Peter Dutton has not ruled out cuts to the ABC and is still refusing to say which public servants will be axed as part of his plan to slash 41,000 jobs, despite repeating concern about Australians struggling to pay bills.
Dutton swerved questions on Wednesday about where and how he would trim what he dubbed “waste” in the federal government, but he committed to releasing costings on his public service cuts before the election on 3 May.
It was seemingly at odds with senior shadow minister Bridget McKenzie’s comments to the ABC on Tuesday night that the Coalition wouldn’t detail which government employees it would sack until after the election.
It is unclear whether ABC staff would be among the 41,000 on the chopping block under a Dutton government.
Meanwhile, sources have told Guardian Australia that repeated attempts by the ABC chair, Kim Williams, to secure a face-to-face meeting with Dutton have been rejected.
Williams has met with the leader of the National party, David Littleproud, and other National party members, whose regional constituents rely heavily on the public broadcaster.
“I think there’s a lot of very good work that the ABC does, and if it’s being run efficiently then you would keep the funding in place,” Dutton said.
“If it’s not being run efficiently and there is waste, then I think taxpayers – who pay for it, and who are working harder than ever just to get ahead – would expect us to not support the waste.”
Dutton has repeatedly declined to give any details of his plan to slash 41,000 extra public servants, beyond commitments not to cut “frontline” services and yesterday revealing the cuts could target “back office” workers.
The Liberal leader has hinted that staff cuts could particularly fall on staff at the health and education departments – the latter of which he criticised after endorsing concerns about a “woke agenda” in schools.
Despite his campaign focus on cost of living and his repeated concerns about families doing it tough, on Wednesday Dutton rebuffed a question on whether public servants’ families deserved certainty about whether their jobs would be at risk if he won the election.
Dutton framed his public service cuts as support for Australian families, with a vision to direct savings into mental health, general practice, bulk billing and defence.
He again repeated the discredited claim that Labor had created 41,000 new Australian Public Service (APS) jobs in Canberra. The Labor government has said two-thirds of public servants live outside Canberra and three-quarters of the new positions were outside the capital, including in regional and rural areas.
“We would look across government in Canberra to identify where the additional places [are] and to make sure we get support back to frontline services, and there are ways in which we can support families by putting more money into frontline services,” Dutton said.
The opposition has continually given contradictory answers on how many jobs would be cut, where from, and whether they would be reduced through redundancies (which would involve generous payouts) or a hiring freeze.
Some shadow ministers have said only a small number of jobs would go, while others have said many or all of the newly created roles would be eliminated.
At the National Press Club on Wednesday, Angus Taylor insisted the Coalition would focus on “natural attrition” over mass sackings.
However, the alternative treasurer did not entirely rule out redundancies if the opposition secure government.
“You naturally have higher attrition if you’ve got more people, because people leave to go and do other things,” Taylor said.
“And it’s not a bad thing that a certain proportion of public servants each year go off to the private sector and do other things and then hopefully come back with some of the experience they’ve learned from the private sector.”
While criticising the “ballooning” and “confusing” bureaucracy, Taylor revealed a new agency would be created to streamline private sector investment into the government if the Coalition wins the election.
Investment Australia would become a new statutory agency to “streamline major project approvals, cut red tape and restore Australia’s global competitiveness”, reporting directly to cabinet and the treasurer with powers to escalate economically significant projects stuck in red tape.
McKenzie, the shadow infrastructure minister, told the ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday night that it would be “inappropriate” to specify pre-election which positions it would cut because the opposition did not have enough access to APS and departmental data.
“The prudent thing, the responsible thing, would be to make those decisions shortly after we come into government,” she said.
Dutton said in February that “of course” the Coalition would release costings for its APS job cuts policy before the election. He repeated this on Wednesday.
However, he would only say the Coalition would seek to make the public service more “efficient” and that it was “important for us to live within our means”.
In an earlier interview on ABC Melbourne radio, the opposition leader refused to rule out cuts to the broadcaster, saying it needed to demonstrate “excellence”. He claimed some ABC regional services were “under done”, hinting at a shift in focus from metropolitan ones.
Former ABC broadcaster and author Quentin Dempster said: “Mr Dutton and any government has a duty to hold the ABC to account on its legislated charter obligations including ‘excellence’.
“But before we all vote by May 3, the Australian public deserve to know if a Dutton LNP government would defund the ABC and SBS.”
