Mr GORMAN (Perth—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for the Public Service and Assistant Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) (09:01): Today I table the 2024-25 State of the service report. The report shows what is working, where we need to lift and how the Australian Public Service is evolving to meet the expectations of the Australian public, whom we all serve. It is an honour to work with Senator Katy Gallagher as the Minister for the Public Service on these reforms. I share her determination for a Public Service that delivers and puts people and business at the centre of their work. This government has invested strongly in rebuilding the Australian Public Service and its capability. As of 30 June 2025, 198,529 employees were working for Australians across the service. That's more expertise, more specialist skills and more capacity where Australians need it most. Government decisions on public service resourcing and a sustained focus on effectiveness, capability and integrity make a big difference, especially to the service delivery experience of the Australian people. This report builds on the Trust in Australian public services report, which showed wait times are shorter—71 per cent said the time taken to achieve an outcome was reasonable. Digital platforms are simpler and more reliable—73 per cent said websites, apps and online platforms worked well. Access to services is easer—79 per cent reported it was easy to engage with the relevant service. Service quality and staff helpfulness has improved—75 per cent of Australian Public Service staff were rated as helpful. In this report, 93 per cent of APS employees now say they understand exactly how their work benefits the community. When public servants are connected to purpose, they deliver stronger outcomes for the Australian people. We are also strengthening integrity across the service. Eighty-one per cent of staff say their agency fosters a culture of integrity, up from 77 per cent last year. I want to say a big thank you to the public servants of Australia, because their work is how we deliver for Australians. They work from some 586 Public Service locations across this country and overseas, delivering for the Australian people from Broome to Bendigo, from Penrith to my hometown of Perth. A huge shout-out to the remote service teams—some 335 remote service teams from Services Australia now operate across the country. On top of that, our biosecurity officers screen million of packages and parcels each month, protecting Australian agriculture, our farmers and our food security. Right now there are public servants in Darwin delivering for Australians affected by Cyclone Fina. A fair and inclusive Public Service is essential to delivering for Australians. The Public Service should reflect the community and communities which it serves. That's what John Howard's act of 1999 demands. In December 2024 the Public Service achieved its lowest-recorded gender pay gap of 4.4 per cent based on annualised salaries. There's more to do, but that is something of which we can all be proud. We have data telling us now that 26.8 per cent of Public Service employees reported their first language was not exclusively English. Culturally and linguistically diverse representation in the senior executive service of the Public Service, however, is just 11.8 per cent. We are moving towards a longer term benchmark of 24 per cent, aligning with the one per cent annual increase target. Guidance has been published to help leaders build culturally inclusive workplaces because we know that diversity strengthens service delivery, especially when engaging with diverse communities. Salima Estefan, an advisor at Austrade, told us, 'I joined the APS to pursue a career with deeper purpose and broader societal impact in the country I've chosen to be my second home.' Tens of thousands of other Australian public servants have made the same decision, and I thank them for choosing a career with the APS. We have also made significant progress when it comes to First Nations leadership in the service. First Nations leadership has doubled in just two years. This is because of deliberate decisions taken by Minister Gallagher and this government to ensure that we have a public service who can give us the advice we need. In 2023, there were 54 First Nations SES leaders. Today, there are 111. Further, we are working on the disability royal commission's recommendations through a discovery project to consider the five recommendations for improving employment for people with disability in the service. It is also essential that the Australian Public Service embraces change and, where necessary, leads change. Earlier this month, the minister released the new AI plan for the APS to ensure artificial intelligence is used safely, ethically and transparently. AI now assesses more than three million mail consignments a month for signs of illicit drugs. AI is helping the Public Service forecast locust outbreaks across 25 million hectares of farmland, protecting food production. The platform GovAI provides APS staff with secure access to APS tools, protecting the data of the Public Service while giving the benefits of artificial intelligence. Early engagement shows strong demand for secure experimentation, practical training and cross-agency collaboration. We are also investing in long-term careers across the service. Three new profession streams have been launched this year: procurement and contract management, evaluation and complex project management. These join the existing digital, data and HR professions. Together, these networks now support tens of thousands of APS employees, helping them to deliver services faster and, importantly, at lower cost. The commitment to service by APS employees remains strong. More than 151,000 APS employees, including a few from the member for Fenner's electorate, participated in the 2025 APS Employee Census. Census results showed that 91 per cent of staff are willing to go the extra mile when required. Our Public Service Amendment Act took effect on 11 December 2024. The changes strengthen APS values, capability and governance. They encourage decision-making at the lowest appropriate level—faster decisions with less red tape. We included the APS value of stewardship, reinforcing that we need long-term thinking for the long-term challenges that we face. They make regular capability reviews mandatory, making sure that we know what is working and what needs improvement. They clarify the commissioner's power to investigate alleged code breaches by current or former agency heads, and they require agencies to publish APS employee census results with corresponding action plans. They don't just have to publish the data; they have to publish what they will do about it. The APS must now also deliver at least one long-term insights briefing each year. All of these changes, along with our other Public Service reform changes, resulted in a $527 million reduction in spending on consultants in 2024-25 alone. With that, I want to thank Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer, the Australian Public Service Commissioner. I want to thank his entire team at the commission for all of the work that they do in making sure that we can deliver a public service that meets the needs of Australians now and into the future. This report tells us not just about the APS as it is now; it also tells us about where we 've been. These reports, under successive governments of every persuasion since 1902, have given us insights into the service. They date back to the Commonwealth Public Service Act 1902, and now the commission, working with the National Library and others, has undertaken a project to locate and connect every single one of those reports so we have good longitudinal data and some interesting insights as well. We found a letter from former prime minister John Curtin to former public service commissioner Thorpe in 1944, setting out his thoughts and priorities for the service after World War II. While we know that former prime minister Curtin did not see Australia post World War II, we know that our success at that conflict was thanks to his leadership and that the rebuilding efforts started well and truly under his watch. It reminds us of the essential role the Australian Public Service plays in keeping Australians safe, and I encourage those with an interest in Australia's history, like me, to look into that archive for insights into where we've been and where we are going. In conclusion, the State of the service report 2024-25 demonstrates a public service that is a stronger, more skilled, more diverse and more future focused than it has been in previous years. The delivery agenda of the Albanese government is working. We are restoring trust in government by investing in people, investing in systems and investing in the future of the Public Service, on which all Australians rely. We are delivering for Australians. We believe that we can do that in partnership with the Australian Public Service. I commend the report to the House.