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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-03-26 Daily Xml
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PUBLIC SECTOR BILL

Second Reading

Adjourned debate on second reading.

(Continued from 24 March 2009. Page 1639.)

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (16:21): In order to assist government business, I will make a start on my speech today, but I will seek leave to conclude my remarks at a later date. I have major problems with what is happening with this bill. I will go into technical detail at the next opportunity. To put my thoughts on the public record, I am surprised about it. I will continue to back the government on legislation, particularly legislation where I believe it has it right (and many times already since I have been privileged to be in this place I have done that) and where I know that the government has what it and all governments call a mandate. However, I do not believe there is any mandate for this draconian Public Sector Bill that has been put before the parliament.

It is an interesting bill to come from a Labor government; I would not be surprised if a Liberal government put up some parts of this bill, but in fairness I understand that the Liberal opposition will put forward a series of amendments as it has problems with this bill, also. When one puts that into context one asks, 'What is driving the government to do this?' From the day the government got in it has always surprised me with its approach to the public sector.

In trying to paint the picture that I wish to paint, before I came into parliament I had a different understanding and lack of appreciation of what the Public Service did or delivered. That was understandable when I reflect because, as a family farmer and in private business, most of the time you had the public sector either writing to you or calling on you and it was always a tax, increased charges, an impost, a direction or something like that, so you did not have the chance to work with Public Service people to the extent that you do once you have a different career path or, in my case, once I came into the parliament.

From the very time I came into this place I started to realise the real importance of the public sector and how those people working there, by and large—there are always exceptions to the rule, particularly with 70,000 to 80,000 people—are good, committed South Australian people who perform their work within the requirements of the Public Sector Management Act and within the criteria of 'without fear or favour' and on behalf of the South Australian community as public servants.

I have to say that there is an enormous differential between the public and the private sectors. Family First, as a party, has a lot of members in the private sector, just as I am outside the parliament. I want to put this on the public record, because a lot of our members will see my remarks when they receive our newsletter: you need to see the difference between the private sector and the public sector. Yes, we need performance indicators, efficiencies, targets, achievements, and inputs and outputs—you need that in the public sector and you need it in the private sector.

However, the public sector is there for the public; it is not there for the profit requirements of the private sector. By the way, it is not funded by government; it is funded by taxpayers to provide services, facilities and resources to South Australian citizens. It is not the same as the private sector. I want to clearly and (hopefully) articulately put that on the record. They have a different role. There are budget requirements and pressures, with the necessity to be going through budget processes, having meetings and planning strategies with CEOs and other senior management people within a portfolio area to get better outcomes, more rapid achievement of government policy and, generally, more efficiency within the Public Service.

I was part of that when I was a minister as, indeed, the current ministers are a part of it. That is the proper business of government and ministers and, within reason, those things have to occur. The trade-off for that occurs through enterprise agreements, whereby people might trade off some rights they have for a pay rise, or they might agree to accepting other efficiency-gaining initiatives for that pay rise. That is all healthy, and I am not against it: I want to make that clear.

However, what I see as being incredibly unhealthy is the practice of now allowing CEOs to be basically hirers and firers in the Public Service. None of my children work in the Public Service but I would be proud if they did—very proud. In fact, I have encouraged the girls to consider the Public Service as a career. I have done that for three reasons, and one is that there are some pretty good rewards for input when you are a public servant delivering services for your community. There is that part of it; there is reward for effort, and there are good empathy opportunities there.

The second reason why I encourage them is not because of pay structures, particularly if you are in a lower ASO level. It is different if you are a CEO; I would not mind one of those CEO pay positions, and I am sure that some of my colleagues would like that, too. However, the reason why I have encouraged them is that you have always been able to find career paths and opportunities through the Public Service where, if you have the capacity and the commitment, you can, without fear or favour—and that is what I want to reinforce—have a very good career path through the Public Service.

The hardest part, as I said to my oldest daughter, is getting in there. She has already tried once. She is a smart, young, highly-qualified woman (I am a bit biased) but, so far, she has met the closed door–and that happens. However, I have told her to continue trying. I said, 'Once you get in there, if you perform you can go anywhere in the Public Service.'

This bill will wreck all that because, if you happen to have a situation where, without fear or favour, you are a loyal public servant within the act and you are delivering as you believe and have been trained and instructed to deliver, and you tread on the toes of someone, you might be treading water for the next 20 or 30 years, and I will have more to say about why that is.

I believe there is enough nepotism in some of the senior ranks of departments right now. In fact, I have been very concerned about some of the nepotism. One of the problems is that, with a government that has been in office for a while, there is obviously a situation where government is able to choose the CEOs, and the ones who have been a pain in the backside, you flick them or you have paid them out.

In fact, with those who have really annoyed you, you actually pay them out straight away or you have a target before you come into government whereby there are several CEOs who you want to flick because they are the wrong colour for you, they are a pain in the backside and they are going to challenge you.

So, even if that costs you several million dollars, you flick them in the first few months and probably the first few weeks after you take office. I am well aware of one person who was flicked, and I could have told them that that would be the case with the incoming government because they were so loose with the message on it. I, as a minister, knew that that person was gone.

