for Australia's premier anti-corruption body. It is the kind of matter commonly dealt with by the Australian Public Service Commission, not an anti-corruption body. It really looks well beneath the role of the NACC. There is real work to be done, but the NACC is distracted by dealing with comparative trivialities. The first two years of the NACC have been a real disappointment. There is negative feel to it, as though the NACC's leadership team are unwilling to flex their muscles. Even the decision to conceal the names of those involved in this incident is puzzling – they did wrong, so why not expose them? The NACC emphasised that it regarded the matter as serious and pointed out that the principal miscreant was in a senior position. The evidence collected showed the breach was deliberate and flagrant. It was a misuse of public power, a misallocation of public money, and it meant that a person who deserved to get the job missed out. Yet the NACC seems to be more concerned to protect the wrongdoers than to expose the wrongdoing. This is a dispiriting position to be adopted by the agency charged with overseeing transparency and accountability in the public sector. The public is denied transparency; those breaking the rules escape accountability. Loading We should not be surprised. Everything we have seen so far from the NACC suggests it is not up to the task of tackling serious corruption. The NACC's decision not even to open an investigation into the six persons referred to it by the Robo-debt royal commission was an early sign that something was not right. That decision, which was an awful error, needed to be corrected by Gail Furness SC, the statutory inspector of the NACC. Ms Furness' report exposed that the NACC commissioner himself was unable to manage a basic conflict of interest – yet he is the person to whom public officials should turn to get guidance on their conflicts of interest. That misjudgment by the NACC commissioner led to a finding of 'officer misconduct' on his part – so, ironically, the first finding of misconduct about the NACC was a finding against the NACC.
The Age
01-07-2025
- Politics
- The Age
Anti-corruption body wastes time with a triviality
On the eve of its second birthday, the National Anti-Corruption Commission was able to celebrate by announcing its first finding of misconduct against a public official. But do not get excited – it is pretty low-level stuff: a senior public servant (their name has been concealed) inappropriately placed her sister's fiance into a job. This is pretty ordinary work, and not an especially spectacular start for Australia's premier anti-corruption body. It is the kind of matter commonly dealt with by the Australian Public Service Commission, not an anti-corruption body. It really looks well beneath the role of the NACC. There is real work to be done, but the NACC is distracted by dealing with comparative trivialities. The first two years of the NACC have been a real disappointment. There is negative feel to it, as though the NACC's leadership team are unwilling to flex their muscles. Even the decision to conceal the names of those involved in this incident is puzzling – they did wrong, so why not expose them? The NACC emphasised that it regarded the matter as serious and pointed out that the principal miscreant was in a senior position. The evidence collected showed the breach was deliberate and flagrant. It was a misuse of public power, a misallocation of public money, and it meant that a person who deserved to get the job missed out. Yet the NACC seems to be more concerned to protect the wrongdoers than to expose the wrongdoing. This is a dispiriting position to be adopted by the agency charged with overseeing transparency and accountability in the public sector. The public is denied transparency; those breaking the rules escape accountability. Loading We should not be surprised. Everything we have seen so far from the NACC suggests it is not up to the task of tackling serious corruption. The NACC's decision not even to open an investigation into the six persons referred to it by the Robo-debt royal commission was an early sign that something was not right. That decision, which was an awful error, needed to be corrected by Gail Furness SC, the statutory inspector of the NACC. Ms Furness' report exposed that the NACC commissioner himself was unable to manage a basic conflict of interest – yet he is the person to whom public officials should turn to get guidance on their conflicts of interest. That misjudgment by the NACC commissioner led to a finding of 'officer misconduct' on his part – so, ironically, the first finding of misconduct about the NACC was a finding against the NACC.
