Peter Dutton has dodged revealing how many voluntary redundancies could be offered as part of the opposition’s plan to downsize the public service by 41,000 jobs by 2030.
Speaking at a conveyor manufacturing factory in Perth on Friday, the opposition leader avoided providing further details about the plan.
The proposal to downsize the public service has raised more questions than it has answered since the Coalition’s about face earlier this week.
The Coalition’s spokesperson, James Paterson, revealed on Friday morning volunteer redundancies had “always” been part of the plan, despite no mention of the move on Monday when the rejigged policy was revealed.
Dutton said the opposition had “looked” at a hiring freeze and the public service’s natural attrition rate, which he said “helps us achieve the 41,000 [job cuts]”.
Asked whether he could say how many redundancies would be offered, Dutton declined to comment.
The opposition has been under pressure to release secret modelling and costings revealing exactly how it could achieve tens of thousands of job losses, including which roles would be on the chopping block.
On Monday, the Coalition revealed it would dump its pledge to crack down on working from home policies for public servants and clarified there wouldn’t be “forced” redundancies or mass sackings.
Instead, the bureaucratic cull would be achieved through natural attrition and a hiring freeze in a similar vein to Tony Abbott’s approach in 2013.
Frontline service roles and those in national security agencies have been ruled out of job cuts.
Since coming into power in 2022, the Albanese government has increased the number of public servants by around 41,000 to 213,439. The public service minister, Katy Gallagher, has defended the increases as necessary after “almost a decade of outsourcing, underinvestment and reduced service outcomes” under former Coalition governments.
Dutton has described these new positions as “wasteful spending”, repeatedly calling the extra public servants “Canberra-based” even though three-quarters are outside the nation’s capital.
An analysis by Guardian Australia earlier this week showed around 11,000 staff leave the public service each year on average but the majority of those come from frontline or essential jobs.
Figures from the Australian Public Service Commission show 11,782 staff left the federal bureaucracy in 2024, with 6,665, or 57%, coming from the home affairs and defence departments, the Australian Taxation Office and Services Australia.
Dutton has previously said the plan would save $7bn annually from the budget’s bottom line once in place but has not answered questions about whether that would begin after 2030, once the public service has been reduced by 41,000.
