The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) has warned that opposition leader Peter Dutton’s revised plan to cut public services, if he wins the federal election on May 3, would have a “devastating and uneven impact across the public sector”.
Dutton said on April 7 that he will cut the public sector 3.5 times more than former Liberal Prime Minister Tony Abbott did back in 2013.
After being criticised for promising to cut 36,000 Australian Public Service jobs, the Coalition then said it would shrink the public service by 41,000 jobs within five years by “natural attrition” — allegedly without retrenchments or cuts to frontline services.
“A freeze on filling public service roles for five years is likely to exceed the 41,000 already on the chopping block,” the CPSU said on April 7. It added that this was a “reckless” decision that would hollow out essential services and leave millions worse off.
The CPSU said that, based on agency attrition rates, Services Australia would lose 12,500 jobs (42% of staff over 5 years); the Department of Veterans Affairs would lose almost 1000 jobs (27% of staff over 5 years); and the National Disability Insurance Authority would lose 2070 jobs (21% over 5 years).
Australian Public Service Commission figures show 11,782 staff left the federal public service last year: 6665 (57%) came from the home affairs and defence departments, the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia.
CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said: “Cutting public services by attrition … are uncontrolled, uneven cuts that will hurt the public sector and have a disproportionate impact on frontline services.”
Donnelly said cutting public services by attrition and implementing a hiring freeze “could lead to public sector cuts that are significantly higher than 41,000”.
Liberal Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has been given the job to lead Australia’s version of the United States Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), should the Coalition win.
One new detail, Price revealed recently, is that Australia’s DOGE would be within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and would investigate where cuts could be made in the wider public service.
Price is a Trump supporter, telling a media conference with Dutton recently that the Coalition wants to “make Australia great again”.
Meanwhile, a new report by the Menzies Research Centre, a Liberal-aligned think tank, is urging the Coalition to go harder on public sector cuts, including auditing the more than 200,000 federal workforce, “to determine the efficient level of resourcing required to deliver services and programs of similar scale and complexity”.
The Stop the Bloat report claims that there is “considerable support” from the public to “lower costs” and cites the Trump administration and British Labour’s Keir Starmer as drivers of “efficiency” and “innovation”.
It calls for a minimum six-month hiring freeze, with limited exemptions for graduate programs and special cases, but with the Department of Defence to be made immune. Natural attrition in the workforce would continue, it said, with some 5500 people expected to exit the public service in that period.
Socialist Alliance NSW Senate candidate Peter Boyle told Green Left that regardless of the Coalition’s final public service cut figures, it is clear that a Peter Dutton-led government would be a “disaster for the public sector and services as a whole”.
“We need a radical expansion of the public sector, including social welfare, public housing, health and education, and protection of the natural environment,” Boyle said. “Only with such a plan can we make the necessary plan for the urgent transition to a job-rich, sustainable public energy plan, with a well-educated community.
“A vote for Socialist Alliance is a clear vote in favour of the public sector in all its forms,” Boyle added. “Allocating our preferences to the Greens and Labor before the Liberals can ensure the anti-public sector fanatics are rejected on May 3.”