Your APS wrapped: What kind of public servant are you?

The APS has been at the core of many of 2023's biggest political storms - from the reckoning of the awful damage wrought by the robodebt scheme to the fall of public service giants.

In our last edition for the year, your Public Eye authors will guide you through the year that was, while weaving in some of the fluffier moments - because that's what we're here for.

We will be back again next year on Monday, 15 January.

The tragedy of the unlawful robodebt scheme was spelled out in the royal commission's 900-page findings, released in the middle of the year.

Commissioner Catherine Holmes called out the "repeated failures" and lack of independence from senior public servants involved in the scheme, and recommended mechanisms to discipline former agency heads be bolstered.

The government has accepted 56 of commissioner Holmes' recommendations - including many concerned with improving APS processes. They did not accept a "closing observation" which called for greater transparency of cabinet documents.

The Public Service Commission has commenced inquiries to determine whether 16 current and former APS employees, and former agency heads breached the code of conduct throughout the scheme.

Robodebt architect and former Human Services and Social Services head, Kathryn Campbell, was stood down without pay from her role as a senior AUKUS advisor in July this year, after she was adversely named in the report. She resigned from the role later that month.

Ms Campbell's advisor role, for which she received remuneration of $900,000 - matching her secretary pay packet - prompted an uproar over the practice of "parachuting" public servants into positions.

In the fallout from the scheme, dozens of pages of new rules and guidelines have been produced. But only time will tell their impact.

The allegations broke in October: an investigation by Nine reported that Home Affairs boss Michael Pezzullo had spent years allegedly messaging with a Liberal Party powerbroker, trying to influence political matters.

The response was swift. The APSC announced an independent inquiry and Mr Pezzullo was asked to stand aside (but he got to stay on his pay package of almost $915,000 during the investigation).

In November, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that the government had sacked Mr Pezzullo - one of the most powerful bureaucrats in the country. The inquiry found that he had breached the APS Code of Conduct 14 times in relation to five overarching allegations, including that he used his power for personal gain.

The scandal was another blow for a bureaucracy grappling to rebuild public trust (and a lesson to all of us to think twice about what we put in writing).

We promised moments of light in amongst the dark, and the case of Ray Griggs' headshots certainly delivered that this year.

The Department of Social Services secretary was caught out - by us - using six different headshots in his all-staff correspondence, over the course of seven months.

A freedom-of-information request revealed the headshots were chosen deliberately "to use in context, to appropriately align with the tone and message of the communications".

But another secretary with quirks emerged recently, as Public Eye turned up the Health boss, Blair Comley's, weekly video updates to staff, featuring long tangents on tacos, yorkshire pudding, and barbecuing.

If you only read one line of that story, let it be this: "Finally hard shell taco: bad idea. I don't endorse those at all," Mr Comley told staff.

One final note on the power of language - we were schooled in the art of public service jargon this year when we tried to ask departments whether they had introduced hotdesking.

Media teams vehemently denied this, but the descriptions sounded an awful lot like hotdesking.

The unravelling of the PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia scandal has changed the way the government spends taxpayer dollars - for now.

Revelations that a former PwC tax partner had shared confidential Treasury information with other staff and partners at the firm not only led to a referral to the Australian Federal Police, but a complete shake-up of the way the public sector conducts its work.

Government and department heads have reacted swiftly to further findings about big four consultancies, often dug up in the Parliament's Senate inquiry.

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Big promises have been made, with the government shifting the onus to department heads to set targets to reduce their reliance on external labour, and start working on it.

Defence, historically the biggest spender on third party labour, introduced a moratorium on entering contracts with former staff within 12 months of them leaving the department.

And a new in-house consultancy has been set up in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

But spending less on consultants, contractors and labour hire means investing more into public sector jobs and skills in the long-term. After initial investments in the APS in the May budget, and service-wide bargaining, it could prove challenging for the Albanese government to keep on this track.

Department of Infrastructure earned a reputation of being "too nice" this year, according to its capability review.

But the agency made headlines for all the wrong reasons in October when Secretary Jim Betts revealed during estimates that certain male members within its graduate cohort had made a "hotties list" ranking women by their "so-called hotness".

Mr Betts said the department had undertaken formal investigations into rumours of the list, but hadn't been able to substantiate its existence. He said that he spoke with graduate women in the program to ensure they received support, and sought advice from a former sex discrimination commissioner.

A surprising new trend seized the public service this year, and we traced its origins back to the Attorney-General's Department.

A spin on the humble lunchbox had taken off in the department - with many a public servant clutching a colourful, insulated lunch-bag on the way in to the office.

And the hottest fashion accessory in the bureaucracy had begun to spread, reaching Defence and the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.

The trend appears to have surpassed its 15-minutes of fame, as cost of living pressures render the bought lunch a thing of the past. (Disclaimer: One Public Eye author has even requested a lunch bag for Christmas.)

The battle for better pay

It was a big year for the Community and Public Sector Union.

The main public sector union spent the year in service-wide bargaining - the first of its kind in more than a decade.

A group of rebel union members were so dissatisfied with the CPSU's approach to bargaining that they formed the first coordinated ticket in almost 20 years to run against the executive at the union's elections (they were not successful).

The CPSU rejected the government's pay offer of 11.2 per cent over three years in October, after 51.9 per cent of members voted in support of the deal (no, didn't misread that - but the union said this "lukewarm support" wasn't enough for it to accept the offer).

The stalemate was over by November when the CPSU recommended public servants accept the APSC's third and final pay offer and a member poll returned majority support of 67.5 per cent.