[Peter Woolcott AO, Australian Public Service Commissioner]

The commissioner has the authority under the Public Service Act to issue directions which essentially relate to employment guidelines.

And they're for the purpose of ensuring that we incorporate and uphold the Australian Public Service Values which are set out in that Act.

We've issued today new directions on performance management and guidelines that go with that.

Essentially what we're trying to do is three things.

It's really about ensuring that we have best practice in the Australian Public Service about managing our talent and how we retain our high-performing employees.

Secondly, it's about ensuring we're not just focused on managing under performance, which is an important part of our job,

but it's also about managing those people who are performing well and ensuring that we get them to work to the best of their capabilities,

that we nurture, we develop and we train them.

And thirdly, it's about ensuring that responsibility for performance management doesn't just rest with agency heads, it actually rests with all supervisors and employees.

So we're in an interesting time in the Australian Public Service.

Change is afoot.

And fundamental to managing that change is going to be leadership, capability and culture.

And so the performance management guidelines need to support and reinforce that.

Because if we're going to serve the Australian people and we're going to serve the Australian government to the best that we can getting the performance management culture right is fundamental to that and managing our talent is fundamental to that.