Despite it being a Sunday evening in the country’s sensible city, Smith’s Alternative is a packed house.

The cosy, bohemian art cafe in Canberra’s CBD could easily fit in Sydney’s Newtown or Melbourne’s Fitzroy. But unlike most gigs in those cities, the room is crammed with public servants who moonlight as musicians, as well as the occasional politician.

The lanyards and ties have been swapped for band T-shirts and eyeliner as four bands, made up entirely of government workers, play to win the inaugural Australian Public Service battle of the bands.

Months of heats and elimination rounds have led to this mid-December night. The finalists, whittled down from a pool of 24, will be judged and a final victor declared by a panel of Canberra luminaries: the ACT Greens politician Jo Clay, the infrastructure department secretary Jim Betts and the alternative country musician Jenny Spear.

Tickets to the final sold out in just 90 minutes. It’s a proud moment for one of the event’s organisers, Leanne Thompson, who tells the cheering crowd: “It was like a Taylor Swift ticketing experience. We even got a ticket scammer.”

First on the bill are the Prod Commies, whose name is a play on the Productivity Commission, where two-thirds of the band work. The three-piece kick off their 20-minute set with a rendition of the Ramones punk anthem I Wanna Be Sedated, which they change to I Wanna Be Seconded.

Then there’s the IT Grrrls – an all-female lineup made exclusively of IT workers, brought together from the departments of treasury, industry, defence as well as the tax office. “It would be quite difficult to find six women from one department who work in IT and can play instruments and want to be in a band, so we’ve gone cross public sector here,” says the band’s violinist Carol Wapshere.

The group soon have the crowd singing “Girls, they wanna write code” to the tune of the 80s Cyndi Lauper hit Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Paper masks featuring the CEOs of social media companies are handed to the audience as the band vie for crowd participation points. Their set finishes as blue and red stage lights shine on Mark Zuckerberg masks that double as fans to beat the humid night.

The third band of the night, the all-male trio the Duds, say they want to take their fellow public servants back to an earlier time – specifically 1992, the year lead singer Jol Duvall stopped touring with his band and joined the mailing room within the industry department. Their acoustic punk originals cover a broad range of public service topics, including what it would be like having ChatGPT in 1994 (apparently it would mean getting in late and going home early).

Finally there’s the Substrates. The six-piece band all work at the National Film and Sound Archive and are also playing at their work Christmas party later in the week. Led by two female singers, they perform a slick 20-minute set of punk-rock originals about exes and being a young woman, plus a notable cover of Amyl and the Sniffers’ Hertz.

The crowd takes note of the band’s frenetic energy, some whirling out of their chairs and into a spin.

Sitting on the judging panel and bouncing his legs as the bands come and go is Betts, who is sporting a Bikini Kill shirt. His reputation for wearing T-shirts and never donning a tie has recently attracted attention by some senators, who suggest it is inappropriate for the professional public service.

The infrastructure boss wants to get a simple message out: public servants can be “cool” too.

“I’m just a guy in a T-shirt going into a gig, really. And it’s great fun,” Betts says. “I really love the public service and I really love music, so it’s kind of ideal for me.”

‘Whack a bit of creativity into your life’

About a fifth of Canberra’s population of roughly 450,000 people work in the federal or ACT public service. A band competition for these workers is the brainchild of Thompson, herself a former bureaucrat who is now the self-appointed secretary of the Department of Rock.

The idea was conceived after a conversation with Nigel McRae, one of the owners of Smith’s Alternative. McRae had also been trying to create a battle of the bands for years after countless conversations with government workers who were also musicians.

“They only play at their Christmas parties and I was like, let’s get these bands out,” McRae says.

Matt from Prod Commies, who is an economist by day, says poking fun at the bureaucracy through music brings the APS community together. “You spend a lot of time in the public service bashing your head against brick walls and not getting very far and it’s sometimes important to have little moments of humanity.”

His bandmate Doug adds that it is all mostly in jest. “We’re still trying to do good, like we want to do good, but, you know, we’ve got to deal with bureaucracy.”

Just before the final set, the arts minister, Tony Burke, slips into the room and sits down at the back of the crowd next to Betts. The minister is in town for an employment policy meeting but says he made sure it finished right on 8pm so he could catch the final acts.

Burke, who himself plays in bands and is known to walk the halls of the ministerial offices with a guitar in hand, says there was no way he would miss it.

“You do all the nonfiction work better when you whack a bit of creativity in your life,” he says as the Substrates complete their sound check. “Keating did his best work to [composer Gustav] Mahler but most people do their best work to pub rock.”

After two-and-a-half hours of headbanging and APS puns, the last note is played and all the musicians head to the stage for the moment of truth. Judge Spear says they’re all winners but it is the Substrates who pick up the mounted gold record.

The band’s singers Alexis and Jodie and bassist Andy are in shock as they take the oversized prize in front of the cheering crowd.

Afterwards, their boss, the NFSA chief executive Patrick McIntyre, says the win is “fucking cool” before telling them he’ll see them tomorrow morning for work.

Runners-up goes to the Duds. Jol is happy with the result given his band didn’t exist two months ago, but notes Burke has been in more fan photos tonight than any of the musicians.

“The minister had more people hanging around him than the bands,” Jol says. “Typical Canberra.”