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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 05 Hansard (Friday, 14 May 2004) . . Page.. 2107 ..

responsibility through organisational changes or that as executives develop in positions they attract new functions.

The proposed arrangement balances the importance of maintaining a consistent service-wide pay structure for executives with the need to reflect increased responsibilities with pay increases. There should be brakes on these arrangements and these will be provided through the Public Sector Management Standards, which are disallowable instruments. The Standards will make sure pay increases are deserved – that is they will need to be supported by a job evaluation – and that there are limits to pay progression without merit processes.

This balances sensible and fair management arrangements with the need to maintain a merit based executive Service with a consistent service wide pay framework.

These changes apply to all existing chief executives and executives. They will flow through to these contracts, as they are all specifically subject to the Act, which includes amendments to the Act. However, given the nature of the changes, there is no prejudicial impact on entitlements.

A number of other technical changes are made. For example, references to Calvary Hospital are updated.

Two sets of amendments to the Public Sector Management Standards are proposed. The first, which will be tabled as a completed instrument, will build in new redundancy entitlements for chief executives and executives that are more in line with those elsewhere in the ACT Public Service.

There is no reason that long serving public service executives should not have their service recognised for redundancy purposes. The fact that part of that service accrued on a rolling executive contract is not sufficient to limit that benefit. Staff promoted to executive positions from within the Service should not lose these entitlements. Further, more generous arrangements are available in the Australian Public Service, our immediate competitor for staff.

A further change to the PSM Standards will be made to support new provisions to increase pay through a contract variation. The Standard, which I will table as a draft Standard, will prescribe when that may occur. First there must be an increase in job responsibilities, supported by a job evaluation. Secondly, the Standard sets the limits on the extent of pay increases through contract variations. The impact is to permit a form of incremental advancement within the first two executive pay zones, and one step increases in the upper pay zone.

The Public Sector Management Act is due for an overhaul. That is recognised by the Commissioner’s review of the Act. This Bill makes intermediate changes to address some core issues. It is recognised that they are a first step to wider changes.

Mr Speaker, I commend this Bill to the Assembly.

Following presentation speech:

For the information of members, I now table the draft Management Standard prescribing circumstances for pay increases through contract variations under the Public Sector Management Amendment Bill 2004.

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