APS employee census to ask cultural background of staff: Australian Public Service Commission

Appearing at Senate Estimates on Tuesday, Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi questioned the Australian Public Service Commission about the progress of a strategy to boost cultural and linguistic diversity, similar to strategies for First Nations people and women in the public service.

APSC Commissioner Peter Woolcott said the creation of a new CALD strategy was a priority for the Public Service Minister, Katy Gallagher, but there was no timeframe.

"It's question of reallocation of resources. It is not something you do in a half-hearted way. If we're going to do a strategy around CALD we need to do it properly," Mr Woolcott said.

"It's a matter of finding resources, how to do that, what are the parameters in terms of information we need to gather, what's the data we need.

"There's a whole lot of things which go into making the proper strategy, and that's exactly what we are providing the Minister with advice on."

Senator Faruqi also questioned the APSC about work being done to improve data collection to enable better accuracy in recording people's backgrounds.

APSC Assistant Commissioner Dr Nicole Steele said the next APS Employee Census in May would ask public servants to identify their cultural background.

"Through the employee census that we were just speaking about before, we're introducing a new item for people to identify their cultural background," Dr Steele said.

"We think that will give us a bit more information about their experiences at work, and of course, there's always a balance about how low we go in terms of granularity.

"So we've worked with Diversity Council of Australia to try and narrow that down to something that's acceptable to ask in an opinion survey."

Greens deputy leader and anti-racism spokesperson Senator Mehreen Faruqi said she was very pleased to see movement after pushing the APSC to make it a priority for months.

"Culturally diverse APS staff face unique barriers, including racism and discrimination, and it's good to see the APSC is finally recognising the need for a targeted strategy," Senator Faruqi said.

"It's critical that the diversity of our community is represented at all levels of government, and that staff have appropriate support. In addition to equity and fairness, this will help ensure government services reach everyone and don't discriminate.

"Improved data collection has been a long time coming and I'm glad the APSC has listened and is taking this on. It will help us better understand the experiences of diverse staff and meet their needs.

"Now we have to make sure there is a comprehensive plan drawn up and agreed to, and sufficient resourcing provided to progress the work.

"I look forward to continuing my discussions with Minister Gallagher, who has shown a clear and welcome interest in this, and the APSC as its work progresses."