Assistant Minister Patrick Gorman praises robodebt 'public service heroes'

The new Assistant Minister for the Public Service has taken on the extra role at a critical time for the bureaucracy as it deals with the robodebt royal commission fallout, attempts to reform its use of consultants after the PwC scandal, as well as launching into sector-wide negotiations on pay and conditions.

All this while relationship boundaries are reset between the public service and the Albanese Labor government.

In an interview with ACM, publisher of this masthead, the Perth-based politician said he wanted to build on the agenda of the Minister for Public Service Katy Gallagher.

"There are many challenges and many opportunities," Mr Gorman said.

"I don't want to think that these are all just problems on the government's agenda.

"There's a huge opportunity in getting that high-quality advice from the public service and making sure that gives us the best policy outcomes."

The government remains tight-lipped about its response to the robodebt royal commission report, as it continues to sift through the recommendations made in the 900-page findings, handed down on July 7.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes branded the unlawful debt-collecting scheme an "extraordinary saga" of "venality, incompetence and cowardice", and her report contains unnamed referrals for possible criminal and civil investigation by other bodies.

On Thursday it was revealed 16 individuals had been referred for potential breaches of the APS Code of Conduct to the Australian Public Service Commission.

"We will respond to robodebt. If that involves legislative response, that's something the government will look at, we're working through that report at the moment," Mr Gorman said.

Also serving as Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, the rising Labor talent declined to comment on whether public servants adversely named in the report would be stripped of their honours.

"As the minister responsible for honours policy, it would be inappropriate for me to comment," he said.

"But I would say that it's not a decision of government where people have honours removed. That is a decision taken by ... the Council for the Order of Australia that's administered at Government House.

"Individuals can write directly to Government House through the Honours and Awards Secretariat, if they have concerns about anyone that they believe for a range of reasons should not be in receipt of an award. But when it comes to individual cases, I can't comment."

READ MORE:

On robodebt, Mr Gorman has another reminder: there is still a lot of good in the public service.

"Often individuals at quite low levels in the hierarchy of the public service were willing to really go out of their way to say, 'This looks wrong. Someone should do something about it, raise it with their superiors'," he said.

"Now we know those calls were not always responded to, but there are public service heroes within the robodebt story, too. People who did the right thing."

It is a crucial message for a government trying to mend a relationship with its public service, strained by staffing caps and bureaucracy-bashing.

That relationship has been described as an "upstairs-downstairs" dynamic by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, while the former Public Service commissioner Peter Woolcott has said both ends of government "can do a little bit better" to understand each other.

But Mr Gorman, who served as an adviser to prime minister Kevin Rudd between 2010 and 2013, said he had only seen it as a "very collaborative relationship".

"I don't think that characterisation is one that I would use to describe how our government works with the public service," he said.

"We do see it as a collaborative piece where there are different roles. We also want to make sure that we have the very best advice to government. That's how you get the best decisions.

"And if you've got really good advice then you also need to make sure you've got people that you really value in the public service."

The Albanese government has been ambitious in its first year in charge, rolling out election commitments to improve the public sector capability which included a boost of 10,000 roles, the first service-wide round of bargaining in decades, and an audit exposing the Coalition government's "ghost workforce" of 54,000 contractors.

But it is crunch time, with looming decisions about how much the government is prepared to pay public servants, and just how effectively it can reduce its reliance on contractors.

Mr Gorman will on Monday visit Services Australia staff in Tuggeranong, where union members are engaged in industrial action.

Staff are calling for a better deal for the APS than a 10.5 per cent pay rise over three years. The government is yet to revisit the issue in talks, but Senator Gallagher has dismissed a claim of 20 per cent from the Community and Public Sector Union.

Mr Gorman would not comment, saying: "I'll leave that to those who are negotiating within the APSC."