Indigenous Employment within the APS: a policy recommendation

 A recent seminar at the ANU on Indigenous employment in the APS by ANU researchers Dr Julie Lahn and Samantha Faulkner managed to shock me. In particular, it mentioned (almost in passing) data on the level of Indigenous representation in the senior levels of the public service, generally known as the Senior Executive Service or SES.

The seminar reported on the findings of a report (link here) commissioned by the Australian Public Service Commission on ‘enablers and barriers which act to support or impede career progression of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees to senior levels in the Australian Public Service (APS)’.

In laying out the context within which these issues play out, the report presented a snapshot of the relevant data:

The 2018 State of the Service report indicates that representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the APS has improved in recent years and currently sits at 3.3% (Australian Public Service Commission 2018, p. 58). This is a significant achievement in terms of having met the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment Strategy 2015-2018 target of 3% representation.

Despite this achievement, employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the APS is concentrated at the lower levels. The majority are employed at APS6 and below and the largest proportion (27%) are at APS4 level.

In contrast, employment at senior executive levels is very small, just 1%. Over a ten year period, representation at the Senior Executive Service levels has remained disappointingly small while Executive Level employment has declined.

The proportion of Indigenous APS members mirrors the proportion of the Australian population who identified as Indigenous in the 2016 Census. Recently published analysis by Nick Biddle and Danielle Venn provide some broader context for these figures:

For both men and women, the public sector accounts for a considerable share of employment, either through direct employment in government at Commonwealth, state or local level or in industries where public sector employment is high, such as education, healthcare and public safety. In 2016, just over 20% of Indigenous employment was in the public sector, compared with 15% of non-Indigenous employment. 

The majority of Indigenous employment in the public sector was with state/territory governments. Indigenous women were more likely than Indigenous men to be employed by Commonwealth or state/territory governments, but Indigenous men had higher employment rates in local government than Indigenous women. 

[Biddle & Venn 2018 ‘Recent Trends in Indigenous Employment’ Journal of Australian Political Economy vol 82, summer 18/19,  link here].

In other words, public sector employment is comparatively more important to Indigenous citizens than private sector employment. However, it needs to be remembered that Indigenous employment is much lower than for mainstream citizens, with less than 45% of Indigenous citizens aged 15+ being employed in 2016 (See Biddle & Venn: Figure 2).

The Lahn & Faulkner report sourced their data on SES employment from a submission to the APS Review from the APS Indigenous Steering Committee. This submission is available at the Review’s submissions page (link here).

That submission provided more detailed data on SES employment in the APS:

At the SES level, the discrepancy is larger, with 25 Indigenous SES officers compared to 2,326 non-Indigenous SES officers (1%).  Furthermore, this discrepancy has continued over the last ten years…

The submission also provides data that makes clear that the proportion of Indigenous SES officers has barely moved over the past decade. Moreover, when we consider the data from different perspectives, the magnitude of the issue becomes apparent. There are just over 150,000 Commonwealth public servants (see the appendix to the Lahn & Faulkner report). Of these, just over 5000, or 3.3% are Indigenous. However, of the 5000 Indigenous public servants, only 25, or 0.5%, are Indigenous SES officers.

The Lahn & Faulkner report to the APS was based on interviews with around 50 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff across the APS, and includes a series of recommendations for policymakers, Indigenous employees and non-Indigenous employees, all of which make intuitive sense.

The Indigenous Steering Committee submission to the APS Review also included a small number of tentative recommendations. I encourage readers to check out both sets of recommendations.

However, my reaction as a former policymaker to both these sets of recommendations was sceptical. Not because they do not have merit, they do. But because they are too fine grained, too detailed, and too amorphous to ensure that policymakers at political and bureaucratic levels focus on them. As a result, notwithstanding their merits, they are unlikely in my view to be implemented and thus are unlikely to be the lever that will make a substantive difference in terms of making the APS an Indigenous friendly environment, and perhaps more importantly, in facilitating policies more attuned to substantive partnerships with First Nations.

Shortly after attending the ANU seminar, the APS Review released their Interim Report titled ‘Priorities for Change’ (link here). I was thus quite interested to see what was proposed in relation to Indigenous employment in the APS, and in particular if they had any ideas for greater Indigenous employment at SES levels.

