Liberal deputy leader Alistair Coe questioned Ms Ekelund about the survey in parliamentary hearings on Friday, revealing that bullying has been an issue for at least two years in the directorate.

In a 2014 survey, 27 per cent of staff said they had been subjected to bullying and harassment. In February this year, numbers had improved, but still 20 per cent of staff claimed bullying in the previous 12 months.

Staff also complained that "political decisions" were affecting satisfaction and creating additional stress – but what they meant by this has not been detailed.

Ms Ekelund told Mr Coe there had been no formal or informal reports of bullying to senior staff or the human resources section in the 2014-15 financial year.

The directorate had been working with staff and "getting good feedback from our staff that they believe the organisation is supporting them".

"AlI I can say is we take this issue very seriously, and we have a very active staff communication and training program and we have had had no reports of bullying and harassment occur over the last period," she said.

When she returned to the hearings later in the day, she said an email had gone to staff that day to set out the directorate's strategy, which included performance management and leadership and ensuring senior and middle management was fully briefed and involved in decision-making.

Ms Ekelund also provided more detail on the staff survey, saying staff concerns included that "people were perhaps not listened to enough, that there was a blokey attitude in parts of the organisation, and a need to work more closely between managers and staff and have open lines of communication. There was concern that there wasn't enough opportunities to get performance feedback between supervisors and staff, and good open lines of communication through all levels of the organisation ... and actually to train staff about what is acceptable behaviour."

The directorate had gathered information from focus groups, anonymous feedback, one-on-one interviews, the staff survey and a consultative committee, she said.

Asked about the reference to stress caused by political decisions, Ms Ekelund said there was no definition of political decisions in the survey and staff "would have had their own perceptions of what that meant".

"Public servants work for elected representatives. We are paid to deliver on the policy objectives of governments. Governments will make decisions in the framework of a democratic system. Now how a person would interpret those questions would be up to an individual," she said.

Finance and operations director Bruce Fitzgerald said the directorate had taken on consultants Optum to address issues raised in the staff survey, and this year had seen an improvement.

"We still have work to do," he said. "We have work to do in training our staff in having a difficult conversation, so we've done that work, we've also engaged the CIT to do some work in managing underperformance."

The Community and Public Sector Union was "very happy with our response to date", he said.