SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER
MINISTER FINANCE
MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE

CANBERRA TIMES

Let's be clear. Cutting APS jobs would devastate communities nationwide.

Despite the ever-increasing demands and complexity of APS work, it's Groundhog Day again with APS services and jobs shaping up to be front and centre of the upcoming election contest.

While the Albanese government has spent the last two years repairing and rebuilding the APS after a decade of damage and disrespect, the Coalition have already said they will cut 36,000 jobs - almost 20 per cent of the entire public service - if they win government again.

Over the past two years the Albanese government has invested heavily in rebuilding the Australian Public Service back into the strong, independent institution our community needs it to be.

These investments are not only about ensuring the APS can deliver programs and policy but, most importantly, that they are able to deliver services that the Australian community relies on. And to deliver services efficiently and effectively you need people to do that.

So we have invested in APS jobs. Because when we came to government the APS was under-resourced and under pressure. Standards of service delivery were slipping badly with people waiting too long to deal with Services Australia and veterans waiting too long for decisions on their entitlements.

We know why this happened - there weren't enough people to do the work and the Coalition government was fixated on artificially constraining public servant numbers by outsourcing work to the private sector.

We also know how that episode ends - with consultants sitting on department executive teams, consultants writing cabinet submissions and contractors being paid much more to do the same job a public servant did whilst the labour hire company clipped the ticket on the way through.

Under this model, service standards plummeted - phones went unanswered, wait times blew out and Australians were left waiting too long for essential payments.

We had the PwC scandal, where confidential government information was used as part of a broken business model for companies to profit off. And, of course, the robodebt scandal - the single biggest failure in public administration which demonstrated with devastating consequences what happens when the ruthless pursuit of disadvantaged people is combined with an administration where public service values are sidelined.

And as our audit of employment laid bare, beneath the Coalition's obsession with "small government" lay a much more expensive reality. While the Coalition maintained an artificial cap on public service numbers, they quietly employed a shadow workforce of 54,000 - costing taxpayers $20 billion in just one year.

It was clear when Labor came to government in 2022 that fixing this mess would require more than just tinkering around the edges. Rebuilding the public service would take time and sustained investment.

In each budget since then, we've chosen to reduce the reliance on external workforces by investing in the public service's own capability - and we are already seeing the dividend.

We have employed more public servants whilst, at the same time, finding $4 billion in savings from reducing spending on external labour. On top of that, we have seen marked improvements in the delivery of services to the Australian community.

We cleared the 42,000-case backlog at Veterans' Affairs. We slashed visa processing times and doubled the on-time approval rate for environmental approvals. We reduced call wait times and claims processing times at Services Australia. And we put integrity measures in place to ensure that immense failures in public administration like the illegal robodebt scheme that cost lives can never happen again.

Our strategic commissioning framework includes a list of agency commitments around what work is core to the public service and, therefore, should be done in-house by public servants. Work like developing cabinet submissions, drafting legislation, leading policy development, managing programs and procurement. In their 2024 plans, agencies have identified more than half a billion dollars of work to bring back in-house.

And whilst Peter Dutton and his colleagues continue to threaten Australians with a 20 per cent cut to their public services, let me be clear: Labor's approach isn't about growing bureaucracy for its own sake - the public service is still proportionally smaller than it was under the Howard government. Labor's approach is about delivering better outcomes for Australians and ensuring the public service is meeting the rightful expectations of Australians.

A cut of 36,000 jobs to the APS would devastate communities across the country. It's a promise to leave veterans without the support they deserve, to make aged pensioners and new parents wait longer for payments, to compromise our national security through cuts to Defence and Home Affairs. And it's a promise that would cripple essential services, from biosecurity protection to cracking down on NDIS fraud.

We can't allow this to happen.

A great deal has been achieved this term to undo the damage that had been inflicted on the APS and we are seeing early but important progress in our commitment to deliver the best quality services to the Australian community. But there is much more work to do. We need to continue investing in a strong, capable and independent public service - because the results speak for themselves. Better services, faster payments, stronger protections, and billions of dollars saved.

Monday 4 November 2024