The Abbott government imposed the freeze soon after winning government late last year with departments told they could hire new staff but only for "critical" or specialist jobs. Do you know more? Send your confidential tips to ps@canberratimes.com.au Under the rules of the freeze agencies must demonstrate to the Australian Public Service Commission that they have given existing staff every opportunity to apply for vacant jobs before hiring outsiders. But according to recruitment industry sources in the capital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, the most popular way to beat the freeze is for a department to hire a recruitment firm to advertise for the worker they want, specifying the job is available on an "S. 26 transfer". Under Section 26 of the Public Service Act, a department can hire from another agency, even bringing a bureaucrat across on a higher classification, without having to ask permission from the Public Service Commission.

In some cases in the past year, there has been an "understanding" between the transferee and their new boss that they will be expected to perform higher duties, and receive higher duty pay. Some senior jobs have been filled or advertised via section 26 this year, including that of head of human resources at the Australian Electoral Commission at an executive level two classification. The Public Service Commission keeps a record of section 26 transfers between departments, but a spokeswoman for the commission said the most recent data available was from December 2013. Another way for bosses to hire new people is known in the recruitment industry as "position stacking" where a 12-month role will be created with the job's occupant sliding into a "new" position, with a different title and a new contract after the initial period expires. The arrangement allows departments to bypass the Australian Public Service Employment Data (APSED) reporting requirements, but the commission's spokeswoman said she had never heard of "position stacking".

Another way to beat the freeze is the "repurposing" of old notional jobs hanging around on departmental databases, one industry insider said. "It doesn't show that you're recruiting if you take an old position that's already been created at a certain level and then you just move it around and re-purpose it," the recruitment specialist said. "It looks like you're making internal changes within your organisation when you report, you're under the radar, but you get to do what you want to do. "Everybody knows about this in the HR community." There is a widespread belief in the private sector in Canberra that the Public Service Commission has been "overwhelmed" by the task of trying to keep tabs on the hiring activities of 117 agencies employing 165,000 people.

"They put a team of three people on it, one of them was a part-timer and they got smashed," one recruiter told The Canberra Times. The commission declined to comment on the number of its workers monitoring recruitment activities and quoted its own website's information on section 26 transfers. "Section 26 of the Public Service Act 1999 facilitates the voluntary movement of employees between APS agencies," the spokeswoman said. "This provision applies in a number of circumstances and is frequently used."