The report is necessarily very high level, and addresses a range of crucial issues for the future of the nation. I do not propose to summarise or even critique the report more generally, (but see recent reporting in the Mandarin link here) and note that a report such as this will inevitably have little opportunity to deal with Indigenous policy and employment issues in any detail. Nevertheless, it seems useful to summarise what the Review Committee has to say on Indigenous issues.

At page 17 under the heading of partnerships, they note:

Nowhere is the importance of genuine partnerships truer than in supporting the aspirations of, and pursuing outcomes with, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Now is the time for the APS to reconceptualise how it works with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

On page 37, a graphic on diversity mentions the key data on Indigenous employment along with that of other specific groups, under a heading that states: ‘The APS struggles to attract and retain diverse employees, particularly at SES levels’. 

On page 49, at the conclusion of a section on Developing stronger internal and external partnerships, the Review included a text box which made a number of points regarding Indigenous issues. I encourage readers to read the whole text. Key paragraphs included:

The panel’s emphasis on the importance of relationships recognises that the APS cannot meet its purpose of serving all Australians unless it works openly and with integrity with partners across the community. Nowhere is this truer than in supporting the outcomes and aspirations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples….

…If pursued, the priorities for change outlined in this report provide an opportunity for the APS to work profoundly differently with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Creating a genuine partnership would be fundamentally transformative.

Such a partnership needs to operate at different levels. Locally, it will often mean working collectively on community-led or place-based initiatives. This will require the APS to work with much greater humility and to focus on building the strength and impact of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.

Nationally, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples must be able to participate meaningfully in matters affecting them. The panel believes this simple proposition should be a guiding principle for the APS. Achieving it will require supporting mechanisms and institutions that provide for national participation and representation…

…It is also critical that the APS supports and develops its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees, including fostering the development of senior leaders across the service.

These comments are well directed and are intuitively appealing. Again, what they lack is any guarantee or mechanism that will ensure they are implemented. Given this is an interim report, it is incumbent on potential sceptics or critics to wait for the final report. Nevertheless, there appears to be little appreciation that changing the deeply embedded culture of stasis and implicit exclusion will be a major challenge for the APS even if its leadership is fully committed to implementing the new approaches being hinted at by the Review.

Which brings me back to the question I asked myself as I sat in the seminar at the ANU and sought to come to terms with the data on under-representation of Indigenous citizens in the APS, and in particular, what this meant for the capability of the APS to deliver effective policy and programs for Indigenous Australians:

What is the single policy change that might make a difference to Indigenous outcomes and APS employment levels over the medium term?

The answer I came up with is based on my view that it should be a policy change that is easy to implement, that is relatively visible and not easily ignored, and should have ongoing impacts that flow to a broad range of circumstances. My answer is also influenced by the fact that increasingly, it is mainstream policies and programs which impact, for good or bad, on Indigenous citizens, and thus there is a need for mainstream agencies to be sensitised to the issues facing Indigenous Australians.

Accordingly, if I were an incoming Minister for Indigenous Affairs, I would seek an undertaking from the Prime Minister for a commitment to double the number of Indigenous SES officers to 50 within four years, and to double it again to 100 within ten years.

Moreover, such a target should be met by appointments across the breadth of the APS. If the authorising environment at political levels encourages greater Indigenous SES representation, the senior levels of the bureaucracy would do all they could to find ways to meet the commitment. If we had two or three Indigenous SES officers in each of Health, Home Affairs, Finance, Treasury, and so on, they would begin to establish an inclusive environment and context that would encourage the promotion and retention of more junior officers. 

Similarly, more Indigenous friendly working environments would organically and informally encourage and facilitate the sorts of recommendations made in the Lahn/Faulkner report and the submission to the review by the APS Indigenous Steering Committee. These recommendations go to ensuring that the APS retains talented Indigenous entrants and gives them every opportunity to pursue a career to the very top of the APS.

Finally, for those interested in reading more about Indigenous employment in the public sector, the publications listed on this page will be helpful.

Addendum 1 April 2019

I have just seen PMC's Communique Number 10 (link here), which reports on the deliberations of the Secretaries Equality and Diversity Council, and includes a section on Indigenous employment. The bureaucratic formulations are tried and tested, but hardly engender confidence that the Equality and Diversity Council is infused with a reforming zeal:

"The Council will explore further retention and development strategies as part of the next Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Strategy....noted the value of the Strategy as a catalyst for change....agreed ....to the APSC exploring opportunities..."

It is worth reading the document inits entirety.

Disclosure: In my ‘day job’, I am a Visiting Fellow at CAEPR.