Somewhere along the way, the phrase public servant became a put-down.
It conjures images of faceless bureaucrats, endless paperwork and red tape. In political debate, “bureaucracy” has become convenient shorthand for waste, inefficiency and government excess. Public servants are too often portrayed as a burden on taxpayers rather than the people who quietly keep our society functioning.
I have always found that deeply unfair.
Most of us rely on public servants from the moment we wake until the moment we go to bed. They educate our children, care for us when we are sick, maintain our roads, protect our borders, forecast floods and fires, respond to natural disasters, administer our courts, issue passports, manage national parks, protect our biosecurity and ensure that the countless systems upon which modern life depends continue to work.
And they are not some mysterious group sitting behind desks in Canberra or Sydney. They are teachers, nurses, paramedics, police officers, firefighters, scientists, engineers, child protection workers, park rangers, planners, emergency managers, policy advisers, school support staff and thousands of others working in our communities.
They are our neighbours, friends and family members.
The people we notice when something goes wrong
Good public service is largely invisible.
We notice the pothole, not the thousands of kilometres of road maintained successfully. We notice when a government website crashes, not the millions of transactions it processes correctly. Nobody thanks the engineer because the bridge stayed standing. Nobody congratulates the biosecurity officer because another pest never reached our farms. Nobody notices the payroll officer because everybody was paid correctly and on time.
Competence rarely makes headlines.
One of the great strengths of Australia’s democracy is its professional and politically impartial public service. Governments come and go. Ministers change. Elections are won and lost. Yet our institutions continue because dedicated professionals ensure essential services continue regardless of which party occupies the Treasury benches.
Public servants do not determine government policy. They advise governments and administer the laws and policies determined by our elected representatives. When governments change direction, the public service changes direction with them. That impartiality is one of the foundations of stable democratic government.
Different philosophies of public service
There is, however, a genuine political debate about the size and role of the public service, and recent Australian history provides two quite different approaches.
During its years in office federally, the Coalition pursued a smaller-government model that included caps on Australian Public Service staffing and extensive use of consultants, contractors and labour hire. The problem was that limiting the number of public servants did not eliminate the work the government needed done.
An Australian Government Audit of Employment subsequently found that in 2021–22 external labour represented the equivalent of almost 54,000 additional full-time positions beyond the reported APS headcount, at a cost of $20.8 billion.
Government could therefore appear smaller on paper while a substantial workforce continued doing government work outside the formal public service.
That should make us question the assumption that fewer public servants automatically means smaller or cheaper government. Sometimes it simply means paying someone else to do the work.
Recent scandals involving some of Australia’s largest consulting firms also demonstrate that outsourcing can carry risks beyond cost.
The PwC tax leaks scandal provided an extraordinary example. Confidential government information about forthcoming multinational tax laws was shared within the firm and used in work aimed at helping clients sidestep the very laws on which the government had sought confidential advice.
More recently, KPMG has faced serious questions over its handling of confidential client information and whistleblower allegations. At the same time, it held hundreds of Commonwealth contracts worth more than $650 million. The Commonwealth subsequently commissioned an independent review of KPMG’s governance, culture, ethics and integrity arrangements, with the firm agreeing temporarily not to bid for new Commonwealth work.
None of this means consultants are inherently bad or that governments should never use them. Specialist outside expertise can be enormously valuable. But it demonstrates the danger of allowing government to become excessively dependent upon private firms to provide expertise that should also exist within the public service.
When expertise is continually outsourced, governments risk losing institutional knowledge. A strong public service needs its own scientists, economists, engineers, policy experts, technology specialists and experienced administrators who understand both their field and the institutions they serve.
The Albanese Labor Government has deliberately moved in a different direction. It removed staffing restrictions and introduced a Strategic Commissioning Framework designed to rebuild expertise within the Australian Public Service and reduce inappropriate outsourcing. Direct APS employment is intended to be the default for core government work, with agencies identifying functions that should be brought back in-house.
The NSW experience
We have seen a similar philosophical divide much closer to home.
For more than a decade, the former NSW Coalition Government imposed a public sector wages cap. It was defended as fiscal discipline, but its reach extended far beyond what many people imagine when they hear the words “public servant”.
It affected the people staffing our schools, hospitals, emergency services, prisons, national parks and government agencies. Teachers, nurses, paramedics, child protection workers and many others were being told how essential they were while their capacity to bargain over wages was constrained.
