Dear Commissioner Woolcott,

I write to echo concerns that workers in the Australian Public Service (APS) are either not permitted or unable to work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I would like to thank you for providing the guidance you did on 29 March 2020 but in my view, this needs to be a directive, either from you or in conjunction with the Secretaries Board.

My key concern stems from comments from the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) on 29 March 2020 in a press conference with the Prime Minister (https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-australian-parliament-house-act-13). In this press conference the CMO said that 90% of the population must stay at home in order to stop the spread of COVID-19.

According to the 2016 Census, 397,397 people lived in the Australian Capital Territory. This means all but 39,740 ACT residents must stay at home to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the ACT.

The ACT has a workforce of 215,833. According to the APS Employment Data Release from June 2019, 55,183 ACT residents work in the APS – 13.9% of the ACT population. With over 25% of the ACT workforce under your direction, your decisions are central to the health of the ACT community.

As there is no definitive list of who is considered an essential worker, it is hard to accurately predict the number of essential workers in the ACT. However, there are:

• 22,447 people working in the health care and social assistance industry
• 4,964 people working in the transport, postal and warehousing industry

This is a total of 27,411 and leaves approximately 12,329 workers if we are to keep 10% of the ACT population at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

I would argue it is a very conservative estimate. It does not include the teachers and childcare workers who are still teaching the children of essential workers. It does not include the hospitality staff who continue to feed our community. It does not include emergency service workers.

I hear from constituents that cultural barriers to remote work and technical limitations are two key barriers to working from home in some APS organisations. I have serious concerns for the staff of the Department of Defence, the Department of Home Affairs, Services Australia, the Department of Health, the Australian Taxation Office and the Department of Social Services. While I have no doubt some staff at these organisations are able to work from home, it is alarming to me that the number of staff working at these organisations total 24,432 – 61% of ACT workers who can work in the office during the pandemic according to the Chief Medical Officer’s advice.

There are many assumptions in the letter above but I believe my workings are very conservative.

I am calling on you to limit the number of APS staff working in offices in the ACT to less than 10,000 at the very minimum.

Not only does the health of the ACT community depend on you doing this, the operation of Australia’s Federal Government does too. We need our public servants healthy and ready to deal with the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic now and into the future.

Sincerely,

Alicia Payne

Member for Canberra