2025-04-07
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The Coalition’s spectacular backflip on sacking public servants should not be misread as a retreat from their cost-cutting agenda. They remain committed to downsizing the Australian Public Service by 41,000 and that will have a devastating impact on service delivery to communities across Australia. Peter Dutton and Jane Hume don’t understand today’s workplace or household. They are frozen in an inflexible world that is long gone and is not coming back. The public’s rejection of their policy to roll back work from home shows how out of step they are. Here in South Australia voters in the marginal seat of Sturt need to know that James Stevens, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction, is part of the team bringing mass cuts to our public sector – for five years ahead. They are promising a long slow bleed of jobs and services. Lines attributable to Senator Barbara Pocock: “Peter Dutton’s about face on sacking public servants and banning work-from-home arrangements shows just how out of touch the Coalition are with the Australian electorate. Opposing flexibility for workers and cutting the public service is in the Liberals’ DNA, and watering down their policy statements after a voter backlash doesn’t hide their ultimate agenda of shrinking the public sector workforce and opposing flexibility. “Don’t be fooled by the softening of Dutton’s rhetoric. He still aims to cut 41,000 government jobs that provide vital services to the Australian community. He just plans to do it slowly. The impact will be the same, a reduced capacity across all government departments and frontline agencies that do everything from manage the tax system, fund schools and hospitals, and look after the aged care and childcare systems. “Dutton still doesn’t get it. Australians value their public service and they recognise that outsourcing core functions to the private sector has been an expensive fiasco that has led to corruption and rorting on a massive scale. “The Liberals appointed the member for Sturt, James Stevens, to lead their Trump-style cost-cutting venture but he’s nowhere to be seen. The impact of this policy will dent his campaign for re-election in a city where 3,700 jobs are earmarked to be cut, one way or the other, under this retrograde action that will reduce the capacity of the public service at a time when it needs to be boosted. “Only the Greens have a policy to expand the public service to keep pace with the population and the growing needs in the community, along with a policy to reduce public spending on consultants by 15% a year for the next 5 years.” |