Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has vowed to cut “wasteful’ government spending if he becomes prime minister, but won’t detail his plans until after the election.
In an interview with ABC’s Insiders, the opposition leader reiterated his plans to shrink the public service as part of a broader plan to slash what the Coalition perceives as inefficiencies in the system.
“We are not going to have the public service sitting at over 200,000 on Labor’s projections,” he said.
“If we find wasteful spending, our intent is to cut it and that will result in obviously an overall reduction in government expenditure.”
Mr Dutton said there were billions of dollars in savings that could come from scaling back the bureaucrats, which would then be used to “pay off debt or you can use to put downward pressure on inflation”.
But he wouldn’t be drawn on the specifics of where the cuts would come from and ruled out an Tony Abbott-style wide-ranging audit of how taxpayer dollars are spent.
“We need to sit down and look through an ERC [expenditure review committee] process, which would be the normal course of things. We’ll do that in government,” he said.
The comments come just days after the opposition leader used a major policy speech on Friday to promise to “scale back” the federal public service, telling the audience that the economy performs better with fewer bureaucrats.
Labor warns of impacts of cuts
Labor has previously criticised Mr Dutton’s plans to wind back the public service, warning that it would result in slower processing of government payments, like pensions.
“They under resourced the public service to the point they weren’t able to deliver services,” said Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher.
“We had veterans that didn’t get their pensions on time, we had unacceptable waits at Services Australia for people to get their pensions and payments — this is what Peter Dutton wants to take people back to.”
But the Coalition argues that increasing the number of workers in the public services results in reduced productivity in the economy more broadly.
“You’re drawing people from the most productive places in the economy to put them into less productive parts of the economy and that is not helping our productivity problem at the moment, it is exacerbating it,” he said.
The opposition leader made Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price the new shadow minister for government efficiency late last month, a move that appeared to echo Donald Trump’s appointment of Elon Musk to lead a Department of Government Efficiency.
At the time, Mr Dutton said she would be tasked with finding “efficiencies to be achieved” so there is more money for frontline services.
Since taking on the role, Senator Price has said she’ll review federal funding for Indigenous Welcome to Country ceremonies.
A federal election is scheduled to take place before May 17.
