Katy Gallagher says the PM shouldn't 'wave his finger' at the public service

The senator for the ACT was rewarded on her return to parliament with a promotion within Anthony Albanese's shadow frontbench to the role of shadow finance and public service minister.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has signaled a new focus on service delivery within the public service, naming himself as the minister responsible and telling public service bosses to be prepared for "congestion busting" and performance targets.

Ms Gallagher said she could see the benefits of the focus, but warned such an attitude needed to come with resources.

"If your public service isn't well resourced or with the right people in the right place to do that, no amount of finger waving is going to deliver the outcome you're after."

"I don't have a problem with the Prime Minister's remarks but they have to be matched up with the right leadership, the right capability within your workforce and the right resources to deliver."

Ms Gallagher said the move to rebrand the Department of Human Services as Services Australia could be successful if it was "for the right reasons," but warned against allowing it to become no more than a name change.

"If it's not about just cost cutting or some sort of presentational effect, if it's genuinely around co-locating and driving efficiencies which deliver a better product for the person at the end of the day in a more readily accessible way, then that makes incredible sense," she said.

Following years of the Coalition government's efforts to move public service jobs away from the capital and to regional areas, Ms Gallagher said there needed to be a test to ensure such moves made sense.

"It shouldn't be an exercise in pork-barreling or Canberra-bashing, which is what it has appeared to be over the last few years because the evidence hasn't supported some of the decisions and the language and the rhetoric of government hasn't been about evidence-based decision-making."

"It's been 'why should Canberra get these jobs when they can be done somewhere else?'"

Ms Gallagher said she hoped the independent review of the public service would be acted on, but the government was sending mixed messages on public sector reform.

"You have [the review] happening on the one hand and then you've got decentralisation, efficiency dividends, failures to finalise EBAs, finger-wagging, all of that happening on the other side, it's sending a bit of a mixed message."

The former ACT chief minister said she wouldn't rule out working in cooperation with the government to ensure the review's recommendations were implemented.

"The public service cant remain the same and just keep going on because everywhere is changing - demands on the public service are changing, demands on government are changing."

Ms Gallagher said Labor would be keeping a close eye on the implementation of the efficiency dividend and how that interacted with spending on contractors and consultants.