Topics: Services Australia, WFH numbers
E&OE.......................
OLIVER PETERSON: The debate about working from home has raised its head again this week after questions in the Senate revealed that more than 40% of Services Australia staff are not in the office for part of the week. That agency is of course responsible for things like Centrelink, Medicare, myGov, child supports. Now this is the agency that all of us are going to have dealings with every big stage of our family's lives. So does it matter if the staff are not in an office? Liberal Senator Dave Sharma joins me now. Welcome to Drive.
DAVE SHARMA: Thanks so much, Ollie. Thanks for having me on.
OLIVER PETERSON: You and the Deputy Leader Jane Hume were asking questions in the Senate this week about rates of working from home in the public service, and what did you find out?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, we found out that Services Australia, which is the the frontline agency for the federal government, that's the body that does Centrelink and Medicare and myGov and child support payments. I look over half of their staff are working from home for some period of the week and almost a third are working from home 3 or more days a week. And that includes at least 40% of their frontline, so-called frontline staff. So I think that has implications for the level of customer service that the customer service-facing department can provide. And bear in mind, you know, in their most recent annual report— this is Services Australia's annual report— one-third of Australians interacting with that body found the services to be unsatisfactory. So it's not like customers are happy and there's nothing to see here. There are issues within Services Australia. And I think, you know, the extent of working from home could be playing a role there.
OLIVER PETERSON: So what impact does that have in your opinion, Senator?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think that's— I don't think I'm qualified to assess that, but I think it would make sense for a body like the Australian Public Service Commission, because working from home has become so prevalent just over the last few years, what impact that is having on not only the ability of the public service to interact and serve with the public, but things like, you know, recruitment, retention, mentoring of staff, professional development, because we've suddenly gone from a situation 4 or 5 years ago where very few people in the federal public service worked from home to now it's almost become the default. And indeed, in enterprise agreements for public service departments. The Labor government has now said the presumption is in favour of if you make a request from working from home, it should be granted. And I think that has consequences and we can't know what they all are yet, but we should be mindful of that fact.
OLIVER PETERSON: Are there some federal agencies where you think that working from home is more appropriate though than others?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think in some areas, yes, the work would be at least better suited to working from home than others. Clearly, you know, look, if you're in the Defence Forces or, you know, I was a federal public servant for about about 15 years, I was a diplomat serving overseas. I don't think I could be a diplomat representing Australia overseas if I was working from home somewhere else. So clearly there are parts of the public service that aren't well suited to that. But bear in mind, I mean, a number of the states, including my own state of New South Wales, have experimented with working from home, sometimes out of necessity during COVID but they've reached the conclusion that they want everyone back in the workforce because the public sector works more efficiently, people have happier jobs and better work-life balance and, you know, better professional development if more people are in the office.
OLIVER PETERSON: Do you think there are some public servant pay grades where it may be more appropriate to work from home than others?
DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, I think it's problematic if you've got a lot of senior staff working from home because, you know, staff that are lower down the hierarchy need guidance, need interaction, need mentoring, need answers. And we all know this, there's friction when you're dealing with colleagues who are working from home as opposed to if you're just in the workplace and you have a casual conversation in the elevator or on the way into the office or, you know, on the way out for lunch where you can resolve or address things rather than having to set up a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting to address that. So I think, we don't want a large chunk of any particular level, I don't think, of the public service working from home because it creates bottlenecks for everyone else.
OLIVER PETERSON: Advocates will say that working from home options give parents or carers to remain in the workforce. It also helps them address congestion on our roads, saving people money. Do you think there's some valid points to working from home, Senator?
