By Kat Wong in Canberra

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s attempts to “fix the bloat” in the public service would have massive consequences across Australia, the government warns.

If the coalition wins the May 3 election, Mr Dutton will look to cut 41,000 public servants and has named the federal health and education departments as some of his first targets.

Education Minister Jason Clare compared the opposition leader to Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott, who promised no cuts to health and education before unleashing one of the most austere federal budgets in recent memory.

“It looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre – cuts every week,” Mr Clare told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.

“(Peter Dutton) will start with the Department of Health and the Department of Education, but he won’t stop there.

“Peter Dutton will cut and you will pay.”

The opposition leader has said he would use any savings to help fund roads, mental health and other initiatives to help alleviate cost pressures.

“If we’re finding a bloating of the public service, which is what is happening in Canberra, that is not helping families,” he told reporters in Melbourne.

Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor has said numbers will be reduced through a focus on “natural attrition” in the sector.

“It’s not a bad thing that a certain proportion of public servants each year go off to the private sector and do other things and then hopefully come back with some of the experience they’ve learned,” he told the National Press Club.

He reaffirmed the coalition would still reduce the size of the public service, but in a way that “does not threaten frontline services”.

If the cuts were evenly spread, one in five government workers across the nation would be out of a job.

But the opposition has homed in on the 68,000 Canberra-based public servants who make up about one-third of the sector.

Government Services Minister Katy Gallagher compared the public service’s impact on Canberra to smaller cities reliant on one particular sector or company.

“If you cut 41,000 jobs, the local economy would go into recession, businesses would close, schools would be challenged because people would move,” she said.

“Not only would it decimate my hometown and everybody who lives in it, but it would decimate services across the country.”

Mr Dutton’s measure aims to cull all the jobs Labor added to the sector after it promised to improve government services during the 2022 election.

Most were hired as a cheaper replacement for external consultants, who cost almost $21 billion under the former Liberal government.

The sector’s growth helped cut Centrelink waiting times by six minutes and Medicare calls by nine minutes, Australia Institute research has found.

It also cut processing times for paid parental leave claims from 25 days to four days while Medicare claims went from 11 days to two days.