The Western Australian public sector plays a crucial role in building a society that works for everyone. The public sector of Western Australia must be empowered to deliver quality services, policy, infrastructure and innovation, whose services are co-designed with impacted communities. The Western Australian public sector should lead by example by being an ethical role model for other sectors of the workforce and be an employer of choice.
Aims
The Greens (WA) want:
- a public sector that is best placed to respond to changing social, environmental and economic circumstances, and to enhance society’s capacity to pursue important goals such as justice, equity and sustainable environmental objectives and community services obligations
- a public sector that is tailored and resourced, in personnel, assets and experience, to fully meet the diverse needs of the community and improve quality of life for the state
- public sector assets and services to remain so and not be subject to outsourcing, commercial competitiveness, corporatisation and unnecessary deregulation. Assets and services that have formerly been privatised should be returned to the public sector
- a public sector that is independent, accountable and transparent to the people its serves
- a public sector that is an ethical role model that other sectors follow. This includes being an employer, buyer and business partner.
- services delivered by the public sector to be co-designed with, and delivered and evaluated by, the communities that are most likely to be impacted by or require those services.
- public sector services that are, at all times, culturally appropriate to Western Australia’s diverse First Nations cultures and Culturally and Linguistically Diverse communities.
Measures
The Greens (WA) will initiate and support legislation and other actions to:
Diversity & Inclusion
- ensure a public sector workforce that reflects the diversity of Western Australian's, including in senior and executive management
- ensure that the public sector will maintain a wide geographic footprint, with offices in regional, rural and remote communities to provide local services and employment opportunities
- ensure that affirmative measures that are endorsed and supported by the authorised First Nations community are implemented across all recruitment processes, to prevent the mainstreaming of First Nations identified positions into general recruitment pools
- implement a collaborative approach within the Public Sector Commission to encourage greater staff participation in management appointments including the appointment of Directors-General, commissioners and managing executives of public sector agencies
- ensures relevant trade unions with public sector workforces are, at all times, participating in all changes to aspects of the public sector workforce
- mandate public sector authorities and government trading enterprises with independent voting boards to have reserved seats for members directly elected by and from their employees, who will undertake those duties in paid time
- ensure scrutiny of the role and legal status of political staffers and Ministerial advisers, and to make their recruitment and appointment transparent
- ensure public sector stakeholder engagement reflects the diversity of community needs
- ensure the public sector is able to provide independent advice without fear, favour or political consequences
Job Security
- ensure stronger regulation of foreign ownership of agricultural land
- legislate a framework to protect the public sector against the outsourcing of jobs to private consultants, labour hire and external contractors, and bring outsourced and privatised public services back into the public sector
- ensure the public sector prioritises the use of ongoing employment arrangements, including where individual positions or projects may be of a fixed duration, with the objective of providing job security to all public service employees
- ensure that benchmarking, performance rating and employee management policies are not implemented at the expense of workforce cohesiveness and quality of outcomes in conjunction and with approval of employees and/or their trade union
- legislate and enforce a permanency target of minimum 85% across the public sector and then within each public sector agency
- introduce the introduction of an in-house consulting agency, similar to the
APS in-house consultancy - legislate the right of public servants, in their private capacity, to engage in political advocacy and activism, run for public office, participate in their union, and represent or be elected to activist organisations
- protect whistle-blowers who are government employees, contractors or tenderers by robust laws which ensure that they cannot be prosecuted for whistleblowing under the public service code of conduct
- ensure the ethical use of emerging technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence that at a minimum ensures high level privacy protections, human decision-making and provides thorough consultation with workers and their unions to provide a just transition to the use of these technologies
Pay & Conditions
- bans the use of efficiency dividends, average staffing level caps, and other blanket approaches to public sector budget cuts
- abolish and bans the use of a public sector wages policy, as it undermines bargaining negotiations, restricts wage growth and impacts the gender pay gap
- ensure remuneration tribunals make decisions independent of private sector pay considerations, including executive pay and private sector pay rises, or lack thereof
- require government remuneration tribunals and recruitment panels to have worker and/or trade union representation
- phase out performance-based pay and age-based pay across all levels of government
- broaden access to, and the amount of, important types of leave required for difficult situations, such as Gender Affirmation Leave, Cultural Leave and Menstrual Leave
- introduce an independent Parliamentary Budgeting Office (PBO), in a similar model to the federal PBO
Procurement
- ensure that governments set an ethical example in business and workplace relations by being supportive of their employees, by setting reasonable terms in procurements, and by always considering the value it can provide to the public
- ensure that procurement policies mandate quadruple bottom line analysis, which ensures decision-makers consider the environmental, social, ethical and economic costs of products and services acquired
- ensure that government procurement policies give priority to Australian manufactured goods and services, and use procurement policy to foster the development of ethical Australian industries, especially First Nations operated businesses
- exclude companies with proven records of poor labour standards or tax avoidance from procurement
(see also The Australian Greens Public Sector policy)
Public Sector policy ratified by The Greens (WA) in 2024