The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is among many who are condemning the Coalition’s plan to slash 36,000 public service jobs if it wins the federal election.
The ACTU said on February 25 the cuts would mean one in five public sector workers would be out of their job, badly affecting services from pensions and veterans’ payments, to the operation of regional weather stations.
It disputes Coalition Leader Peter Dutton, who said on February 24, that cutting public sector jobs would “save” $6 billion a year and pay for Labor’s proposed $8.5 billion expansion of bulk-billing in Medicare, which he supports.
More than 20,000 of the current new public sector jobs, including front line health and community workers, are based outside Ngunnawal/Canberra, with large workforces in regional cities such as Townsville and Geelong.
The Coalition, when in office, awarded contracts totalling $21 billion to private consultants in Scott Morrison’s final year in office.
“The cuts risk creating growing claim backlogs at Services Australia, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the ATO [Australian Taxation Office] which could delay essential payments and weaken tax avoidance efforts,” the ACTU said.
ACTU president Michele O’Neil said the “only winners” from these cuts would be the big consultants, “which will profit from this outsourcing”, as well as multinational companies for which there will be much weaker oversight on their tax avoidance.
O’Neil said 60% of public service workers are based outside of Ngunnawal and cutting those jobs means losing “expertise, services and incomes these workers provide to local communities across Australia”.
Melissa Donnelly, national secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union, said the only winners from Dutton’s plan are the PwC and KPMG consultants.
“In the final year of the Morrison government, the Liberals had employed an external labour workforce of 54,000 employees at a cost of $21 billion. Peter Dutton’s plan to gut our public services is a plan to sack highly skilled APS employees and give their work to his mates in big business,” Donnelly said.
Long-term public servant Andrew Podger, now a Ngunnawal academic, wrote in the February 5 Conversation that Dutton was taking inspiration from United States President Donald Trump.
“Dutton is careful not to make any specific commitments regarding the number of jobs that would go nor the dollar savings involved. However, he and his shadow ministers have repeatedly referred to the 36,000 new positions under Labor.
“While the Coalition won’t be detailing any spending cuts until after the election, Dutton has alluded to [Trump’s] playbook by targeting “culture, diversity and inclusion advisers”.
Podger said Dutton’s rhetoric on the growth in public servants is “not nearly as dramatic”.
“The [APS] headcount is lower now (0.68%) as a percentage of the Australian population than it was in 2008 (0.75%). It is also a smaller share of the overall Australian workforce (1.36% compared to 1.52%).”
He said the proportion of the public service working in Ngunnawal has decreased to just 36.9%.
Dutton has also failed to commit to avoid any return to public sector politicisation, which contributed to the Robodebt scandal under Morrison, Podger said.
John Hawkins, a Canberra University academic and former public servant, wrote in the February 27 Conversation that the growth in public servants has been in the National Disability Insurance Agency (up 2193), Defence (up 1425), Health and Aged Care (up 1173) and Services Australia (up 1149).
“Many of these extra staff would be providing invaluable front line services to clients and customers who are accessing essential support.”
Some of these replaced more expensive outsourced workers, he said. Labor claims to have saved $4 billion by reducing spending on consultants and contractors.
Peter Boyle, NSW Senate candidate for Socialist Alliance, told Green Left: “This outrageous plan to replace vital public service employees with private contractors shows Dutton aims to impose a Trump-Lite agenda.
“Dutton is effectively proposing to follow Trump and Elon Musk’s slash-and-burn strategy.
“What we need, instead, is a radical expansion of the public sector to address the housing crisis and urgently transition away from fossil fuels.
“We believe that unless the mines, banks and energy companies are taken into public ownership, the climate transition will not happen in the time frame that’s needed for the people and planet to be safe.”
SA Greens Senator Barbara Pocock said the Coalition had “hollowed out” the public service and it needs to be rebuilt, not gutted.
“The Coalition strategy hinges on casting a well-staffed Canberra-based bureaucracy as somehow being bad for the business of government. The opposite is actually true. All those dedicated APS workers in the state and territory capitals and out in the regions, rely on a strong and responsive back-of-house workforce in Canberra.”
She said if Dutton is not willing to say which jobs will go, which state capitals will lose their workforce, which regional centres will lose more staff, “perhaps it’s because he hasn’t got a clue”.