This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The government has announced a review of the federal public service that has sparked concerns it is preparing to double down on plans to outsource jobs.

The review – announced on Friday by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the minister assisting on the public service, Kelly O’Dwyer – will be led by David Thodey, the former chief executive of Telstra and current chair of the CSIRO science research agency.

The panel includes a number of senior private sector appointees including Maile Carnegie, the digital banking group executive at ANZ and Alison Watkins, the group managing director of Coca-Cola Amatil who is also a board member of the Business Council of Australia.

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The other appointees are Gordon de Brouwer, the former secretary of the environment and energy department, and academics Glyn Davis, the vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne and Belinda Hutchinson, the chancellor of the University of Sydney.

In a statement, Turnbull and O’Dwyer said the Australian Public Service “must be apolitical, professional and efficient”.

“It needs to drive policy and implementation, using technology and data to deliver for the Australian community,” they said.

They cited the fact the fundamentals of the public sector “reflect the outcomes of a royal commission held back in the mid 1970s”.

“It is therefore timely to examine the capability, culture and operating model of the APS, to ensure it is equipped to engage with the key policy, service delivery and regulatory issues of the day.”

The review has broad terms of reference which include:

“driving innovation and productivity in the economy”

delivering high-quality policy advice, services and oversight

tackling challenges in collaboration with citizens, business and the community

managing trade and security interests

“improving citizens’ experience of government”; and

acquiring and maintaining the necessary skills and expertise to fulfil its responsibilities.

The Community and Public Sector Union is concerned the number of private-sector appointees to the review indicates the government’s tendency is to increase contracting out.

It has raised concerns that privatising call centres for government services including the National Disability Insurance Scheme, home affairs and Centrelink have cut public sector jobs and reduced government control of citizens’ information.

The shadow assistant treasurer, Andrew Leigh, said Labor had increased the public service from 155,087 in 2007 to 166,139 in 2013 but “the Coalition quickly got to slashing it”.

“Tony Abbott pledged to cut 12,000 jobs from the public [service], but as of January, 14,044 people have lost their jobs,” he said.

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The shadow finance minister, Jim Chalmers, said the review must not be “a smokescreen to slash frontline services further, like the cuts we’ve seen at Medicare and Centrelink recently”. He complained that the opposition was not consulted on the review.

“The Liberals have hollowed out the APS and imposed arbitrary caps, which have seen a blowout in spending and consultants and labour-hire and poor morale among public servants,” Chalmers said.

In 2014 the Abbott government’s Commission of Audit found that middle managers in the public service had “comparatively few” people reporting to them, but did not recommend specific targets to correct this.



It noted since the 1980s the public service had been constrained by “efficiency dividends” which it said were a “blunt instrument” to achieve budget savings that resulted in “significant reductions in funding, requiring voluntary and, in some cases, forced redundancies”.

The joint committee of public accounts and audit has been examining the public service’s use of contractors including the fact that just four consultancy firms have won $39.4bn in government contracts over the last five years.

Ahead of the 2018 budget, the Community and Public Sector Union national secretary, Nadine Flood, wrote to the government calling for it to abandon the average staffing level cap introduced under Abbott.

“The premise of the cap is to keep the commonwealth public sector at its size when former prime minister John Howard was ditched by voters in 2007,” she said.

“But the reality is it’s all smoke and mirrors, with the government in reality paying more and receiving less through its ballooning use of consultants, contractors and labour hire.”