Albanese condemns Dutton’s pledge for mass public service cuts ‘only in Canberra’
Opposition leader’s comments suggest close to two-thirds of capital’s public service roles – which include many key agencies – would be slashed
Peter Dutton has pledged to cut almost two-thirds of Canberra’s federal public servants if elected, in a move Anthony Albanese has criticised as “outrageous”.
In a testy press conference in Tasmania on Thursday morning, the opposition leader batted away questions about not visiting a single proposed nuclear power station site, as well as confusion over shifting positions on migration targets, tax breaks for electric vehicles and Coalition support for recognising West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
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 to downsize the public service by 41,000 jobs by 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 in Canberra. 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 to 213,439 roles over 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.
The Coalition had previously ruled out cuts to frontline jobs and national security roles.
The ACT independent senator David Pocock denounced the policy as “Canberra-bashing”, describing it as an “ideological attack on public servants who can’t even speak up in their own defence”.
“The numbers don’t even stack up, you can’t cut 41,000 public servants from Canberra without touching defence, intelligence and frontline services, and still run the country effectively – it simply isn’t possible,” he said.
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.
Canberra-based Labor MP Andrew Leigh described the Coalition’s plan as “insane”.
“Even if Dutton closed the head offices in Canberra of 12 departments – Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry; Attorney General’s; Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; Defence; Education; Finance; Foreign Affairs and Trade; Health and Aged Care; Home Affairs; Prime Minister and Cabinet; Treasury; Veterans’ Affairs – he’d still have less than 41,000 job cuts.
“Dutton makes Doge look restrained,” Leigh said, referring to the US Musk-led “department of government efficiency”.
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 existing power stations identified for potential nuclear reactors.
“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.”