Commissioner for Public Sector Employment

Mr MARSHALL (Dunstan—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): Supplementary, sir.

The SPEAKER: Supplementary.

Mr MARSHALL: Can the minister explain why one of the most senior positions in the government, the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, was not publicly advertised?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (14:09): It might help those opposite if I explain the process that we have been going through in the public sector. Before the election, we not only released a policy document, called 'A modern government', but also made a commitment to bring together three areas within the public sector to merge them into one.

We then won the election and formed government and undertook a review of that process of how the merger would work and how the savings would be achieved. Once we had determined that the merger would definitely occur, one of the people who ran one of the three areas was appointed to run the combined office—and that was Ms Ranieri. Obviously a period of time then elapsed between that and the replacement of Mr Warren McCann as previous commissioner and during that time a process was undertaken.

There was no requirement to undergo a process; however, it was my decision both to seek advice and to follow that advice on the best way to ensure that the appointment was made with merit in recommending to the Governor, and so that is what we did.