Government agencies will do all this while competing for staff at a time of economic rebound that could tilt the labour market in favour of employees, many of whom are emerging from lockdowns having spent the time reconsidering their career paths. Public-sector employers, and their ministers, cannot take for granted that the public service will be first choice for workers.

Public Service Minister Ben Morton is hopefully aware of all this, and watching it closely. His strident defence of his policy on public service wage rises on Monday suggests his views on the matter are set, at least for now. He would do better to keep an open mind on the pay rise cap, and other public service workplace conditions, as the labour market changes after lockdown. At a time when the best workers will demand flexibility, it will pay for the public service - and its minister - to be flexible.

Mr Morton made a provocative call-out to the Community and Public Sector Union in an interview with The Canberra Times, challenging the union to say whether it believed his new public service wages policy was better than the old one.

The difference is that Mr Morton's policy ties the pay rise cap to the private sector's wage increases - an improvement, at least, on the previous hard 2 per cent ceiling. He has softened the harder edges of the Abbott-era rules, but the policy contains restrictions that risk hobbling public-sector employers as they look for good staff for the challenges ahead.

Pay tied to private-sector wage rises might not be enough to entice workers to some agencies. In any case, Commonwealth employers have their hands tied by the cap.

The Public Service Minister also defended the government's use of contractors, saying their numbers should rise and fall according to the needs of agencies. That is glossing over the real problems with the public service's ever-growing reliance on contractors, which have been laid out clearly and repeatedly in parliamentary inquiries, audit reports and by the government itself in its May budget.

Not long before Mr Morton made his comments, the Defence Department revealed its annual spend on contractors had grown to $1.87 billion. The number of contractors in the department has soared, reaching 6800 in March, and growing about 2000 in two years.

Defence's dependence on contractors is emblematic of the problem ahead for the public service. It is a department that is under increasing pressure to deliver in a portfolio responding to mounting national challenges and priorities, not least of which is the latest AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. It has a growing defence budget to manage as it tries to deliver projects. Yet its internal workforce is constrained by a staffing cap that has forced it to look outside to make up the difference, with contractors.

The department doesn't have a clear idea of whether this is a good or bad thing, because it hasn't analysed the value for money, or effectiveness, of using contractors instead of employing public servants. It's a potentially wasteful and ineffective way to manage projects in any portfolio, let alone one so important to the nation.

There are signs the government has recognised the public service has become over-reliant on contractors.

If that's the case, though, there is even less excuse for the Coalition not to solve the problem.

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