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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-13 Daily Xml
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I Work For SA—Your Voice Survey

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (14:23): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer provide details to the house about the I Work for SA survey?

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (14:23): I thank the honourable member for the question because this does canvass a very important issue. The Marshall Liberal government for the first time approved funding back in 2018 for a comprehensive survey of all public sector workers, under the title of 'I Work For SA—Your Voice Survey', which sought insights from public sector workers about their experiences at work, any concerns, etc., in relation to their public sector work experience. I am advised that this was in direct contrast to the former Labor government, which was asked by the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment to fund a survey. The former Labor government and the former Treasurer refused to provide the funding for the survey.

In direct contrast to that, this government is genuine in terms of wanting to hear from its employees. If they have concerns about issues like bullying and harassment, we don't want them swept under the carpet. We are prepared to have them revealed or exposed so that we as a government, the public sector generally and indeed the community can be aware of what the concerns might be within the public sector.

I hasten to say that the public sector has more than 100,000 employees. Whilst there has been a recent concentration on the number of workers compensation claims or sexual harassment claims, etc., it is a very small percentage of the more than 100,000 public sector employees.

I do want to indicate that the government, having funded the 2018 survey, is now funding the 2020 survey. The commissioner today has sent a whole-of-government email urging more employees to respond to the survey to provide information about their experiences, and I as the minister with responsibility for the public sector take this opportunity to support the call by the commissioner for more public sector employees to undertake the survey.

When I met with my very good friends from the Public Service Association yesterday, one of the issues that we canvassed was indeed the tackling of the issues of bullying and harassment, the encouragement of their members and employees of the public sector to participate in the survey and an open invitation to the PSA to work with me as the minister, the commissioner and the government on ways that we might be able to tackle these issues within the public sector.

I would have to say—and it is for the PSA to speak for themselves—that they, too, as I said to them, have an important interest in the public image, branding and integrity of the public sector as being a good place to work. It is important that in highlighting figures and statistics we don't portray the public sector as being a bad place to work or a place that people, and young people in particular, should fear coming into in terms of employment. There is genuine concern from the government, the commissioner and senior management to ensure that it is a good place to work and that their concerns can be addressed.

The survey was launched on 27 April and it concludes on 28 May this year. Without going through all the details, there is a very comprehensive series of questions on bullying and harassment, whether people have witnessed harassment or bullying in the current workplace and whether they have been subjected to harassment or bullying. If they answer yes to the first question, there is a detailed set of about eight sets of examples that they can tick in terms of the sorts of bullying and harassment they have witnessed or have been subjected to. I won't go through all the details of the various options.

They are then asked, 'What did you do in response to the bullying and harassment you experienced?' Again, there is a series of options in terms of what they did or didn’t do. If they select that they lodged a grievance or complaint, there is then a series of follow-up questions in terms of what was their experience in terms of their senior management responding to their grievance or complaint and their particular surveys.

There is then a series of questions about discrimination: have you personally experienced workplace discrimination? What type of discrimination? There are a series of options there. If you are experiencing distress at work or at home, they encourage you to seek support, and there is a listing there of agencies that people should contact if they are suffering distress, etc.

There are a whole series of questions. I don't want to take up too much of question time by going through the detail of all those, but I do want to stress the importance of the survey and the fact that it will be open for another couple of weeks. I urge public sector workers, and I would ask members of this chamber who have contact with members of the public sector, or indeed leaders of public sector unions, to urge them to have their members, employees of the public sector, take it up.

I conclude by saying that there is a genuine endeavour from this government to shine a light on issues in the public sector, contrary to the attitude of the former Labor government in this respect. We do want people to respond, identify the problems and then see what we can do to try to address them. I hasten to say that we need to bear in mind that we have 100,000-plus employees within the public sector and that any portrayal of the results of surveys, such as the last one, or workers compensation claims I hope would be done in the environment of highlighting the fact that this is a very small percentage of people within the public sector.

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