Collective bargaining in the Australian public service: From New Public Management to public value

Abstract

In 2022, Australia's Labor Opposition pledged to reintroduce collective bargaining covering the whole Australian public service (APS) if elected. The elected Labor government is now implementing this ground-breaking reform. The APS has, since 1997, bargained at the agency level with no mandated common terms and conditions of employment applying across the service. This has led to pay dispersion and inequity, and fragmentation of the terms and conditions of employment. The current negotiations aim to rectify this situation. We argue that these reforms represent an ideological shift and a repudiation of New Public Management (NPM) towards a public value approach, which also incorporates being a model employer. We consider whether this refocusing will overcome the problems inherent in the system of bargaining practised under an NPM framework. We examine some of the most important items being negotiated at the time of writing, namely, wages, job security, flexible working, paid parental leave and paid family and domestic violence leave. We conclude that the new approach will overcome the legacy of the previous bargaining system to benefit individuals and the APS as a whole. We further conclude that this public value approach substantially fulfils the government's ideal of becoming a model employer.