Scott Morrison has asked the public service to identify critical and non-critical employees to prepare for a massive redeployment of workers to frontline agencies, state governments and community organisations.
The directive, issued on Friday, will enable redeployment of public servants, with a new taskforce within the Australian Public Service Commission to determine where workers should be sent to help deal with the consequences of Covid-19.
The redeployment comes on top of recruitment of an extra 5,000 workers at Centrelink, which the Community and Public Sector Union believes will be filled by 4,500 private sector workers including labour hire, and just 500 casuals recruited to the Australian public service (APS).
While public servants do not face the same job insecurity as many private sector workers in industries hit hardest by Covid-19 shutdowns, the health crisis has sparked concern that public servants are being asked to attend work in person rather than work from home.
The Australian Capital Territory chief minister, Andrew Barr, has raised and will continue to raise the issue at national cabinet, citing the fact the APSC’s policy is at odds with Scott Morrison’s request that people work from home where possible.
On Thursday the prime minister asked every agency head to identify by Monday which public servants are critical to the continued delivery of services to the Australian public or the operation of the APS as a whole.
Agency heads will then identify which employees are capable of working on a temporary basis for other critical APS agencies, in state or territory government agencies or community organisations to address the consequences of Covid-19.
The Australian Public Service Commissioner “will then notify relevant agency heads as to which employees or groups of employees in the agency are to undertake work elsewhere”, although Guardian Australia understands the intention is for redeployment to be voluntary.
The directive states its purpose is “to facilitate the most efficient and effective deployment of APS employees and expertise to meet the exceptional challenge posed by Covid-19 to Australian society – a task which has become the principal focus of APS endeavour”.
A spokeswoman for the APSC confirmed it is “mobilising its resources to ensure staff are dedicated to the most critical government services and ensure that the Australians who need help the most are receiving it”.
Agencies “critical to the delivery of government services, such as Services Australia” will be the focus.
“The APS commissioner Peter Woolcott has established an APS workforce management taskforce to manage the mobility of the APS workforce across departments and agencies,” she said.
“The taskforce will quickly identify critical gaps in capacity and emerging risk areas, and increase capacity through movement of staff into those roles.
“The taskforce will be working closely with agencies to work out where best to source required staff.”
The APSC’s policy on Covid-19 and social distancing states that its “primary objective is to maintain the workforce in the current workplace as much as possible”.
On Tuesday, however, Morrison said that it is “strongly encouraged” that Australians work from home “where you can do that”.
On Wednesday Andrew Barr said he was concerned that “when the general guidance is work from home wherever possible, that should surely be possible for many people in the [APS]”.
“Not everyone … but it would appear to me that there would be a lot of places in the public service … some functions that, surely, could be carried out by people working from home,” he said.
Barr described the proposal “as a risk reduction measure, reducing the number of people working in some public service buildings”.
On Wednesday Morrison created the National Covid-19 Coordination Commission, to be lead by the former Fortescue Metals Group chief executive and current Perth Airport chairman Nev Power.
Power said the role of the commission is to “minimise and mitigate the impact of the coronavirus on our businesses, our communities and our people”.
“Where there is a workforce that is no longer gainfully employed, we want to find a place where that workforce is needed,” he said.
