Pay rates and salaries across the Australian Public Service should be in line for a major overhaul according to former Australian Public Service Commissioner, Andrew Podger.
According to Mr Podger (pictured) who was APS Commissioner between 2002 and 2004 but is now an academic at the Australian National University in Canberra, the salary differences that have developed between Departments and Agencies over the past 30 years are ‘inappropriate and needed fixing’.
Quoted in a report in the Canberra Times that claimed salary discrepancies could be as high as $30,000 between officers at the same level but in different Agencies, Professor Podger said the current system was based on each Agency negotiating its own enterprise bargain base supposedly on the productivity arrangements within the organisation.
“That approach to setting a pay would not be used in any private sector arrangement and is entirely artificial,” Professor Podger said.
He said the recent Thodey review of the public service recommended a move towards common pays scales and conditions but ‘sadly” according to the Professor, failed to explain how to go about it.
‘More sadly again,” Professor Podger said, “the Government rejected any change to its remuneration, claiming that the policy was working well when everything tells you it’s not working at all!
“There is every reason to believe that some people are paid more than the market suggests they should and some people are being paid less than the market suggests they should,” he said.
“What is needed is an approach to setting pay based on market conditions and those market conditions would then lead to similar jobs getting the same pay.”
As spokesperson for the APS Commission was reported as saying the discrepancies between pay rates were caused by more than two decades of Agencies and Departments bargaining for their own agreements.
Until the mid-1990s, the APS negotiated its own awards service-wide.
