Mr VAILE —My question is addressed to the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service. Is the government going to place the new Public Service legislation on hold following the report from the Joint Committee on Public Accounts?

Dr KEMP —I thank the member for Lyne for his question. There is absolutely no need to put the new Public Service legislation on hold or to delay it in any way. Indeed, every day that the old, highly prescriptive legislation remains in force it continues to cost taxpayers dearly and it frustrates public servants who find themselves tied up in red tape—red tape which will be cut by the new legislation.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the members of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts from both sides of the chamber on their report, and in particular the chair of the committee, the member for Fairfax. The report is, as one would expect, a very thorough and professional report. It makes a number of very sensible suggestions for improving the bill or the subordinate legislation. None of these recommendations, so far as I am able to determine on my first read through, affect, the fundamental integrity of the bill that the government has put before the House, and I believe that many of the recommendations of the committee have merit.

The committee supported the need for the present legislation to be replaced and favoured simplification and modification of the legislation governing the Public Service, as the new bill does. Indeed, most of the witnesses before the committee saw that the 1922 act was in need of desperate overhaul. I want to record the fact that this bill that the government has brought forward is the culmination of many years of work on Public Service reform. I acknowledge the work by the previous government as well as by many leaders of the Public Service itself. The bill is not a partisan piece of legislation. It is a bill designed to put in place a framework for the Public Service of this country which will enable it to serve, in an outstanding way, governments of all persuasions over the decades ahead.

The Australian Public Service is a key institution in Australian democracy and both sides of this chamber have an interest in ensuring that the framework within which the Public Service operates is a framework that will enable it to be a high performance, best practice organisation. The challenge for the Labor Party coming out of this report is to recognise the fact that the bill before the House is one which reflects views which have been expressed on both sides of this chamber. I challenge the Labor Party, which so far has had an abysmal record of reform in so many areas, to demonstrate that it is prepared to support a non-partisan, major, substantial piece of reform to ensure that the Public Service in this country is the kind of Public Service that the Australian people want it to be.