The Minns Labor Government allowed that wages cap to expire in September 2023 and returned to a bargaining approach. One of its first measures delivered a 4 per cent salary increase, together with an additional 0.5 percentage point in superannuation, to more than 80,000 NSW public sector employees. Broader agreements followed across the public sector.
There is, of course, a legitimate debate about public expenditure. Governments cannot spend without restraint, and public sector wages ultimately have to be funded. But there is another side to the ledger.
What does it cost when we cannot recruit enough teachers? When experienced nurses leave? When child protection services cannot retain caseworkers or government departments lose the professionals needed to provide sound advice?
Public servants certainly cost money. So does not having enough of them.
And now, One Nation
This brings me to the latest manifestation of the argument—and one that particularly gets under my skin.
I find it enormously frustrating to hear Pauline Hanson and One Nation repeatedly disparage public servants and portray the public service as little more than bloated bureaucracy and an unnecessary drain on taxpayers. Criticising government expenditure is entirely legitimate. Questioning whether departments operate efficiently is legitimate too. But continually talking about public servants as though they are the problem is something else entirely.
These are real people doing real jobs that Australians depend upon every day.
And there is a political consequence to rhetoric like this that One Nation itself should consider. If you repeatedly tell hundreds of thousands of Australians that the work they do is part of a bloated bureaucracy, an unnecessary expense or something that needs to be dramatically cut, you can hardly be surprised if those same Australians question what value you place on them and their contribution.
These are not numbers on a spreadsheet. They are people who have chosen careers serving their communities. Whatever legitimate debate we have about the appropriate size of government, surely we can have it without diminishing the people who keep its essential services functioning.
One Nation is campaigning for substantial reductions in government expenditure and what it regards as unnecessary bureaucracy. Its published policies propose abolishing the Department of Climate Change and associated agencies and programs, abolishing the National Indigenous Australians Agency, and reviewing federal functions including education and housing.
One Nation is entitled to argue for smaller government. But slogans about “slashing waste” should always be accompanied by another question: what happens to the work?
Abolishing a department does not abolish the responsibilities that gave rise to it. Reducing public servant numbers does not make legislation disappear or remove the need to administer programs, regulate industries, protect the environment, oversee public money and provide services.
If the work moves to another department, it has merely moved. If it goes to consultants or contractors, taxpayers may still be paying for it. And if nobody does it, Australians deserve to know which services, protections or capabilities they will lose.
It is easy to make public servants a political punching bag. It is considerably harder to explain how a modern country would function without them.
Public servants make government possible
Of course public institutions should be efficient. Waste should be exposed, poor performance addressed and senior management structures scrutinised. Every taxpayer has the right to expect value for money.
But reform is not the same thing as contempt.
Public servants have too often become convenient political scapegoats. They implement laws they did not write, administer policies they did not choose and deal directly with citizens frustrated by decisions made by elected politicians. Blaming “the bureaucracy” can be considerably easier than accepting political responsibility.
We should also consider what message we send talented young Australians when public service is continually described as bloated, wasteful and unnecessary. A society that constantly belittles its public servants should not be surprised if eventually it struggles to attract talented people into public service.
We need outstanding teachers and nurses, but we also need excellent economists, scientists, engineers, lawyers, planners, cyber-security experts, administrators and policy thinkers.
The private sector needs talented people. So does the public sector.
Indeed, successful private enterprise depends upon effective public institutions: reliable infrastructure, functioning courts, enforceable contracts, educated workers, safe workplaces, effective regulation and stable government. The public and private sectors are not enemies. A successful modern economy needs both.
“Just” a public servant?
Perhaps that is why the phrase public servant deserves reclaiming.
There is nothing second-rate about choosing a career serving the community. Most public servants will never become famous. Most Australians will never know their names. Their success is often measured by the fact that nothing happened.
The bridge remained standing. The disease outbreak was contained. The child received an education. The emergency call was answered. The pension arrived. The food was safe. The bushfire warning was issued. The passport arrived before the holiday.
The system simply worked.
So the next time someone dismisses somebody as “just another public servant”, perhaps we should think again.
Civilisation does not run on political slogans. It runs on capable people quietly doing their jobs, day after day, in the service of the rest of us.
And they don’t just help the world go round.
In many ways, they are the people who keep it turning.
Denise McHugh is an experienced educator in Tamworth. She is Chair of the NSW ALP Education and Skills Committee and Deputy President of the Independent Education Union (IEU).
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