Check if you're eligible, and how to apply

Once you leave the APS or the Parliamentary Service, you no longer have a right of review to us. This means if you resign from your employment, or are terminated, during the course of a review, your review right will lapse. We will then not be able to complete the review.

The only exceptions are for former employees, where a determination that they breached the Code of Conduct was made after they left the service. We can also consider complaints about final entitlements for employees who have left the service.

No.

We can't review these decisions as our functions only relate to APS and Parliamentary Service employees, and you are not yet an employee.

You may wish to contact the agency to seek feedback about your application. If you think a mistake has been made, you could ask the agency to reconsider the decision.

Our review of a Code of Conduct determination or sanction does not consider whether it was appropriate to investigate the matter as a suspected breach of the Code of Conduct.

If you are currently involved in a Code of Conduct process, and a decision has not yet been made, if you want to seek review of the decision to commence a Code of Conduct process, you will first need to seek a review of that decision by your agency. If you are not satisfied with the outcome of that review, you can seek then apply to us for a secondary review.

In some cases your agency, and the Merit Protection Commissioner, may decline to conduct the review if it may be 'overtaken by other events', such as a misconduct determination. This is because you can seek review of the misconduct determination directly by the Merit Protection Commissioner.

If you are an ongoing APS or Parliamentary Service employee and you have applied for a promotion, you can apply to us to have certain promotion decisions reviewed. This is known as applying for a ‘promotion review’. The promotion review process is only for jobs between APS level 1 and APS Level 6 (or equivalent classification levels) that are advertised in the APS Employment Gazette.

If you are an ongoing APS or Parliamentary Service employee and you applied for promotion to Executive Level 1 or Executive Level 2, you can seek a review if you consider there were serious defects in the selection process.

What is meant by ‘serious defects’ is not defined in the legislation but it is a high threshold and is taken to mean a substantial defect that would compel the selection process to be done again.

If the selection process has been finalised and a promotion decision made, our review can't set this promotion decision aside. The review can recommend the agency change their recruitment processes to ensure a better process in the future, or if the defects are due to an employee’s misconduct, we can recommend the agency investigate the employee for suspected misconduct.

For a review of this type, you will need to first apply to your agency for a primary review.

Yes

If you do not lodge your application on time, we can still conduct a review if you have exceptional circumstances to explain the delay. This might include if you were sick in hospital and could not lodge an application. Reasons such as forgetting to put in your application form would not usually be considered exceptional.

Usually no.

It is best if we can talk with the person directly affected as they have the most knowledge of the situation and know best to how to resolve the issue.

There are occasions where someone needs help lodging an application or needs a support person. On these occasions, the employee will need to consent. This is most common where someone has a disability which means they can’t apply for themselves. Usually the person assisting should be a family member, union representative or, on occasion, a lawyer. It is usually not ok to be a support person for someone that you work with directly.

Yes.

We can’t accept an anonymous application. We need to know that you are the person directly affected by the action, and we need to know we can share personal information about the situation with you.

It depends on the action or decision you want us to review

When we conduct a review of a workplace decision, we are only able to consider issues that fall within the ‘scope’ of the review. This means if you apply for us to review a decision or an action, we can only consider information relevant to that decision or action, and not other unrelated information.

We can look at both the process taken to reach the decision (and whether it was fair) as well as the outcome.

If something new and unrelated occurs during the review, you will need to make a fresh review application, and usually you will need to seek a review by your agency in the first instance.

For example:

• If you seek review of an agency’s decision that you have breached the Code of Conduct, we cannot consider other issues such as a suspension from duty. You will need to make a separate review application to your agency about the suspension decision.
• If you apply to us for review of your end-cycle performance rating, you will first need to seek a review from your agency. If you are not satisfied with the agency review, you can then apply to us for a secondary review. Our review (secondary review) can only consider the issues raised in your original review request. For any new issues that aren’t directly relevant, will need to make a fresh review application to your agency. You will need to keep in mind the timeframes that apply.

There are no costs and no fees.

Yes.

If your application is not lodged within the time limit we will decline to accept it unless you have exceptional circumstances to explain the delay.

If you ask us to review an application that is not eligible it will be declined.

During the review, we can exercise our discretion not to continue the review if there is no outcome to be achieved or if the matter under review has been overtaken by other events

For example, if you ask for a review of your agency’s decision to decline your request to attend a training course, we may exercise our discretion not to review this decision if the date for the training course has passed and your agency offered for you to attend another suitable training course.

We have a policy which guides our use of this discretion.

For detailed information about our statutory functions for both the APS and the Parliamentary Service is set out in our legislative framework.