Opposition workplace relations spokeswoman Michaelia Cash slams public service use of contractors

The public sector's struggle to attract highly paid contractors into employment opens up a "can of worms" about its overhaul of workplace laws, Senator Cash said.

Industrial relations laws passed last year imposed limitations on fixed-term contracts for the same role beyond two years, with Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke identifying the practice as a form of insecure work.

Appearing in senate estimates on Wednesday, employment officials revealed the department relies on 1021 contractors, according to figures from the end of December 2022.

"We have already started to ... offer contractors in our contact centres ongoing employment through merit selection processes under the Public Service Act," Employment Department secretary Natalie James said.

Reducing contract reliance "becomes a little bit trickier" though for sought after specialists, particularly in the technology sector, Ms James told senators.

"These are workers that are used to working as contractors and the equivalency in terms of APS salary is not necessarily attractive to them, and so that's something we can't immediately do because we don't have the structures there," she said.

Senator Cash, the opposition workplace relations spokeswoman, slammed this reliance on contractors as "hypocritical".

"It's okay to have non-permanent roles in the Australian Public Service, in particular in Canberra, because of the market in which we operate, but at the same time you have a minister who in speech after speech, and statement after statement says we want to crack down on so-called insecure work for everybody else," she told employment bureaucrats.

"It's just the inconsistency in message."

Expanding on that in a statement following the hearing, Senator Cash said after nine months in government, "if they were serious about 'cracking down' on insecure work, there wouldn't be 1000 contractors in the Department of Employment."

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"Mr Burke should either climb off his high horse on this issue or enforce his own policies within his own department."

Ms James said the department complied with the relevant legislation, the Fair Work and Public Service Acts, but the public sector was still investigating how it could reduce reliance on contractors.

"My sense in coming back into the Canberra-based public service is there has been a significant increase in the use of contractors in the area of IT, probably for lots of reasons," she said.

"I think that the Canberra-based public service has probably contributed to the way this industry operates by continuing to hire so many contractors."

"If the public service as a whole makes decisions about how we're going to go about engaging our very talented technology workforce differently, then that would influence the market.

"I think that that might shift the way that people think about jobs."

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