What we're finding is that in those two cases we didn't find political influence. That's an important consideration here, which we didn't find. That's not to say it doesn't exist, but we didn't find it. What we found was a lot of hand-picking people and saying, “We're going to use the system and get you into that job.” That's where we get very worried. There was a using of the system to manipulate the system to get pre-chosen people into the jobs.
So we're very concerned about that. That's not what we expect, because we have the system that says fairness, access, and transparency.
There are a couple of other things that go on in the public service. One is that we do have a priority system, and we expect it to be respected. If you get laid off or you're on leave without pay as a public servant, you have a priority for a position. The expectation is that you go to those people first, so you expect that to function.
One of the areas I have been concerned about, and continue to be concerned about, is the movement from casual employment in the public service into full-time, and the movement we see from part-time to full-time. What we see going on is people moving in and learning the job. So you come in as a casual, you have the opportunity to learn the job, then you have a competition and--surprise--this person knows all about the job. That's not really very fair, because not everyone's in a position where they want to take casual employment to learn the job to get into a permanent job. So some of those moves are really not very good. You can have small numbers of them, but you don't want large numbers of them.
That's why I've been concerned about the speed it takes to do things, how efficient we are, and how flexible we are, because what you want is a truly competitive process in which you're not relying on entry through the casual and part-time route. This is how you hear the comment that somebody got a job because they knew somebody. It wasn't that they were all of a sudden put into a permanent job; it was because they were given the opportunity to work as a casual to learn the job and then they would compete.