Negotiations are now well under way for a new pay and conditions deal for staff in the Australian Public Service (APS).

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It's a big deal too that will provide the backbone of personnel management for some 200,000 staff for the next three years.

The relatively new Public Service Commissioner, Jacqui Curtis, has brought in one of her former colleagues, Alison Stott, from the Tax Office to run the negotiations. That's not a great vote of confidence in the condition of the organisation which Curtis now heads. She must have been disappointed to find that the Public Service Commission, the central personnel authority in the public service, was left without the capability to undertake one of its main responsibilities off its own bat.

Anyway, in recent weeks Stott has been running negotiations for a new public service-wide agreement on pay and conditions under the burden of a government remuneration policy that makes no sense. That policy is a mish-mash about "model employer", "unified and capable", "attraction and retention", "fairness and equity" and, of course, that reliable old standby "sustainability", which as ever is expected to carry immense burdens when comprehensible explanations are not available.

In short, the policy does not provide a satisfactory basis upon which judgements about adjustments to pay and conditions can be made, still less justified to staff and taxpayers.

Rational, model employers who want to be able to recruit, retain and motivate staff try to set staff remuneration at competitive levels in relation to outside labour markets for comparable work. That consideration is absent from pay policy for Commonwealth public servants. It's a significant burden for Stott to carry into her negotiations.

Yet while she's been battling away against the tide, some........

© Canberra Times