Deery: The Allan govt has never struggled to promise savings. Delivering them is a different matter
The festive, ribbon-tied public sector cut promises handed out by Jacinta Allan and Treasurer Jaclyn Symes on Thursday are equally as impressive as they are implausible.
As always with Allan government promises, believe them only when you see them.
$4bn in savings. 1000 public sector jobs on the chopping block. More oversight. Stronger accountability.
These were the festive, ribbon-tied promises handed out by Jacinta Allan and treasurer Jaclyn Symes on Thursday.
They are equally as impressive as they are implausible.
Highly respected former bureaucrat Helen Silver identified $5bn in savings in her review of the public service.
But those savings depended on axing more than 2000 jobs and abolishing 78 government entities as part of 52 recommendations.
Responding to the report the government said it would slash just 1000 jobs and 29 entities, accepting in full just 27 recommendations.
In other words it would deliver half the cuts, but realise almost all of the savings.
The maths, frankly, does not add up.
Of course the maths of the Allan government so rarely does.
For a decade, Labor has squeaked budget targets with optimistic assumptions, heroic accounting, and line items that amount to little more than hopeful guesses.
And it has allowed a bloated public service to grow such that the wages bill has more than doubled from $18bn when it took office in 2014 to $38bn.
Stripping back the public service to find the billions in savings we’ve been promised is anathema to Labor’s habit of a decade.
When Ms Symes announced the review in Feburary, she flagged between 2000 and 3000 jobs would be lost.
The government’s plans will go nowhere near that.
In practice, today’s announcment looks suspiciously like yet another attempt to paper over a structural budget problem that has been years in the making.
Take the promised closure of Cladding Safety Victoria.
Well-placed sources say the decision to close that agency was made more than a year ago and had been well budgeted for already.
In other words, it will make no difference to the promised savings.
Then there’s the promise of “rebalancing” the number of senior roles in the “top heavy” public service.
New caps will apply for senior roles that insiders say will be almost impossible to meet with significant impact on service delivery.
Lastly, there’s the small matter of a $400m accounting error in the press release spruiking these shiny new promises.
With mistakes like that, doubt should be cast over each and every figure and assumption in the government’s response.
Government departments are already groaning from years of supposed efficiency rounds.
If there were easy billions lying around, they’d have been activated long before now, well before debt ballooned to historic highs.
Yet we’re asked to believe this time is different.
This time the savings are real, responsible, and achievable.
We’ve heard it all before, and each time reality comes to bite fast.
The problem here is the savings number has been announced before the work has been done, creating a convenient political narrative, not a fiscal plan.
This government has never struggled to promise savings.
Delivering them is another matter entirely.
Originally published as Deery: The Allan govt has never struggled to promise savings. Delivering them is a different matter
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