The Australian Public Service could soon have a strategy for improving cultural and linguistic diversity after a renewed push from the Greens' deputy leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi, who called the under-representation of ethnic diversity in the public service "abysmal".
Senator Faruqi said having more culturally and linguistically diverse people in the APS would improve the public service's ability to "provide better services to those communities".
"The numbers are already low, but for the last 10 years, there has been no improvement."
The Greens senator also called for better data collection about ethnic diversity and at which levels of the APS it is lacking.
The proportion of culturally and linguistically diverse people in the public service is lower than the general Australian population.
APS employment data shows as of June 2022, 22.7 per cent of employees reported they were born outside of Australia, less than the proportion of people born overseas among the Australian population which was 27.6 per cent in 2021.
The Greens senator said she will push for a strategy to fill the "huge gap" and increase ethnic diversity in the public service.
"There're really fantastic strategies now for First Nations people, for women, and for people with disability, but nothing, no strategy that the APS has which is to actually improve and increase the ethnically diverse workforce."
Minister for the APS Katy Gallagher said she looks forward to talking with Senator Faruqi about the issue in the new year and work to improve representation.
"Ensuring the APS workforce better represents the Australian community, not just in numbers but also in opportunities."
"As part of our APS reform agenda we are committed to improving diversity within all levels of the APS including culturally and linguistically diverse Australians, among other under-represented groups," Senator Gallagher said.
Deputy national president of the Community and Public Sector Union Melissa Payne said the under-representation "is an issue that is yet to be adequately addressed by any government or the Australian Public Service Commission."
She said the failure to "adequately reflect the makeup of the Australian community impacts heavily on its ability to deliver high quality public services".
A spokesperson for the Australian Public Service Commission said "diversity and inclusion efforts across the APS are focused on attraction, retention and rewarding career pathways including for culturally and linguistically diverse Australians".
Diversity data not 'sufficient'
Senator Faruqi also called for the data the public service commission collects to be more detailed, in order to advise a potential strategy.
"The data that they collect is on language and on country. So I don't think that's actually sufficient," she said.
The Greens senator said she wants the Public Service Commission to collect more disaggregated data about ethnic diversity and the number of culturally and linguistically diverse people at each level of the APS.
"Once we have that data, only then can we make targets and strategies to be able to address them."
A spokesperson for the APS Commission said they "will explore enhancements to our data collection to better understand our CALD workforce and develop actions that would further improve employment outcomes".
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