Page 2131 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 5 June 2019
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We should also recognise that we as governments do not just employ public servants directly. There is an entire service sector that has grown up around the institutions of government and beyond as we purchase goods and services from a broad range of small, medium and large providers, from family businesses to multinationals that have local operation arms.
I am pleased to be part of a government that has set a higher standard for our own employees and, through things like the secure local jobs code, has endeavoured to ensure that the employment expectations we have for members of our own family are applied to people right across the workforce. This is an important principle. It is right to seek to be a model employer, and the ACT government is making some progress in this space.
In the time that I have been in this place, with the urging of the Greens, we have extended our approach to ethical investment policy. For me, this is important. When we think about our purchasing decisions and the choices that we make, global supply chains can have quite a broad effect. Things like ethical investment policies can be a really important part of our desire for people to work in decent and respectable conditions, as much as possible.
The Greens think that the ACT public service should, and does, set an example of good industrial relations policies and practices that respect staff and offer conditions that attract and retain quality staff. For us, that includes offering a balance between paid work and personal time, with fair pay for overtime and unsociable hours and innovative and flexible working arrangements to be offered to employees.
It is important, though, when we talk about flexible working arrangements, that we do not seek to justify some equation of flexibility with insecure employment. We have seen that in the federal sphere in recent times. Sometimes the two are rather too conveniently interchanged; we need to make sure that flexibility does not equate to insecurity.
I think it is fair to say that both current Liberal and, dare I say it, previous Labor governments have made Canberra, our city, the scapegoat for poor budget outlooks and threatened the financial security of our friends and family in order to pursue efficiency drives that demonstrably cost the taxpayer more in terms of outrageous consultancy fees and outsourcing of business as usual operations, only to see failures of policy and a distinct lack of continuity in program implementation. I imagine there are case studies where it has ended up being more expensive in the long run.
It is our hope that in time federal politicians of all persuasions will see Canberra as more than just a fly-in fly-out temporary office and instead consider us a strong, vibrant and growing regional centre in our own right, where people deserve to be employed in a secure position. Until that day it is important that we continue to progress the ideas that we are talking about in this debate today and that we view employees as investments in our community’s future, not just as chattels.
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