Senate estimates reveals lanyard-lifestyle of public service’s laptop class

In the alternate universe of the public service, you can work from home for a whole range of reasons – like how you feel about a public holiday or a referendum, Vikki Campion writes.

In the alternate universe of the public service, you can work from home for a whole range of reasons – like how you feel about a public holiday or a referendum.

A fresh week of senate estimates has revealed the reality of the lanyard-lifestyle of the laptop class, where to deal with a public holiday or referendum result we dislike, we just stay at home at our leisure.

Department of Infrastructure secretary Jim Betts, paid a package of $898,201 a year, gave public servants work-from-home privileges to process the Voice referendum result for their “psycho-social safety”.

Under questioning by senators Bridget McKenzie and Matt Canavan, estimates revealed that while Mr Betts was busy granting staff home school without parents, his department had dropped the ball on airline access slots at Sydney Airport, leaving country passengers paying through the nose for city flights.

Department of Infrastructure secretary Jim Betts, paid a package of $898,201 a year, gave public servants work-from-home privileges.

Or worse, leaving them stranded as Qantas, busily painting planes in official Yes Voice campaign logos for prime ministerial photo shoots, hogged slots and then cancelled flights altogether.

After the Slots Compliance Committee expired in 2020, it was supposed to be replaced with a new committee with the same job.

Instead of obeying an act of Parliament to ensure a Compliance Committee was overseeing slots at Sydney Airport, public servants defended the four-year-long breach, arguing that “there was a lot of feedback it wasn’t effective”.

Who would say that?

Surely, not Qantas, the airline that hoards Sydney slots, forcing out competition such as Rex, Bonza and international competitors such as Qatar from being able to land.

Meanwhile, the patient in Moree, who needs a specialist in Sydney, is poorer.

If the rest of us don’t abide by an act of Parliament, we suffer – in the upper echelons of lanyard land, it’s another dispensable inconvenience in the home “office” where doing what is required is a minor detail in the shadow of the dilemma of holiday interpretation.

Betts should realise the only reason they have money is that people who aren’t in public service went to work to pay their taxes, and they don’t have the privilege of not going to work because they are upset about a referendum result.

NewActon Nishi commercial building in Canberra. The Federal Government is spending more than $20 million to fit it out for offices.

Department of Infrastructure secretary Jim Betts.

Of more than 2000 people on Bett’s staff, most apparently worked from home on Australia Day. So what do you achieve when only 2 per cent of the engine is on? What did they achieve? We wouldn’t know. There were no measurable outputs, no correspondence, no ministerial briefs, just a time sheet, bureaucrats said.

There’s more accountability on a farm where at least you have to prove you’ve built a fence.

If only Sydney insurance employee Susie Cheeko, dismissed by her company which monitored keystrokes, had been working for the Australian Public Service. She would still have a job.

Instead of going to the office on Australia Day, public servants were “encouraged … to consider working from home” because of a lack of fire, first aid and emergency wardens.

Working in the $256m A-Grade Nishi offices overlooking Lake Burley Griffin, winner of the Best International Project, and boasting onsite hotel, cinema, gym, salon, yoga, and cafes, is apparently a perilous place without a fire warden.

Did the fire alarms take Australia Day off too?

If the fire warden calls in sick, does the rest of the department go home?

Perhaps it’s no wonder the department couldn’t fulfil its own legislative requirements with everyone AWOL with the secretary’s blessing on everything from a public holiday to a referendum due to their overwhelming coloniser’s guilt.

Another department head, acting Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority chief executive Dr Melissa McEwen told senators she discussed January 26 as a “contested date” at an agency Australia Day awards ceremony.

“I may have said some people may consider it invasion day,” she said.

While she was shy to admit a potential breach of the APS Code, her own X account is much more revealing, where on top of spruiking her new electric scooter and new red Tesla, she regularly retweets posts from Labor ministers and statements like: “Sovereignty does not come from a court process but from something far deeper and insoluble.”

It’s time bureaucrats leave the politics to the politicians and do their day job.