Tens of thousands of public sector workers will need to wait until after the federal election to see if they will still have a job under a coalition government.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton doesn’t “think any Australian can say that their lives are easier in terms of their interactions with government agencies because of 36,000 new public servants being employed in Canberra”.
Asked how many federal public sector jobs he would cut, he said he wouldn’t allow the public service to have more than 200,000 jobs, which is part of Labor’s projections.
“I have no doubt that we’ll be able to find where Labor has put fat into the system that is not helping do anything but drive inflation,” he told the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.
Mr Dutton ruled out an independent audit of public spending, saying his team would comb through the budget if they took government.
He declined to mention where the cuts would come from, saying a decision would be made after the election if they were in office, although frontline services such as national security agencies will be bolstered.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher attacked Mr Dutton for not revealing where they would cut from, saying services like pension waiting times and quality control to stop NDIS rorting would be affected.
“What he’s not telling people before the election is that he will once again cut Medicare, he will cut the pension and he will cut important cost-of-living relief which are helping Australians get by,” she told AAP.
“Australians can’t afford Peter Dutton’s secret cuts to vital services and payments Australians rely on like Medicare or the pension.”
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Mr Dutton needed to come clean about spending cuts, saying the secrecy was because “if people know what they were they wouldn’t vote for him”.
Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume stopped short of committing to firing thousands of public servants when asked about plans to cut staff, instead saying a coalition government would limit public sector growth.
“We’ve certainly said that we’re going to stop the growth in this bloated public service,” she told Sky News.
“We will make sure that essential services are maintained and indeed improved.
“Inevitably, we will make sure that we stop the waste and we stop the duplication.”
Opposition government efficiency spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price spoke to The Australian newspaper, first saying a Dutton government wouldn’t cut jobs but halt further growth.
She then backtracked with a written statement saying there would be “sensible reductions”, according to the report.
Senator Hume pointed to the Department of Foreign Affairs hiring a consultant to advise on integrating a First Nations approach to foreign affairs on top of having a First Nations ambassador as an example of waste.
“There is extraordinary amounts of duplication for things that I’m not entirely sure we need in place,” she said.
A growing public sector also hampered the private sector which was the centre of sustainable economic growth, Senator Hume added.
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