This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Thousands of public servants want to quit Peter Dutton’s home affairs department, with a new report finding staff are suffering low morale, poor engagement and high levels of bullying and harassment.

The annual employee census, which gathered information from almost 10,000 workers in the mega department, has ranked the Department of Home Affairs as the worst agency for staff engagement across the Australian public service.

Across all 97 APS agencies that were surveyed, the department ranked last for engagement, 94 for wellbeing and 91 for innovation.

Only about half of home affairs employees believe their direct executive managers are of high quality, which while a slight improvement compared to 2018, remains 13% lower than the public service overall.

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Workers are scathing of the senior leadership across the agency as a whole, with 40% saying their senior executives are not “seen in action” and only 35% judging them to be of high quality.

The snapshot of unhappiness pervading the department is translating to people wanting to leave, with almost 40% of people surveyed – about 3,500 people – admitting they had applied for a job outside the department in the past 12 months and 36% of respondents wanting to leave the department in the next 12 months.

Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, said the report card “lays bare Peter Dutton’s incompetence, failure to lead his department and inability to adequately support staff at the frontline of serving and protecting Australia’s borders and national security”.

“It is clear the climate of harassment, bullying, poor communication, substandard leadership and lacking resources is pervasive in Peter Dutton’s department – the department that is charged with keeping Australia safe, while also welcoming new migrants and visitors to our country,” Keneally said.

“It is clear that this poisonous culture is resulting in poor outcomes, with blowouts in bridging visas, airplane arrivals claiming asylum and people waiting to pledge citizenship to Australia all spiralling out of control all because of Mr Dutton’s incompetence.”

Keneally said that if the results were replicated in the private sector, a chairman or chief executive would “hang their heads in shame”.

The survey also found that only 71% of staff believed the agency “actively encourages ethical behaviour by all of its employees”.

Almost 20% also reported they had experienced discrimination on the basis of background or personal characteristic, more than in other agencies, with gender, age and caring responsibilities listed as the three highest responses.

Bullying and harassment is also more prevalent in the department compared to other areas of the public service, with 17% reporting harassment and bullying, 55% of which was verbal abuse, including “offensive language, derogatory remarks, shouting and screaming”, and 44% listed as interference, including sabotage.

About 5% of people claim to have witnessed corruption, predominantly cronyism, acting with a conflict of interest or nepotism.

In questions relating directly to the function of the Department of Home Affairs, about 25% of people did not support the statement that they understood “the purpose of the Home Affairs Portfolio”, while less than half said the agency engaged sufficiently “so that I understand our direction”.

Dutton’s office did not respond to Guardian Australia’s request for comment on the survey findings.