Australian Public Service (APS) staff will receive a 3 per cent pay rise under what the federal government says is part of its commitment to "be better" when bargaining with its workforce.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, who is also public service minister, said the wage increase would be introduced in the coming 12 months, as part of an interim workplace relations policy.
The pay rise will apply to all public servants who are due to receive an annual raise before August 31 next year.
Senator Gallagher said the government would work with unions and staff on a longer-term strategy to improve how APS pay agreements are made.
The governments said the interim decision would ensure public servants "who have worked so hard to support the community during the pandemic and the transition to the new government are not worse off in their pay packets while more comprehensive arrangements are developed".
Senator Gallagher likened the former Coalition government's approach to wage bargaining to the adversarial Hunger Games stories.
"There's a huge difference, not just in pay, but in conditions and duration of agreements, and we'd like to move towards a more APS-wide approach to bargaining," she said.
"That hasn't been the approach under the former government and it's led to a bit of a Hunger Games approach to bargaining.
"The bigger piece of work that we have to do is to fix the mess that exists across the public service in terms of agreements that are in place, over the … past decade.
"It's a very fragmented, uneven approach at the moment across the public service."
Increase doesn't keep up with costs of living: union
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) welcomed the pay increase but said it would not go far enough given the rising cost of living.
The union's deputy national president Brooke Muscat said many staff had not received the pay rises they should have in past years, and some had had their wages frozen.
"We do acknowledge that it is an improvement to the previous government's wages outcomes, but we don't think it's enough, we don't think it meets the rising cost of living," Ms Muscat said.
"Current inflation is sitting around 6 per cent, so 3 per cent is well below that."
But she said she looked forward to negotiating with the new government.
"We hope that, next year, we'll be able to use that avenue through genuine negotiations to improve that offer so that our members get the pay rises they deserve," she said.
"The capacity of the APS has been fragmented and stymied by … paying conditions that have been eroded over years and years and years of negotiations.
"Well, they haven't been negotiated, in fact they've been imposed by the previous government.
"So I think the new government has some real challenges in terms of dealing with the bargaining processes and the depth of various arrangements across the APS to make sure that standardisation comes to the fore."
Ms Muscat also said the public service should rely less on contractors than it did.
"We're just working with the government, looking at areas where there are consultants and contractors and labour-hire employees, where those jobs might be brought in-house, because that actually cost the taxpayer less," she said.
"We haven't talked about that in terms of bargaining, but certainly this government is looking at that expenditure and we think that's appropriate."
Ms Muscat said the union would consult its members before pay negotiations with the government begin.
