Peter Dutton has pledged to cut almost two-thirds of Canberra’s federal public servants if elected, in a move Anthony Albanese has slammed as “outrageous”.
In a testy press conference in Tasmania on Thursday morning, the opposition leader batted away questions aboutnot visiting a single proposed nuclear power station site, as well as about-faces on immigration and tax breaks for electric vehicles.
But a question levelled at Dutton about how many public service jobs would be cut in Tasmania unravelled the Coalition’s policy to crack down on “government efficiency”.
Dutton said the opposition’s plan todownsize the public service by 41,000 jobsby 2030 via attrition would only apply to Canberra-based roles, with “none” being slashed outside the capital territory.
“We’ve been clear … we’re not reducing the public service – only inCanberra. We’ve been very clear about that from day one,” he said.
The national capital employs almost 70,000 federal bureaucrats, according to the Australian Public Service Commission’s figures. Under Labor’s most recent federal budget, that number is projected to rise further as the Albanese government expands the workforce to213,439 rolesover 2025-26.
Speaking in Perth on Thursday, Albanese said the comments showed Dutton was “not ready for government”.
“Asio, the Australian Signals Directorate, all of our security and intelligence agencies – where does Peter Dutton think they are based? They are based in Canberra, in our national capital,” he said.
“The Department of Defence. Do they think that the CDF [chief of defence force] and the senior defence leadership in this country aren’t based at Russell [defence’s administrative headquarters] in Canberra? Where does he think they are?”
Dutton accused Labor of a “scare campaign” after the government warned earlier this week that whole departments and agencies could close if the plan went ahead.
More than 40,000 staff are employed across just 10 agencies in Canberra. Those include the defence department – Canberra’s biggest employer, with more 9,000 jobs – and the home affairs department, with 5,500 roles.
Services Australia, which processes income support payments, has almost 4,500 staff in its ACT offices, with the health, industry and foreign affairs departments also employing thousands of staff.
Earlier in the Thursday press conference, Dutton also conceded the Coalition’s proposal to establish a nuclear power policy, with seven reactors placed around the country, might not be popular among voters.
The opposition leader’s campaign has yet to stop at one of the proposed sites, with his closest visits in the Hunter and south-west Western Australian regions so far steering at least 50km clear of the identified power stations.
“We made a tough decision, not for political vote-winning exercises, but for what is in the best interest of our country in relation to nuclear power,” Dutton said.
“It is a proven technology accepted by the prime minister in relation to nuclear submarines and, as you know, the prime minister is not too far from Lucas Heights [home to a nuclear medicine facility].
“He sleeps well at night and he wants to whisper under his breath about safety and all the rest of it but he has never accepted the challenge for a debate in six months in relation to nuclear.”