<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <docID>339047</docID> <postdate>2025-02-25 13:36:39</postdate> <headline>Warnings consultants would replace axed public servants</headline> <body><p><img class="size-full wp-image-334907" src="https://citynews.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20200323001458839554-original-resized.jpg" alt="" width="900" height="619" /></p> <caption>"Job cuts mean service cuts to all Australians," says ACTU president Michele O'Neil. (James Gourley/AAP PHOTOS)</caption> <p><span class="kicker-line">By <strong>Kat Wong</strong>, <strong>Dominic Giannini</strong> and <strong>Tess Ikonomou</strong> in Canberra</span></p> <p><strong>Taxpayers could end up spending more on government services under a coalition plan to cut public service jobs, cabinet ministers warn.</strong></p> <p>After revealing he would match Labor's $8.5 billion plan to boost Medicare, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said his pledge would be funded by axing tens of thousands of jobs in the public service.</p> <p>But senior minister Murray Watt said this would send Australia backwards.</p> <p>"People have Medicare claims to be processed, people have veterans claims to be processed – national security needs to be dealt with, immigration applications need to be dealt with," he told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.</p> <p>"Someone's got to do that work and it's either going to be public servants or high-price consultants.</p> <p>"We'll go back to the past, where the coalition outsourced enormous quantities of government work, at enormous expense to taxpayers, to line the pockets of the big consulting firms."</p> <p>Almost $21 billion was spent on an external workforce of 53,000 employees during the final year of Scott Morrison's coalition government.</p> <p>Cuts to the public service would also increase lines and waiting lists, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.</p> <p>"We'll go back to the queues of veterans... not getting the support that they were entitled to," he told reporters in Sydney.</p> <p>Tax avoidance countermeasures could be weakened under cuts to the Australian Taxation Office, while claim backlogs would balloon, the Australian Council of Trade Unions said.</p> <p>"Job cuts mean service cuts to all Australians," its president Michele O'Neil said.</p> <p>The coalition has not specified how many of the government's additional 36,000 public servant jobs are on the chopping block but Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley assured there would not be cuts to frontline services.</p> <p>"We know that everywhere in this Albanese government there is waste," she told reporters in Queensland.</p> <p>"Does anyone anywhere feel that the service delivery from the commonwealth government is improving? I haven't spoken to anyone who does."</p> <p>Services Australia's latest quarterly data shows Labor's decision to hire more staff had significantly reduced processing times for the aged pension, parental leave and Medicare enrolments.</p> <p>The Greens hope to boost these numbers by hiring extra Centrelink staff to reduce average welfare phone waiting times to under five minutes, abolish for-profit service providers and establish a commonwealth employment service with thousands more public servants.</p> <p>https://citynews.com.au/2025/pm-faces-thorny-questions-hostile-public-grilling/</p> <p> </p> </body>