The sad part about that is that that person was probably one of the best CEOs and has gone elsewhere in Australia and is still delivering. When you have been in government for a while, you choose all the people around you in the senior positions, by and large, and you get people to whom you owe favours for their effort into some fairly senior positions.

They are possible scenarios that can occur. Any government or any major party can deny that, but I would challenge them on it for sure because I know that it happens. Then, when you become a minister and you have been a minister for quite a while, you start to lose touch with the rank and file within departments. You rely more and more on the people you have put in there and the team that has been built up around them.

Parallel to that is the CEO who has been able to develop the headnodders in and around him or her. They lose touch more and more with the rank and file of the Public Service, too, or they become arrogant and dictatorial towards some public servants who might raise their head every now and again and say, 'Well, I don't believe this is right' or 'That is not what I understand I should be doing' or they do something else to offend, and they are done over.

That happens to an extent now and it is reasonably hard to control, but if we pass this bill it will be very easy for the senior management group within the various departments. It will be good for ministers, too—wink, wink; nod, nod! 'What did that person do making a comment like that on this piece of material or policy?' or 'How dare that person say anything in the media or ring up the radio!'

They will have a job done on them, and that job will potentially not only undo that person's career and opportunity in the future but it will undo opportunities for their family. Some of your brightest and best, I believe, will be done over by this because we already have a problem in Australia.

In America, if you get a tall poppy, they are encouraged; they are embraced. The CEOs are smart enough in America that, if they can see a potential tall poppy who can make them look better, they embrace those people and they look better and brighter, too, because they lift their performance outcomes in the public service or they lift the profit in the private sector. Then they tell the board, the panel, the minister or whoever is going to give them a $350,000 a year CEO position instead of the $300,000 CEO position. Here, however, you get in a comfort zone, and you get that nepotism around you and you see that someone has potential to be a risk. They are a risk to your position, or your middle management position, if you have it even more broadly expanded.

I do not know how far this bill will go to 'do over' some good people if they tread on their toes. Do you know what will happen as a result of this? The day this bill passes, we will start to see it in respect of the goodwill. Mark my words: there is a lot of goodwill in the rank and file of the Public Service, and I know that from when I was under pressure as a minister. It used to happen on a Thursday, ironically, and it would be happening with this government, too. For example, you would go to executive council and you might have to do just a small amount of general cabinet business. There would be a red tag from the Premier's office, or there would be a blue tag from another department through another minister. You would be required to have legislation, or whatever the government needed, fixed and ready for cabinet on Monday.

You would go back to your office and call your CEO and hit the panic button. Guess what would happen then? As a minister you would head off out into your electorate on the Friday and Saturday, and you might go out into your electorate on Sunday, or you might actually have a day off with your family. But do you know what would happen quite often? Rank and file public servants would be working. In my experience, if you buy them a couple of pizzas through the proper and open processes by getting one of the senior managers to buy them pizzas or a beer, they will work their backsides off for you, and their families would be put out. Are they going to do that when they are being done over? I do not think so.

We have a situation at the moment where this government, one way or another, is going to sack—it might be sacking with a package, but it is still sacking—1,600 public servants. I wonder what the government will do if they get back into government. However, at the moment, they are on the public record for 1,600. The government is then going to expect better and better performance from those public servants who are left. There is only so far that you can take for granted a person's goodwill. I would have thought the government understood that, because some government members came up through the Public Service.

When you talk to people it is not always about the money. Most of the time it is about job satisfaction and security; it is about a career path and growing an opportunity to use your God given gifts and talents in the area you have chosen to spend the 40 years of your working life. However, you can break a person's heart and spirit to the point where they say, 'Well, stuff this, it's all too hard.' That is what this bill will do. Whether or not this government stays in office or whether the next government is of a different colour, it will have less goodwill from a Public Service which, until now, has always shown goodwill. How many strikes, by and large, have there been by Public Service employees over the past six or eight years? To be fair, I do not think there have been a lot of mass strikes. We often hear the Premier talk about that fact.

There have been a lot of demands for efficiency gains, and a lot of public servants have really struggled to get pay increases equivalent to the private sector. I am saying all this as a proud private sector person, someone who was born and bred in the private sector, but I have had the privilege of seeing how important the Public Service is to us in its commitment and its service delivery to the community. A lot of the work done by the Public Service is not transparent. You cannot grab hold of it and say, 'This is what the Public Service delivers.' That was always one of the problems that we had when we started to set up budgets with performance outcomes.

I cite as an example the police. Police are para public servants, but they deliver a public service. When we looked at enterprise agreements I would struggle with the area of police more than any other area or portfolio that I held because, if police are out there and there is a presence, how can you quantify what that does for communities? You cannot. You can go to a shop and put a person into retail, ring the till at the end of the night so that you know it is starting at zero in the morning, and at the end of the day look at the sales and find out that that particular shop assistant sold $7,500 worth of goods.

You can quantify that, but you cannot quantify a lot of what the Public Service delivers. Like a lot of things, much of it is taken for granted because it is a situation where we are used to those services and are not aware of them until they are no longer there. I fear that one of the key parts of those services, which is goodwill from the public servants, will be dramatically undermined—and I am happy to put on the public record that I would not blame them for that if this bill passes in its present form. There is more I would like to say about this matter, but at this point I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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