Logie JanJAN LOGIE (Green): I rise to take a call on behalf of the Green Party in this urgent debate that goes to the heart of our country's ability to have confidence in our Public Service. So far I am pleased to hear a lot of messages of support in the previous two speeches from the Labour Party and the Government in support of the value of our public sector. It is not something that we often hear in this House actually. I am far more familiar with the messages of needing to constrain the public sector and how it is a drain on our resources when in actual fact it is the engine room of our country and enables us to address our social and environmental issues.The core of the discussion today is about the fact that the now convicted fraudster Joanne Harrison was able to defraud our public sector of over $725000 that good people within the public sector who raised concerns about her practices lost their jobs and that there was after her conviction a review of the processes that was led by Sandi Beatie who was previously in a senior position in the State services. Her report found that four public servants had been disadvantaged in the process after speaking out and raising concerns. While three of them may not have been made redundant directly as a result of speaking out the process relating to their redundancies was improper and they were disadvantaged through that process.It is very good to hear the Minister of State Services say so clearly that no public servant should be treated that way because that is correct: no public servant should be treated that way. We need as a country to ensure that we are encouraging people to raise concerns when they see impropriety or they hear advice that is not based on evidence. We need that rigour and safety in our public sector to ensure that our money is being spent well and that our services are the best that they can possibly be. We need to encourage people to speak up and we need to protect them from any negative consequences for doing that.As has been discussed already the Protected Disclosures Act has three key purposes: to enable disclosure and investigations where there is serious wrongdoing to protect employees making disclosures and to promote public interest. What we have seen in the situation here was that people used that Act but they were not in effect protected. So clearly we do need to review and update the Act and it is great to hear that we seem to have so far at least unanimity of thought on that point. And I hope that there will be consideration within the State services as well as within Government of the wider issues around culture and how culture can create openings for certain behaviour or protect against certain negative behaviour.I certainly have been hearing from public servants for quite a long time now about some very significant concerns about a shift in culture in our public sector. We have had reports from research that came out in 2012 of 7000 female public servants that found an extraordinary 43 percent of those surveyed public servants reported experiencing bullying in their public service life in their workplace. I think we need to consider that because when people are experiencing bullying the chances that they are going to be able to speak up and be heard is reduced so we need to be addressing that aspect of the culture.I also hear concerns raised with me about increased managerialism within the public sector whereas previously—at least at one time—a culture of free and frank discussion was encouraged and people's particular knowledge was respected. But now we seem to have this very clear stronger chain of focus up towards the Minister and people who are mindful of their career opportunities are mindful of wanting to deliver—this is what I hear—for the Minister rather than the public.We are hearing that that is also affecting information that is being shared in the workplace. People who want to have career opportunities will be wanting to limit damage. That creates an environment where things are covered up and stifled and that is part of what we seem to have seen here. Certain people's—managers'—voices can be privileged which we have directly seen and that was the finding of Sandi Beatie: that this senior manager had undue influence in the system. I think that is what we are hearing concern from public servants about: the much wider implications of the way that our Public Service has been run under this Government through that increased managerialism.There have been some people who have also spoken about—which I touched on to begin with—an undermining of the Public Service ethos about the sense of people being there to be servants to the public which is really at the heart of a vibrant Public Service. It is not about making the Minister look good; that is not Public Service ethos. That is about a politicisation of our Public Service and we really need to be safeguarding against that. That kind of change in ethos is creating a culture that more readily enables this type of behaviour to happen because it is undermining that sense of everyone being there for a purpose for the public. It makes it more about career advancement than it does about public service. We really do need to be speaking more about the value and the benefits of the Public Service and respecting the amazing work that is being done across so many areas in our country by some amazing public servants.I also want to speak to another aspect that I have been hearing in concerns raised by public servants that I think also links to this which is an increased risk aversion and a sense of preventing scandal. And it is not preventing scandal by making sure that a scandal never happens but a shutting down of information sharing and we have seen the Ombudsman's report around the operation of the Official Information Act as one aspect of that. This seems to be developing into this culture of rather than exposing things to the open air so that we can look at them and understand them and consider them much more of a silencing and a hiding and a preventing of things coming out into the public in many areas and we have far too much evidence of that.I think that creates an environment that is far more likely to support corruption. While we are doing really well in the Transparency International ratings we want to make sure that nothing changes and it will be a while before that shows up so we need a proper review of the state of our public sector to protect all the strengths that have been there that we all benefit from.