EXPLANATORY STATEMENT
STATUTORY RULES 1983 NO 91
PUBLIC SERVICE REGULATIONS (AMENDMENT)
Issued with the authority of the Public Service Board
Sub-section 97(1) of the Public Service Act 1922 (‘the Act’) provides that the Public Service Board may, with the approval of the Governor-General, make regulations prescribing all matters which are necessary or convenient to be prescribed for giving effect to the Act.
Paragraph 97(1)(b) enables regulations to be made for defining, in relation to the officers included in a class of officers, the seniority of those officers for the purpose of promotion within that class.
Sub-section 51A(1) provides that the regulations may make provision for the temporary performance of the duties of an office including provision for the selection of an officer to perform temporarily the duties of an office of a classification higher than the classification of the office occupied by him and appeals in relation to such selection.
The previous Commonwealth Government, and the New South Wales Government, approved last year the transfer of certain meat inspection staff from the New South Wales Public Service to the Commonwealth Department of Primary Industry. The present Government re-affirmed the earlier decision. Action has been taken to transfer these staff under the provisions of Part III, Division 9F of the Act. The date fixed for the transfer is 1 July 1983.
As the transfer provisions of Division 9F of the Act do not preserve the seniority of New South Wales staff transferring into the Service, it was desired, in order to avoid unfairness to the transferring staff, to give all meat inspection staff in the Department of Primary Industry immediately after the transfer a common seniority date (1 July 1983) for the purposes of promotion, and to remove seniority as a criterion in selection for the temporary performance of higher duties. The relevant staff associations were consulted and were agreeable to this approach.
In the case of promotion seniority for existing staff is determined by reference to a common date - 1 July 1983 - rather than by reference to the date of an officer’s appointment. In the case of selection for the temporary performance of higher duties selection will be solely on the basis of relative efficiency with no reference to seniority.
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The effect of these amendments is that selection of Meat Inspectors will be on the basis of relative efficiency and that seniority will cease to have the limited ‘tie-breaker’ role that would otherwise apply. This is consistent with the policy of amendments to the Act that will come into effect upon proclamation of the relevant provisions of the Public Service Acts Amendment Act 1982, which will make relative efficiency the sole criterion for staff selection. These regulations are necessary as the Meat Inspectors’ transfer takes place on 1 July, and the abovementioned proclamation cannot occur until later in the year.
Details of the regulations are as follows:
• regulation 1 fixes 1 July 1983 as the commencement date for these amendments;
• regulation 2 amends regulation 110 of the Public Service Regulations to provide a common seniority date of 1 July 1983 for existing Commonwealth Meat Inspectors who apply for transfer or promotion within that employment area;
• regulation 3 amends regulation 116 of the Public Service Regulations to provide that relative efficiency is to be the sole criterion in the selection of officers for the temporary performance of higher duties as Meat Inspectors and in appeals relating to such selections.