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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 10 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 2791 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

yet the public service at the Commonwealth level, where I worked, was not susceptible to new thinking, innovation and change. The world around it has changed. What is it about the public service that makes it sacrosanct and a place where no change is permitted? One may not even think about changing it.

The Leader of the Opposition quoted Tony Ayers. Tony Ayers is a departmental secretary at the Federal level, and a very innovative person. He would never say that the public service that he is in today is anything like what it was 10, 20 or 30 years ago. It is totally different. There has been massive change in attitudes about the public service everywhere else in Australia, and indeed throughout the world, except Canberra, where only a year and a half ago the then Chief Minister created our new public service. All she did was change the names and the dates, not anything else.

Attitudes outside the public sector have also changed considerably. One of the factors that have forced the changes is the fact of life in today's world that a high percentage of the population has been, and will continue to be, unemployed. There has been a rethinking in the world generally about what constitutes work, how you go about your work and whether you must do it in your office at the workplace designated by the boss. The whole question of what constitutes employment is changing. So it should. As part of that change, contract employment is becoming more and more common.

People take a job with a specific task, with specific remuneration attached to it, and they do that job. At the end of it they look for something else, perhaps somewhere else, that is challenging for them and that is conducive to their lifestyle. In between contracts they may travel for recreation or to enhance their knowledge. If they are good at their job - and most professionals are - they may even take a contract outside Australia, get new ideas and come back with new and different approaches to problem solving in the workplace. That makes jobs available for some of those who are unemployed.

I think that this flexible approach to the workplace, what constitutes work and how it is done and where it is done is a good thing. In the private sector many businesses are moving towards the stage of not having office space for a lot of their staff. Staff cannot come in and roost in their office for days on end and perhaps not be as productive as they might otherwise be. They are forced to be out and about, doing whatever it is that they are contracted to do. I have not seen any of that in the public service yet, but it is a good idea. We might do that next year. More importantly, we might do it to members of the Assembly. Only half the Assembly members will have an office at any one time, and the other half will have to be out doing something productive. Would that not be a new thought?

MR SPEAKER: Innovation, Mr Kaine, not miracles.

MR KAINE: I am fascinated that the Labor Party brings to this debate the notion that we cannot change the way the public service works or the way the public service looks; that we cannot introduce innovations that have proved in other sectors to be beneficial to the organisation, to be beneficial to the workers and to be beneficial to the people for whom the service, whatever it is, is being delivered.

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