Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee, , 5:13:08 to 5:17:56
Defence officials outline the policy review process, ministerial involvement, and how changes were communicated to personnel via the chain of command.
Topics: ADF, Workplace culture
Speakers: Justine Greig, James Paterson, Meghan Quinn, Unknown Speaker
>> Y what what prompted this? How did it come to the department's attention that there was a lack of alignment that needed to be resolved?
>> Um Senator, we had been aware of this um for some time and that the work uh needed to be done. uh in terms of uh again I need to come back to you on when exactly that was recognized. We certainly had discussions within the department in terms of the timing conscious that um giving people sufficient notice. The other um aspect I will um reinforce again is that people if if members or APS employees can demonstrate that additional costs were necessary in terms of meals and incidentals then that is absolutely an avenue.
>> Sure. I appreciate that. And if you say you're aware for some time have you been known of this problem for years or more recently than that?
>> Uh the last couple of years. Yes.
>> Right. And at what level was this decision made? Was it who who decided that this needed to be
>> So we took this uh uh situation knowing that we needed to align and uh it was overdue to our enterprise business committee of which uh all uh deputy secretaries and service chiefs are part of and that is chaired by the associate secretary.
>> Okay. And and how did you first become aware? Was a a jealous DEFAT officer saying, "Oh, this is pretty unfair." you know, um, these guys are getting more than me. How did I mean, Dave would never have done that back in his day, I know.
>> So, we we regularly review our ADF, uh, and APS employment policies. So, that was part of a regular review, but I really need to come back to you, Senator, on the actual timing that that
>> does defense have visibility of what DEFAT pays? Is that how you became aware? Was it brought to your attention?
It was part of our regular review and indeed other overseas conditions of service uh are by and large aligned with DEFAT. So whether that's uh your cost of living allowance, whether it's your location allowance, that is all aligned with DEFAT. There was quite a big review of overseas conditions of service done a few years ago and a number of alignments were made at that time. I think that was 2016 from memory and that has been revisited a number of times. There are still some elements where there are specifics to the unique na nature of the ADF but by and large conditions of service are matched to DEFAT for non-operational um roles and postings.
>> Would was the minister um required to sign off on this? Was the minister briefed on this? Any of the ministers?
Um, I'm going to check on that, um, Senator, but this was a departmental decision.
>> Right. Okay. Um,
>> we may well have we may well have >> we may well have reported I mean it's not unusual when we make decisions at the departmental level that we provide information to ministers about the activity that we're doing. So,
>> okay. In this instance, could you take on notice when that happened? >> Thank you. And how was this change communicated to personnel? So the change
was uh communicated through our usual mechanisms and they consist of uh firstly uh we make sure we're communicating with uh each service through the chain of command. We have what we call deaf ggrams. I think you've heard us talk about those before which a very standard way of communicating across the workforce. And uh there are other updates through our um internal internet, but we're always conscious that people don't all have access to that.
>> Yeah.
>> And presum and presumably there would have been each post has a hierarchy as well within it. Uh and so it would have been communicated through the line management areas in the individual posts as well.
>> Okay. Can those defs be provided? They're not classified. I assume that can be provided to the committee.
>> We can provide those.
>> Thank you. and and it's your evidence that that's the most appropriate way to communicate um a a kind of change to people's entitlements.
>> Uh Senator, the what we have learned over time is the best way to communicate with service members is through the chain of command. In terms of the APS workforce, uh often we use different um mechanisms to communicate, but as the secretary just noted, communication to post is also um a key element of this.
>> Okay. Thank you. If the chair's happy, I'm going to move on to another topic