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Why is the public service a 2025 election issue?
The Canberra Times
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4/2/2025
Inside the debate on the public service and government waste.
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News
Transcript
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00:00
If you live in Canberra, or even if you don't, you might have heard the Coalition saying things like this.
00:05
We'll reverse Labor's increase of 41,000 Canberra public servants
00:10
because it will save about $7 billion a year.
00:14
That's money that we can provide back to the Australian people in frontline services.
00:19
Attacks on so-called government waste have been a key feature in the lead-up to federal elections for years.
00:24
Both the major parties have jostled for power, claiming they can make the government more efficient.
00:29
Right now, the Coalition says that an addition of 41,000 public servants under Labor has been wasteful.
00:35
But to really understand this debate, we need to rewind to 2022, when Labor was waging its own war on waste.
00:42
People who I knew, good professional public servants,
00:47
put off by the Department of Widgets,
00:52
then re-employed as contractors,
00:56
being paid more than they were as the dep sec of the Department of Widgets.
01:03
From opposition, Labor was highly critical of the Morrison government's spending on consultants, contractors and labor hire.
01:10
They argued a cap on the public service led to billions wasted on outsourcing and promised to reverse that.
01:16
In power, the Albanese government have done what they said they would,
01:20
directing agencies to reduce outsourcing and projecting savings of $4.7 billion by the end of June 2029.
01:27
But to make this happen, they've had to put tens of thousands of public servants back on the books.
01:32
They say this is a critical investment in integrity and capability for the public service,
01:37
making reference to scandals like Robodebt and the PwC tax leak.
01:41
The Coalition says outsourcing is not such a bad thing and that they could use it in a cost-effective way.
01:46
They're indicating that they'll cut potentially tens of thousands of public servants from Canberra,
01:51
but they haven't answered questions about from what agencies and how that would affect services and programs.
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