PLEASE NOTE, THIS OPPORTUNITY IS CASUAL (IRREGULAR/INTERMITTENT) ROLE. YOU CANNOT BE MADE AN ONGOING EMPLOYEE OR BE PROMOTED FROM THIS ROLE About the Merit Protection Commissioner The Merit Protection Commissioner (MPC) is an independent statutory officer established under the Public Service Act. The APSC provides the MPC with staff to assist in the exercise of its functions. Staff employed to assist the MPC are employees of the APSC. The Office of the MPC is the Commonwealth 'workplace umpire'. It comprises the MPC and a team of experienced and highly knowledgeable public servants with diverse experience. Our role is to review workplace decisions to make sure they are correct and fair. We do this by adjudicating disagreements about workplace decisions, inquiring into alleged misconduct in the workplace, reviewing agency decisions to ensure agencies have followed the appropriate processes and directions, and ensuring that recruitment and promotion decisions are merit-based. This right for employees to seek a review is set out in the Public Service Act 1999 and the Parliamentary Service Act 1999. It is part of the APS and Parliamentary Service integrity framework. From April 2025, the MPC is responsible for administering a new function. When we receive an eligible application for a review of a promotion decision, our role is to review the entire recruitment exercise to determine if it was merit-based. In the APS, merit-based recruitment is defined in the Public Service Act. If a recruitment process is found to be not compliant with the merit principle, the MPC can take proportionate regulatory action including setting aside the promotion decision. The MPC may also provide employment-related services including misconduct investigations and convening recruitment selection processes. The MPC is a steward of the APS Values, Employment Principles and Code of Conduct. By ensuring that public servants are being employed based on merit and confirming or overturning workplace decisions, we are contributing to the integrity, efficiency and effectiveness of the APS. Find further information about the MPC on our website www.mpc.gov.au The key duties of the position include The MPC seeks to establish a pool of skilled recruitment and review specialists with extensive experience and expertise in a range of public sector areas of recruitment, merits review and workplace investigations. We need people with a deep working knowledge and understanding of public sector employment frameworks and principles of administrative decision-making and law. We seek specialists at the Executive Level 1 and Executive Level 2 classification levels, dependent on experience and skills. The work is of a casual and intermittent nature, and there is no guarantee of work in any given period. Assignments may vary from several days or weeks to several months in duration; however, there is no firm advance commitment to continuing and indefinite work according to an agreed pattern of work. Casual senior review officers will be required to work towards performance goals through regular feedback from their supervisor to ensure the work meets the highest standard to maintain the MPC's reputation as an effective independent statutory regulator. Desirable skills, experience & qualifications Experience in conducting workplace investigations and/or administrative reviews (in any field) Experience in a human resources or industrial relations roles and/or managing people in a public sector environment Relevant qualifications in law, government investigations, merits review.
