Topics: Services Australia, WFH numbers
E&OE.......................
ROSS SOLLY: How will that work out though if a lot of those people are working from home? This week we heard that Liberal Senator Dave Sharma and Deputy Leader Jane Hume got some answers back to some questions about the number of public servants who are currently working from home. And there's a lot. There is a lot. And in particular in Services Australia, which is the largest public-facing agency within the public service, where 50% nearly of the staff in the agency have an approved working from home arrangement. Dave Sharma is the Liberal Senator who asked the question, one of the questions, and he joins us this morning. Senator Sharma, good morning to you.
DAVE SHARMA: Good morning, Ross. Great to join you.
ROSS SOLLY: Yeah, thank you for making some time to talk to us as well. So these figures, I mean, we know that this was sort of an issue. Well, it was more than sort of, it was an issue at the last election. People felt very strongly about it. Are you concerned about these numbers?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, I mean, I think it's important that we know these numbers and make a decision. I mean, Services Australia is the frontline of the federal government. I mean, the people who run Centrelink and Medicare payments and child support and myGov and whatnot. So they're the most public-facing part of the federal government in many respects. And the figures we got are that basically 50% of their workforce has an approved work-from-home arrangement, and that includes 40% of public-facing staff, basically. About a third have a working from home arrangement approved for 3 or more days a week. So that's a pretty high level of absenteeism, and I'm just not sure that the taxpayer is getting good value for money with that level of people working from home. But I'm also not sure it's great for the professional development of the public service.
ROSS SOLLY: Technically, sorry, it's not absenteeism though, is it? They're not actually, they're working.
DAVE SHARMA: I need to correct myself. Yeah, no, that's right. Absent from the office, I guess. Working from home is what I meant to say. But it's quite high for a public-facing agency, and I'm concerned about, what does it mean for the service to the public, but also what does it mean for the professional development and career development of a lot of these younger staff who need to learn and be mentored by staff who are not in the office all the time. I think it makes it much more difficult.
ROSS SOLLY: I guess if there was evidence that people felt that Services Australia wasn't fit for purpose or wasn't doing their job properly, that would be a cause for concern. But do you have any reason to think that Services Australia is letting down the public and that there might be a link between the number of people who are working from home and those problems?
DAVE SHARMA: Well, I'd say that we've seen the public service grow by about 25% or 44,000 people under the Labor government over the last 4.5 years, and that's added about $6 to $7 billion annually to the public service wage bill. But if you look at productivity in the public sector or in the non-market sector, it hasn't moved or it's gone backwards. So it feels like we're spending more money and employing more people, but the services aren't improving at all. So you have to question, well, is, you know, is there there's something to do with the structure of the operations that's inhibiting any improvement in service level. I don't think, I mean, I think you still hear people who've waited a long time on Centrelink or unable to get through to the ATO or have spent hours trying to resolve a technical logon difficulty with myGov.au. I don't think it's a seamless service like you might have with Service NSW as a comparison.
ROSS SOLLY: And you think that's directly because people are working from home?
DAVE SHARMA: No, I don't make that accusation. I just think that this is a pretty high number and I think we need to interrogate it more to see is this having an impact on the operations. I mean, I know privately from a number of senior public servants, I mean, they would like to see less working from home in their agencies, but the way the enterprise agreements have been structured that the Commonwealth Government has improved means the default is to accept it. In New South Wales, Labor Government as well, when Chris Minns came to office, they said the default assumption is that you're operating from a workplace or a business or the central office, and they were quite clear about that.
ROSS SOLLY: So if you were running the show, Senator Sharma, would you be demanding or suggesting to Services Australia that maybe they bring some of these people back into the office a bit more often?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, I'm not presumptuous enough to think I'll be running the show, but what I—
ROSS SOLLY: If your party was running the show.
DAVE SHARMA: What I would like to see is some advice and some analysis done, probably by the Australian Public Service Commission, but also potentially by others on what impact a much higher level of working from home— and bear in mind this was, you know, not quite but almost unprecedented before COVID in the federal public service, so it's been a pretty dramatic shift, and I think it's now about two-thirds of overall APS employees work from home at least some part of the week— what impact is that having on, you know, staff retention, productivity, morale, performance, all of those sorts of things? Because I just don't think we've done that analysis. I think the assumption has been that working from home is the same as working from the office. I don't think it is. It depends very much on depends on the role you're doing and the sort of work you're doing. But I don't think we should necessarily assume that they're equivalent.
ROSS SOLLY: Jane Hume went down this path before the last election and ended up with Peter Dutton having to walk it all back before election day because generally there was a feeling there that you were very anti-family and that people enjoyed the opportunity to work from home and it made them more productive and they, you know, it was a better work-life balance. Here you are again, Dave Sharma, raising this as an issue. Has the mindset changed, do you think, out there, or do you still feel that people do want to work from home?
DAVE SHARMA: I don't think the mindset has changed, and I'm sure, look, there's many good reasons for people to want to work from home. And in many respects, when workplaces work this out at an enterprise level, it often is a win-win situation. But when you have a sort of a carte blanche set of rules that the default must always be working from home and operational requirements are not a primary consideration there, it can, it can present challenges. I mean, I'm just conscious that we're in a situation where in a budget-constrained environment we've got a public service wage bill that has grown significantly over the last few years and we don't seem to be getting better public services for it. So, you know, we need to examine why that's the case.
ROSS SOLLY: Appreciate your time this morning. Thank you, Senator Sharma.
DAVE SHARMA: Thanks so much, Ross.
ROSS SOLLY: That's Dave Sharma on these latest figures which show that, yes, quite a few people are working from home and whether it's a concern— you may be one of those people? Let me know what you think. You may work in one of those departments where a lot of people are working from home.
[ENDS]