Submission to Public Service Legislation Bill

Executive Summary:

1. The Salvation Army supports the vast majority of this Bill. We welcome these reforms as a good way to create a modern, agile and adaptive Public Service.i Additionally, we support the five key areas of the reforms and Bill. Our submission below will provide specific comments on these five key areas. The Salvation Army is engaging with this reform process and the current Bill primarily to advocate for the needs that our clients have when they engage with the frontlines of the public service. We have good relationships with different parts of the public sector. But on many occasions our clients and communities have informed us about the challenges they face with the public sector departments and public servants themselves. Hence, this submission is another opportunity to present a community or client voice to these discussions.
2. The Salvation Army engaged in the public consultation phase of the State Sector Review in 2018. The crux of our submission in 2018 was advocating for; better front line public services particularly for the clients we work with; supporting people to navigate through the often confusing bureaucracy in government departments; having a consumer-centric approach to developing public services; encouraging more joint projects and meaningful engagement with NGOs and community groups; and safeguarding against a top-heavy bureaucratic and inefficient public service.
3. Our responses in this submission to the Bill are not too dissimilar to the feedback above. Therefore, this is not a long submission. However, there are some specific responses we have to the main sections of this Bill. These include our submissions that the public service must remain apolitical, that greater connection to the community and NGOs is crucial to a modern public service and advocating for pay equity for a serially underfunded social services and NGO sector as compared to public servants.