Overworked public servants risk fatigue, new report warns
SA government staff are having to work across multiple roles and the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital build faced construction lags, the Auditor-General found.
There are 141 SA government employees working more than a full-time job across multiple concurrent roles, the Auditor General’s financial audit report for the year ending June 30 has found.
The report tabled in State Parliament yesterday identified 450 government employees holding concurrent roles within multiple agencies, including those who had three separate roles and worked the equivalent of two full-time roles.
According to the SA Government’s Office of the Commissioner for Public Sector Employment, there were 122,644 people working in the state’s public sector as of June 30, 2025, with 101,732 full-time equivalents.
“Not being able to easily identify employees working in multiple concurrent roles increases the risk that inappropriate employment arrangements, excessive or duplicate payments, payroll anomalies, policy non-compliance, employee fatigue and reduced workforce performance may not be detected in a timely manner,” the report found.
It comes after a partial freeze to the recruitment of non-frontline positions across all state government agencies over the next 12 months was announced in June’s 2026-27 State Budget, which Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis said would save about $120 million annually. It is understood the issue raised in the report has no bearing on the freeze.
A state government spokesperson said that Shared Services SA “is currently working to strengthen cross-agency reporting and reviewing policies to improve visibility of concurrent employment arrangements across the public sector”.
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“As noted in the Auditor-General’s report, individual agencies have the primary responsibility for managing employment arrangements and should have controls to manage the associated risks, such as employment declarations about other employment arrangements,” he said.
The government did not provide InDaily with information about which employees were affected by working multiple roles.
The 443-page report into the public sector also looked into major projects including the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital and the T2D and government support programmes such as the Whyalla Steelworks package and the response to SA’s harmful algal bloom.
It found that “stronger oversight” was needed “as the SA Government delivers complex projects and programs, responds to emergency pressures and manages persistent risks in controls, procurement, workforce arrangements and legacy ICT”.
South Australia’s Auditor-General Andrew Blaskett said the report “highlights a broad range of issues affecting the management of public resources across the SA Government”.
Regarding the new Women’s and Children’s Hospital build – which controversially required the demolition of the formerly state heritage-listed Thebarton Police Barracks – the Auditor General’s report found that $190 million of the $430 million allocated in the 2025-26 budget had been spent.
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This was due to “delays in starting construction due to program realignment and scope review”, it found.
Responding to the delay in parliament yesterday, Health Minister Blair Boyer said that the project was still scheduled for completion in 2031, with the schematic design now finished.
“We are still working through the final design work, so I understand now that the schematic design is complete, which will precipitate the next bit of work about understanding exactly what the budget pressures that the project is under are,” he said, adding that any revised budget would be made public by the government.
“One of the reasons that I can say that … is because the phasing of the work and the way that the contracts were put in place … has enabled that design work to continue while the early works there down on the site have actually started.”
State Liberal leader Ashton Hurn believed the delays erode any chance of an on-time completion.
“This project is showing all the warning signs of becoming RAH 2.0, plagued by cost blowouts and construction delays. The government should just be up front and honest,” Hurn said
“The idea that this project remains on time and on budget is a total fantasy,” added shadow Health Minister Jack Batty.
The Auditor General’s report found that procurement pressures were challenging traditional safeguards, while asset, contract and workforce management and procurement continued to pose challenges across the government.
It also found that legacy ICT remains an operational, security and governance risk and highlighted the importance of transparency, governance and public accountability as artificial intelligence is increasingly adopted by government.
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