Every February brings a great migration to Canberra - the annual arrival of a new cohort of Australian Public Service graduates. Across departments and agencies, early-career public servants arrive in great numbers; they are often joined by other, more senior new starters, relocating for a fresh role after the summer break.

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We thought it was timely, then, for our first column of the year to outline what new public servants need to know about their rights at work. For many, a long, happy career in the APS will never require any detailed knowledge of employment law. But it never hurts to be aware of where to go for more information, if issues do arise.

There are four primary sources for a public servant's rights and obligations at work. First, all employment in Australia is contractual in nature. Employees owe express (that is, written) contractual obligations - although often public servants do not sign a formal contract of employment, but instead signed an abbreviated letter of offer. Employees also owe implied (unwritten) obligations - to obey lawful and reasonable directions from a supervisor, for example - which arise under common law.

More significantly, for public servants especially, is the statutory regulation of employment. The vast majority of employees in Australia benefit from entitlements in the Fair Work Act 2009, which sets out core minimum entitlements (the National Employment Standards), protections from unfair dismissal and adverse action, and more recent developments such as the right to disconnect.

Federal public servants also find employment rights and obligations in the Public Service Act 1999 (Cth), which sets out the government's powers to hire and fire and so on. Section 13 is a particularly significant part of the Public Service Act; it provides the APS Code of Conduct, which public servants are required to adhere to. The Code's 13 subsections outline the behavioural norms governing day-to-day work environments across the APS, ranging from an obligation to behave honestly and with integrity, to at all times upholding the reputation of the APS.

Finally, APS agencies are covered by enterprise agreements - which outline agreed employment conditions, pursuant to a framework for bargaining in the Fair Work Act. APS enterprise agreements are similar, although not identical, across the service, due to APS-wide common condition bargaining. For example, APS enterprise agreements contain common terms of parental leave, flexible working, dispute resolution and more. Sitting underneath agency-specific enterprise agreements are often a number of policies and procedures that give effect to different APS workplace processes.

Workplace health and safety

Public sector agencies are required to provide a safe workplace under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth). In recent years, there has been a growing focus on psychosocial safety at work; a new code of practice took effect two years ago for managing psychosocial hazards at work. All public servants are entitled to workers' compensation through Comcare if they are injured at work; following a recent independent review of the Comcare scheme, reform is expected.

Discrimination, bullying and harassment

Public servants, like all employees, are entitled to a workplace free from bullying, harassment and discrimination. Concerns about the prevalence of bullying have been a theme in recent APS-wide employee surveys; beyond internal mechanisms, public servants who experience bullying have the ability to seek a stop-bullying order from the Fair Work Commission.

There are four federal anti-discrimination laws, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, age, disability and sex (which also encompasses things like pregnancy and relationship status). It is therefore unlawful to discriminate against a public servant on the basis of those attributes, to, for example, decide not to promote someone because they are expecting a baby.

The Sex Discrimination Act and the Fair Work Act also provide protection against sexual harassment and hostile workplace environments. In recent years, reform has imposed a positive duty on workplaces, including departments, to address sexual harassment and sex discrimination.

Public servants are entitled to whistleblower protections under the Public Interest Disclosure Act. If someone speak up at work about wrongdoing (of a sufficiently serious nature - workplace grievances are excluded), the agency is required to consider investigating the disclosure, and the whistleblower is protected from retaliation for speaking up.

In practice, the PID Act has been criticised for its bureaucratic nature and byzantine complexity. Reforms are underway, including to establish a Whistleblower Ombudsman within the Commonwealth Ombudsman to improve the scheme's accessibility and effectiveness.

Avenues for escalating employment grievances will depend on the particular issue. But public servants are rarely short of options. Many APS workplace decisions can be reviewed through the Merit Protection Commissioner. Other employment issues can be pursued through the Fair Work Commission, the Federal Circuit and Family Court or the Federal Court, while discrimination and harassment concerns can be raised with the Australian Human Rights Commission. Finally, because most employment decisions are government decisions in an administrative law sense, judicial review remains an option - albeit a difficult and often expensive one - when things go really wrong.

Employment law in Australia is always evolving, through judicial developments and legislative reform. We try our best in these pages to keep readers up to date with key developments affecting public servants.

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