Senator ALLISON (8:26 PM) —The Public Service bills we are considering were passed by the Senate some four months ago now with a large number of amendments. They were returned to the House of Representatives, where the bill was laid aside. The bill, unamended, was passed again by the House of Representatives earlier this month and is presented to us again for approval. If the Senate again amends the bill, the government has made it clear that it will be added to its stock of possible double dissolution triggers.

I first want to again restate the reasons why the Democrats regard the Public Service Bill 1997 [No. 2] as fundamentally flawed. Then I will return to the government's attempt to use this as a possible election trigger. The Public Service reform bills undermine the integrity and the independence of the Australian Public Service. They attempt to turn the Public Service into a creature of the government under the direct political control of the relevant minister. In our view, such an approach to running the Public Service is not in the national interest. We need a Public Service capable of providing free and frank advice to the government of the day, which assumes and upholds the highest possible ethical and professional standards and which does not become a party to grubby political point scoring.

As Professor Peter Hennessy of the University of London put it, the cornerstone of a successful Public Service was the giving of `fearless advice resting on top-class analysis'. He said that in this world of globalisation, `the prizes go to the flexible and the intelligent, and governments can be neither of those things if the outcome of policy making is the precooked, the palatable and the convenient'.

The Public Service must uphold and implement decisions of the government of the day—we recognise that—but it must do so in a way which is professional, service orientated and fully accountable to the public it services. This set of bills does not achieve this. Rather, these bills are about bringing all aspects of the Public Service, through its management system, under the direct control of the government. Service wide standards and protections are to be swept away while departments become the personal fiefdoms of the chief executive officer, appointed, dismissed and directed at the whim of the Prime Minister. This is not the sort of direction that Public Service reform ought to be moving in. Tightening political control through a tighter pay related management system will not increase individual commitment or professional services. Indeed, the exact opposite is likely to be the case.

The public servants whom I spoke to, as part of the focus work group with the then minister, Peter Reith, made it very clear that they wanted to see the Public Service change to become a better workplace where service quality was paramount. But that is not what the government has delivered. This bill will add to the frustration levels felt by public servants, add to the heavy weight of falling morale and add to the continuing brain drain of well qualified and gifted administrators and policy makers out of the Public Service.

In my speech in the second reading debate on 17 November 1997, when we first considered this bill, I outlined the main concerns of the Democrats, and I propose only very briefly to go through those again. We believe that it is inappropriate for Prime Ministers to hire and fire chief executive officers of departments and to fix their remuneration without public scrutiny. We do not believe that the bill adequately protects whistleblowers. We remain concerned that the bill is silent on the question of maintaining standards, accountability and quality in the APS services which are contracted out.

We do not support the removal of the right of public servants to appeal to an independent body on a wide range of matters. We do not support the breaking down of service wide employment standards, particularly by use of individual Australian workplace agreements.

I foreshadow that, in the committee stage, I will again be moving the amendments I successfully moved on the last occasion to prevent chief executive officers offering AWAs to employees. My amendments do allow disallowable regulations to determine that certain categories of employees are appropriate to become the subject of AWAs, but they ensure that such determinations are reviewable by the parliament.

The Democrats want to see public sector reform that focuses on quality of services provided and improving accountability to the public. But this bill does not achieve that. This bill does not enhance accountability to the public—only accountability to the minister and, of course, the politicians. Indeed, this bill is not about quality services but about control. It is a grasp for power and an attempt to free up ministers from the important accountability mechanisms which have been designed to protect the independence of the Public Service and the principle that those appointments should be the most meritorious and not the most politically correct.

Since the House has refused to accept the bill as amended by the Senate last year, the Minister for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, Dr Kemp, has moved to put large parts of the reform in place by administrative means. This he has largely achieved by use of delegations under the existing Public Service Act, the Financial Management and Accountability Act and the Workplace Relations Act. But the great cumbersome mass of the Public Service Act stays in place. So, what Dr Kemp has actually achieved is the worst of both worlds: all the detailed regulation of the current act and the negative delegations of authorities of the new bill, without any compensating changes to the accountability regime.

However, it does raise questions as to why the government is proceeding to establish this bill as a double dissolution trigger. As Mike Taylor noted in Sunday's Canberra Times, commenting on a speech by Dr Kemp just last week:

In other words, the Government can achieve virtually everything it wants, including giving agency heads greater flexibility and autonomy in financial management, without having to accept the Opposition and Australian Democrat amendments to the Public Service Bill . . . The Howard Government may choose to use the Public Service Bill as a double dissolution trigger, but the outcome is irrelevant.

There is, anyway, a very real doubt about whether this bill can form a double dissolution trigger at this point. The Clerk of the Senate, in two pieces of advice, has argued that the government's decision to lay this bill aside in the House rather than to send it back with its amendments insisted upon did not properly constitute the first limb of a double dissolution trigger.

Indeed, the clerk has some pretty good backing for his opinion. The only time the High Court considered the issue of what constitutes a double dissolution trigger was in 1975, and the lead judgment by Chief Justice Sir Garfield Barwick lent very strong support to the clerk's argument. Sir Garfield's judgment suggests that the determination of when a conflict between the two houses occurs will be determined by reference to the actions of the two houses, having regard to their usual parliamentary procedures and practices. Indeed, the trigger was not formed in his view until `the processes which parliamentary procedure provides have been explored'. He noted that, when the House disagrees with amendments, it is usual practice for those to be returned to the Senate with a message, and he suggests that that is when the conflict commences.

The government did not follow the usual practice when it declined to send the bill back with a message in September. So, as a double dissolution trigger, this bill remains under a cloud. If we proceeded to a double dissolution, and then to a joint sitting and passed the bill, there is very considerable doubt about whether this bill would survive constitutional challenge in the High Court. This must be very cold comfort to the five or six coalition senators, including Senators Bill O'Chee and Sandy Macdonald, who would be guaranteed to lose their seats in a double dissolution election.

For our part, the Democrats are quite happy to fight an election on this bill, amongst other issues. The government has comprehensively broken all of its election promises in respect of the Public Service. It promised that there would be no slashing of jobs beyond the 2,500 needed to pay election promises; instead, we have seen 27,000 Public Service jobs gone. It promised public servants that their superannuation entitlements were safe; instead, it now proposes to close down that scheme. It promised that the Public Service would remain a source of non-partisan, loyal and objective professional advice to the government; that promise also certainly has not been fulfilled by this bill. Also, it promised to retain a Public Service and Merit Protection Commission; again, that promise has not been delivered. This is hardly a record to go to election on, and this is why the Democrats do not fear an election based on public service issues.

In conclusion, the Democrats have not changed their mind on this bill; we still think the bill is unsupportable. We will support the same set of amendments passed by the Senate on the last occasion. And, as we did at the third reading on the last occasion, we will vote against the bill at the final stage—because, even amended, this bill fails to meet what we regard as a minimum standard for fair and proper public service reform.