The Guardian
02-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Coalition proposes ‘migrating' public servants to regions in last-minute tweak to plan to slash workforce
Just a day out from the federal election, the Coalition has again amended its policy on cutting the public service, raising the prospect of staff being 'migrated' across the country to fill roles in regional areas. Voters might expect to have a clear understanding by now of how a Liberal-National government would manage the nation's public service. More than 7.5 million people have already cast a ballot ahead of Saturday's poll, and Peter Dutton's policy costings are public. But in a final pitch to voters on Friday, the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, revealed a new element of the plan. He said a Dutton government would 'migrate' workers as he confirmed the Coalition's cuts would be 'focused on Canberra'. 'Natural attrition happens everywhere, but we'll move people around appropriately to meet the needs of regional areas and frontline services,' Taylor said. 'We will migrate people around to make sure that we keep our numbers where they are in regional areas.' Taylor released a final set of budget numbers on Thursday, including details on the Coalition plan to slash the federal workforce by 41,000 positions over five years. Designed to achieve budget savings worth $17.2bn, the cuts would come from Canberra-based jobs and be delivered through a hiring freeze and natural attrition, with 5,000 vacant positions left unfilled. The Coalition has said the cuts would exclude defence and security agencies, as well as 'frontline services'. Dutton initially promised to immediately reverse 41,000 hirings but was forced to abandon that pledge following a backlash. Labor and the Coalition do not agree on the starting figure for the size of the bureaucracy. The government cites Australian Public Service Commission figures showing about 70,000 employees nationally. Taylor and Jane Hume, the opposition's public service spokesperson, use a figure of 110,000, taken from Australian Bureau of Statistics, which includes Defence personnel. The suggestion of moving jobs out of Canberra is reminiscent of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government's decentralisation agenda, when a National party push saw public service jobs and agencies, including the agricultural and veterinary chemical regulator, relocated to regional areas. The Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority has suffered from serious cultural and workforce issues since being relocated to former minister Barnaby Joyce's electorate of New England in 2016. Earlier this month, Joyce said the Coalition should restart decentralisation efforts if it won the election. Asked about whether attrition from jobs in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide would fit into the Coalition's current plan, Taylor said services would be maintained 'outside of Canberra'. Analysis by Guardian Australia shows the Coalition would not be able to downsize the public service without cutting frontline, defence and national security-related jobs. APSC figures show 11,782 staff left the federal bureaucracy in 2024, with 6,665, or 57%, coming from the home affairs and defence departments, the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia. The majority of staff leaving each year come from frontline or essential jobs, in part because the four agencies make up 48% of the total workforce. The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, on Friday repeated comparisons to former Queensland premier Campbell Newman's government. About 14,000 public servants were sacked in the state between 2012 and 2015. Labor believes Newman's tumultuous one term in office remains toxic in the minds of voters. Taylor on Friday insisted the Coalition's plan had been clear from the start.
The Guardian
24-04-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Albanese condemns Dutton's pledge for mass public service cuts ‘only in Canberra'
Peter Dutton has pledged to cut almost two-thirds of Canberra's federal public servants if elected, in a move Anthony Albanese has slammed as 'outrageous'. In a testy press conference in Tasmania on Thursday morning, the opposition leader batted away questions about not visiting a single proposed nuclear power station site, as well as about-faces on immigration and tax breaks for electric vehicles. But a question levelled at Dutton about how many public service jobs would be cut in Tasmania unravelled the Coalition's policy to crack down on 'government efficiency'. Dutton said the opposition's plan to downsize the public service by 41,000 jobs by 2030 via attrition would only apply to Canberra-based roles, with 'none' being slashed outside the capital territory. 'We've been clear … we're not reducing the public service – only in Canberra. We've been very clear about that from day one,' he said. The national capital employs almost 70,000 federal bureaucrats, according to the Australian Public Service Commission's figures. Under Labor's most recent federal budget, that number is projected to rise further as the Albanese government expands the workforce to 213,439 roles over 2025-26. Speaking in Perth on Thursday, Albanese said the comments showed Dutton was 'not ready for government'. 'Asio, the Australian Signals Directorate, all of our security and intelligence agencies – where does Peter Dutton think they are based? They are based in Canberra, in our national capital,' he said. 'The Department of Defence. Do they think that the CDF [chief of defence force] and the senior defence leadership in this country aren't based at Russell [defence's administrative headquarters] in Canberra? Where does he think they are?' Dutton accused Labor of a 'scare campaign' after the government warned earlier this week that whole departments and agencies could close if the plan went ahead. More than 40,000 staff are employed across just 10 agencies in Canberra. Those include the defence department – Canberra's biggest employer, with more 9,000 jobs – and the home affairs department, with 5,500 roles. Services Australia, which processes income support payments, has almost 4,500 staff in its ACT offices, with the health, industry and foreign affairs departments also employing thousands of staff. Earlier in the Thursday press conference, Dutton also conceded the Coalition's proposal to establish a nuclear power policy, with seven reactors placed around the country, might not be popular among voters. The opposition leader's campaign has yet to stop at one of the proposed sites, with his closest visits in the Hunter and south-west Western Australian regions so far steering at least 50km clear of the identified power stations. 'We made a tough decision, not for political vote-winning exercises, but for what is in the best interest of our country in relation to nuclear power,' Dutton said. 'It is a proven technology accepted by the prime minister in relation to nuclear submarines and, as you know, the prime minister is not too far from Lucas Heights [home to a nuclear medicine facility]. 'He sleeps well at night and he wants to whisper under his breath about safety and all the rest of it but he has never accepted the challenge for a debate in six months in relation to nuclear.'
