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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1995 Week 11 Hansard (12 December) . . Page.. 2847 ..

MRS CARNELL (continuing):

gave no choice whatsoever. They had to be on tenure. Certainly, there was some capacity, under agency heads, for SES officers to be employed on contract; but, at agency head level, there were no choices whatsoever. The reality is that in States such as New South Wales and Victoria there is straight contract employment for SES or equivalent officers. That is common and is working extremely well in one Labor State and in one Liberal State.

The question of politicisation is a very interesting one, because the Government's model requires, under contract, frank and fearless advice. In fact, in the current situation there is no specification of agreed things to be achieved, what has to be measured and how it will be measured. In other words, there is no absolute understanding between agency heads and Ministers or between agency heads and SES officers of exactly what has to be achieved and how it will be achieved. Under a contract arrangement everything is there in writing. Both parties know exactly what is expected of them. That removes all ambiguity from the relationship and, therefore, removes the capacity, as exists under the current legislation, for people who might be politically unpalatable but who are doing the job to be removed. They simply cannot be removed under the contractual situation. If somebody is performing the task, doing the job, then they are there, simply because they are performing their contractual arrangement.

The other thing that Ms Follett seems to overlook the whole time is that - I do not know about under the previous Government - under this Government we are looking for continual improvement in the public service. We are not saying, "We have done a good job in the past; we will all be right; it is all fine; we will look just to the past". We are looking for continual improvement. Certainly, public servants have done a good job in the past, but we believe that performance can be improved. I know that the public service believes that it can be. Management and the way things are done are changing very quickly, not just in the ACT but in the whole world, and particularly in Australia. We believe strongly that those changes are things that should be shared by the ACT public service. I know that they want to. Continual improvement should be embraced, not thrown out for some particular reason.

Ms Follett made the comment about career structure being destroyed. Certainly, that has not been the case in New South Wales, Victoria or other places where contracts have been in place. In fact, people have had a series of contracts over a period of time. At the end of each contract there is a capacity to renegotiate that contract and look at new outcomes and new contractual arrangements generally. That is how career paths work in every other area of normal enterprise. I do not understand why the ACT should be all that different and that somehow a career service cannot exist if you have your senior managers on contracts. Quite the opposite. It allows the service to exist much, much better.

Ms Follett, in her previous statement, made the comment that merit selection was only ever not used under Mr Kaine. I am a bit concerned at Ms Follett's comments, taking into account the appointments of the head of the ACT public service, Dr Rosalky, by Ms Follett, and the current head of Health. I am extremely interested to find out from her how, when those two people applied for their jobs, the merit selection process went.

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