Section 5 – Equal Employment Opportunity

The Commissioner’s Directions specify that the APS Value on equity in employment requires, in particular, measures aimed at eliminating any employment-related disadvantage on the basis of:

being an Aboriginal or a Torres Strait Islander
sex
race or ethnicity
physical or mental disability.

With the exception of sex, Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data is supplied to agencies by individuals on a voluntary basis, and forwarded by agencies to be entered onto APSED. Overall, non-response varies widely between agencies.

The current focus on improving employment outcomes for people with disability and for Indigenous Australians in the APS provides an even greater emphasis for ensuring that the quality of data is robust. The Commission continues to work with agencies to encourage employees to provide this data to their agency’s HR system. There has been some improvement in the quality of data provided by agencies this year, however the overall quality continues to be poor and there are a number of agencies still providing little or no data on the diversity status of their employees.

Because no new measurement regime has yet been agreed for ‘race or ethnicity’, for the purpose of this publication NESB 1 and 2 are used for reporting purposes. NESB 1 refers to people born overseas who arrived in Australia after the age of five and whose first language was not English. NESB 2 refers to children of migrants, including: those who were born overseas and arrived in Australia before the age of five but did not speak English as a first language; those who were Australian born but did not speak English as a first language and had at least one NESB 1 parent; and those people who were Australian born and had neither parent speaking English as a first language.

Figure 12 shows the change in the representation of the four EEO groups from their proportion at June 1993. Each of these proportions is weighted by the ratio of the June 1993 total ongoing APS number to the number of employees in the respective EEO group at June 1993. Weighting eliminates the effects that the changes in the overall size of the APS have on representation. The index is given a value of 100 at June 1993, and rises and falls proportionally with the particular group’s change in the weighted number over time. For example, at June 1993 the number of Indigenous Australians was 3085 out of an ongoing APS population of 142,891. By 1999 the number of Indigenous Australians had fallen to 2731 and the ongoing APS number had dropped to 102,004. Therefore the weighted IA number for 1999 is 3826, which is 124.0% of the original index.

Figure 12: Change in population, weighted and indexed, for EEO groups, 30 June 1993 to 30 June 2007

Chart: description available below

Figure 12 shows the change in representation of each EEO group over the fifteen years to June 2007. Data is weighted for changes in the size of the APS, and indexed from 1993.

Source: Table 46