‘Scare campaign ends today’: Public service to grow 2.24 per cent

Queensland’s public service will grow by 2.24 per cent, Treasurer David Janetzki revealed on Tuesday as the first LNP state budget since 2014 confirmed consultancy services would be brought in-house.

Janetzki said the public service would grow to 277,352 full-time equivalent positions in 2025-26, up from 271,279 in March – an increase of 6073.

Queensland’s population growth was forecast to be 1.5 per cent in the same period.

One William Street in Brisbane, the main office space for Queensland’s public servants.Credit: Michael Howard

Before delivering his first budget on the floor of parliament, Janetzki told the media lock-up the new Queensland Government Consulting Services would, from July 1, provide in-house advice to departments.

The move would end the dependency on external consulting firms, though its name was a source of disappointment.

“QGC was already trademarked, so we had to go with QGCS,” Janetzki said.

Treasurer David Janetzki walks into the pre-budget lock-up.Credit: Jamila Filippone

He said the new QGCS would be set up within the Queensland Treasury Corporation, with set-up costs of $15 million over two years. He expected the position of chief government consultant to be advertised immediately.

“They’ve got an advisory unit in QTC that does a lot of this work, outsourced across government and local government, and we’re going to be setting up a unit that sits beside advisory,” he said.

“We think this is an excellent vehicle to rebuild that capability into the public service and support us in what we’re trying to deliver across government.”

Janetzki said the government had been on a 20 per cent a year trajectory to spend $4.5 billion on external consultants in the 2024-25 financial year, a figure that had been reduced to $4 billion already.

“The flattening of that trajectory is key,” he said.

“When we formed government, I made it clear through Treasury that we wanted to set expectations throughout the public service, that we wanted more capability in house, we wanted them to deliver more, and we were going to provide them – through QGCS – that opportunity.

“Those expectations have realised a flattening of the trajectory already.”

Labor had warned before last year’s election of public service cuts, drawing on the experience of the former Newman LNP government’s first budget, in which 14,000 public servants were sacked.

As recently as this week, Opposition Leader Steven Miles said that history should set alarms bells off.

“You shouldn’t just swallow that line from the LNP that this is fearmongering,” he said on Monday. “This is their record.”

Delivering his remarks in Tuesday’s lock-up, Janetzki said: “Their scare campaign ends today.”

The treasurer said most of the investment would come in “those big buckets” of health, transport, community safety and housing.

“We’re investing more,” Janetzki said. “So that’s it in black and white, or blue and red.”

But there would be a freeze on the number of non-frontline senior executives, capped at current levels until 2028.

Janetzki said that measure would save taxpayers $18 million over four years.

A “more sustainable” annual public sector expense increase of 3.5 per cent a year was baked into the budget, even as the Crisafulli government continued to negotiate enterprise bargaining agreements with workers across departments.

Janetzki said ongoing negotiations with unions would continue “in good faith” despite the apparent ceiling in the budget papers.

“The process, as you would appreciate, will differ from department to department, agreement to agreement,” he said.

“Those negotiations will continue, but the position in the budget papers is clear.”

Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Jacqueline King said while the growing public sector was welcomed, it was a matter of “robbing Peter to pay Paul”.

“Agreements for police, teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers expire on July 1 and public sector unions have already rejected the current offer of an average annual wage rise of just 2.67 per cent,” she said.

“This offer is less than the Treasury’s forecast wage price index of 3.5, 3.25 and 3.25 per cent for 2025-26 to 2027-28 and we know that right across the country, public and private sector workers are attracting an average 4.6 per cent annualised wage increase.

“We are also disappointed there is no funding to improve the state’s paid parental leave, which remains among the lowest of entitlements in the country and which is a key factor in attraction and retention of the workforce.”

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