DAVE SHARMA: Yeah, look, I think there certainly are, and I'm not hostile to working from home. I just think it needs to be horses for courses. That is, it needs to suit the enterprise and suit the circumstances of the worker. And I think we all recognise that there are, you know, jobs in Australia that can't be done from home. You know, many frontline roles— nurses, doctors, teachers, you know, train drivers, truck drivers, people working in our mines, all those sorts of sectors. It needs to be sort of enterprise-by-enterprise driven, but I do recognise there's a lot of benefits from it. And I think in the right sort of balance, it can be a great boost to workplace productivity, can make people have more balance in their lives, mean some people can return to the workforce in a way that perhaps they couldn't before if they had to be in the office, you know, a certain number of days a week. So I think they're all very valid reasons. I just think in this particular part of the public service, which is the public you know, the customer-facing part of the federal public service, these figures seem quite high for an agency or a department where the level of customer satisfaction is quite low.
OLIVER PETERSON: Liberal Senator Dave Sharma is my guest on 102.5 ABC Perth and across WA. This is Drive with Oliver Peterson, 1300 221 025. Do you think it matters if staff are not in an office? And perhaps you can tell me about your experience with Services Australia, that is Services Australia, the agency responsible again for things like Centrelink, Medicare, myGov, child support, etc. Senator, in your view, would coming into the office, do you think, improve productivity?
DAVE SHARMA: Look, I don't— I think some time in the office in any role, I think, or some time with your colleagues in a physical workplace is an improvement to workplace culture and productivity. And even businesses have their entirety of their workforce working remotely or in a dispersed way. We'll try and bring them together periodically, I think, to make sure that they can work well together. I think it depends on the nature of the work and the type of work. Sometimes, you know, for work that needs to be done, you know, in relative peace or quiet or with a high degree of concentration, working from home can be more productive. But if there's other things you're doing like client interactions or strategizing or developing a, you know, corporate plan for something, it makes sense to have people physically together. So I think it depends as much on the task you're doing as on the particular role.
OLIVER PETERSON: Just before the last federal election, your party waged a war of sorts on the idea of working from home for public servants. It didn't play out that well for you in the polls, particularly amongst metropolitan voters. Is this dangerous territory to be wading back into?
DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, I'm conscious of that, and I think it's because that issue became conflated with working from home for the public sector versus working from home across the economy, and I think they're quite different. Propositions. I mean, you know, in the private sector, I think businesses and their employees and staff should be free to work out what's mutually best arrangement for them that works in both their interests. And that's how workplaces work best. But in the public sector, where the government is, you know, the employer and taxpayers' money, taxpayers are paying for the salaries of our public sector, we want to make sure our public sector is effective and performing well. And as I said earlier, there's been a big shift in the federal public service to a large amount of people now working from home. And I don't think we've done any analysis of the implications of that. Is that having an impact on productivity? Is it having an impact on customer satisfaction? Is it having an impact on recruitment or retention or anything else? It's a pretty dramatic change not to have done any analysis on what implications that's having. So I wouldn't want to draw any conclusions, but I think it's important that we do some of that analytical work.
OLIVER PETERSON: Just finally, what other measures does the Coalition believe would improve productivity when it comes to the public service?
DAVE SHARMA: Well, look, I think at the broad level, I think the public service has grown too quickly and government spending is growing too quickly. I mean, we've had a public service, a federal public service that's grown by about 44,000 people in the last 5 years of the Labor government. That's about 25% of an increase in headcount that's added somewhere in the order of $6 to $7 billion annually to the budget, the deficits as taxpayers have to pay for that.
And I don't think we're seeing better government services as a result. I mean, I mentioned to you the level of satisfaction with services Australia. I mean, they've, they've failed to meet their own timely service goal ever since they reduced their target in 2022, 2023. So I think we want to make sure that public money is spent wisely and that if we are growing the public sector, there's a good justification for why it is and how we expect services to improve.
OLIVER PETERSON: Dave Sharma, thanks for your time.
DAVE SHARMA: Thanks so much, Ollie.
OLIVER PETERSON: That is Liberal Senator Dave Sharma joining us on Drive this afternoon.
[ENDS]