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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-04 Daily Xml
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Public Sector Employees

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. K.J. Maher:

1. That a select committee of the Legislative Council be established to inquire into and report on—

(a) issues relating to the employment, termination, redeployment or placement of public sector employees following the 2018 state election;

(b) the adequacy of existing structures and policies to ensure the independence of the Public Service is maintained;

(c) any influence or direction from ministers or members of parliament in relation to the employment, termination, redeployment or placement of public sector employees following the 2018 state election; and

(d) any related matter.

2. That standing order 389 be so far suspended as to enable the chairperson of the committee to have a deliberative vote only.

3. That this council permits the select committee to authorise the disclosure or publication, as it sees fit, of any evidence or documents presented to the committee prior to such evidence being presented to the council.

4. That standing order 396 be suspended to enable strangers to be admitted when the select committee is examining witnesses unless the committee otherwise resolves, but they shall be excluded when the committee is deliberating.

(Continued from 20 June 2018.)

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (17:00): I rise to speak to this motion. The subject matter of it has been traversed at some length during question time in this house and in question time in the House of Assembly; as I am advised, during hearings of the Budget and Finance Committee; and, in the public arena as well, so I do not intend to speak at length in outlining very strongly the government's opposition to this particular motion.

The essential contention in relation to this issue has not been made out by the Leader of the Opposition, or indeed any member of the Labor Party, in relation to any unlawful activity by either the Premier or any member of the government. They have produced no evidence to that effect and therefore the motion, in our view, should fail simply on those grounds alone. To establish a select committee solid evidence should be produced to demonstrate the need for it, solid evidence produced to indicate that someone has done something unlawful or improper in relation to appointment procedures within the public sector.

As was outlined by the then opposition and now the government, the new government was comprehensively elected on a partial mandate of trying to clean up the politicisation of the public sector by the former Labor government. The hypocrisy that reeks from this particular motion, coming from former ministers and representatives of a party that were recently in government, who treated sections of the Public Service and their departments as political playthings, is self-evident not only to the new government but also, I might say, to many respected members of the public sector and the Public Service who are aware of what went on prior to the election.

As I outlined during a question time debate some weeks ago, the former Labor Party treated the State Administration Centre, or the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, as the Victoria Square sub-branch of the Labor Party. That is how grotesque they were in relation to politicisation of senior level appointments within the public sector in Premier and Cabinet.

As I indicated on that particular occasion, there is one set of positions that premiers in particular, Labor and Liberal, do have the power to directly appoint if they so choose, and that is the position of chief executive officer of government departments and agencies. Whilst I had no great love for Messrs Don Russell and Michael Deegan, who were known Labor Party fellow travellers from interstate, it was within the prerogative of the former premier to appoint people of that particular calibre and background to the position of chief executive officer of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet and the Department of Planning, Transport and Infrastructure.

Prior to that, Kym Winter-Dewhirst, another former staffer, was appointed as CEO of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet. Whilst they were not decisions that I would have taken, or we would have taken, they were, nevertheless, within the accepted conventions of the appointments of public servants within the public sector, and that is that the Premier does have the power if he so chooses. He can go through a merit-based selection process if he chooses; he can direct appoint if he chooses. They are decisions for him to take and for the new Premier to take in relation to chief executive officers.

The grotesque politicisation of the public sector under the former government was evident not at that level but at the levels beneath that. In the Department of the Premier and Cabinet I would instance people like—and they would take no criticism of this—Mr Rik Morris, Mr Paul Flanagan and a range of other appointees who are former ministerial staffers and Labor Party supporters who were appointed, in some cases by direct appointment and in other cases through merit-based selection, to senior executive positions within that department.

That is what appalled so many long-serving public servants who had been loyal public servants to both former Liberal and Labor governments—and given there has not been a Liberal government for 16 years, that shows how long some of them had been in the public sector. I met with a number of them who were, in some cases, sacked on a Monday morning without ever having met the new Labor-appointed chief executive officer. Someone had drawn up a hit list within the department and the new chief executive officer came in and knee-capped them on the Monday morning. They never met the chief executive officer; in some cases there was a delegated senior officer who met with the senior public servant, handed them an orange envelope with their termination provisions, and said, 'This is the way we do it in the private sector and this is the way you're going to be treated here.'

In the end, governments have the capacity, with fixed-term contracts for executives, to terminate if they are prepared to pay the cost of the termination payments, and Labor and Liberal governments have used that on occasion over the years. What we saw was the grotesque abuse of that in recent years; it was not an isolated example but the go-to position in the way the public sector was structured in those departments. As I said, the people appointed were either Labor Party candidates, Labor Party members, Labor Party supporters or former ministerial staffers. That was the nature of the appointments.

That is the background that the Leader of the Opposition in this place, as a minister, and other ministers brought to the table in seeking to criticise the new Premier who, on the public record, the evidence has been was seeking assurances in relation to impartiality within the Cabinet Office of the Department of the Premier and Cabinet.

There have been claims made in relation to the position of the new member for Black, the former member for Bright, an officer who had won merit-based selection prior to putting up his hand for preselection for the Liberal Party prior to the last election. He was not someone who had been appointed to a position by a Liberal government as a Liberal Party mate, but someone who had won the position on a merit-based selection. To the credit of the former government a judgement was made and he was kept on in that position.

For some reason that I still do not understand—and I guess this is one of the potential attractions of this select committee should it get up, although we will certainly be opposing it because it serves no productive purpose—four or five ministerial staffers during the election period, as I understand it, somehow got parachuted from the Premier's office and Labor ministers' offices into the Cabinet Office. This was either during the election campaign period or just prior to the election campaign period.

Suddenly they got moved out of political offices—that is, ministerial offices—and were given positions in the Cabinet Office. This was in the middle of the election campaign or just prior to the election campaign. How that occurred and what the appointment process was for that would make for interesting reading at some stage, but that is obviously not what the Leader of the Opposition was after in relation to the motion that is currently before us.

Put simply, this motion should be rejected by the Legislative Council. As I said, I think there needs to be a higher threshold of trying to justify wrongdoing or a higher probability of potential wrongdoing by the Premier, in this case, or somebody in relation to a particular alleged practice. As I said, coming from the low bar that I have outlined as to how the former government behaved, which is no excuse if a new government was to behave in exactly the same way, and I accept that, but having come from that low bar to then be confronted with an accusation where the Premier says he is elected on a platform of much greater concentration of merit-based appointment—in essence, the go-to position in terms of appointments for executives.

An avowed position, which I have spoken on as the minister responsible for public sector matters, is for a greater independent role for the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, and there will be changes announced in relation to that in the not-too-distant future. That is the platform the new government was elected on, supported by a large number of public servants who helped craft and draft the policies that we took to the election who said, 'Help us fight the politicisation of the upper levels of the Public Service under the former government. If you think it is wrong, then put out a policy that says that it is wrong and that you are going to seek to correct.'

Then to have this fanciful notion that, having been elected overwhelmingly on a platform which included this reform agenda, to think suddenly that the Premier who passionately believes in what he has said in relation to this particular space that he would engage in the sorts of practices that the Leader of the Opposition and other members of the Labor Party have sought to make claims about is indeed fanciful. It is not worthy of any contemplation. It is certainly not worthy of support and it is certainly not worthy of wasting the time of a select committee of the Legislative Council.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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