Senior executive positions in state govt increase from 708 to 3680 over decade

Top earners making average $256k a year, among them are Transport for NSW’s Director of ‘Breathtaking Simplicity’ and a director of the ‘Make it Happen Program’.

An explosion in the number of bureaucratic fat cats is now costing taxpayers almost $800 million every year, following a 419 per cent increase in the government’s “senior executive” ranks over the past decade.

The number of top-tier public servants in the government ranks has grown by almost 3000 since the Coalition came to power, with the biggest increase occurring between 2020 and 2021.

That’s despite the government pledging before the last election to cut spending on senior executives by 10 per cent every year.

The top executives earn between $200,000 and $679,000 each year, with an average yearly wage of $256,000.

The extraordinary increase in fat cats has seen an extra 2972 senior executives employed between 2010 and 2021.

According to Public Service Commission data, there were 3680 “government sector senior executives” employed in 2021.

In 2010, after public service cuts from the previous Labor government, there were just 708 senior executives employed, government documents show.

Premier Dominic Perrottet pledged to save $158.8 million over four years from the public service. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Among the senior executives are Transport for NSW’s Director of “Breathtaking Simplicity” and a director of the “Make it Happen Program”, also at TfNSW.

The government’s Agent General to the United Kingdom, Stephen Cartwright, is also among the list of highly-paid executives.

Between 2010 and 2021, the number of full-time teachers increased by just 7.1 per cent, according to Labor analysis, meaning the number of senior executive ranks grew more than 59 times faster than the rate of teacher hiring under the Coalition.

Taxpayers were supposed to be saving hundreds of millions of dollars on the public service, under a policy costed by then-Treasurer Dominic Perrottet before the 2019 election.

The policy, costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office, would have saved $158.8 million over four years and $224 million by 2022-23, based on “natural attrition” of 203 senior executives over two years.

Between 2020 and 2021, the same year frontline workers copped a pay freeze, the number of government sector senior executives grew from 3333 to 3680, an increase of almost 11 per cent.

The number of senior executives employed last year has not yet been revealed.

Labor Treasury spokesman Daniel Mookhey said the Perrottet government had failed to hire frontline workers while splurging cash on a bloated bureaucracy.

“Twelve years of this government has created a surplus of top bureaucrats and a deficit of essential workers,” Mr Mookhey said. 

“The salary we pay one of these top executives could have hired either two brand new teachers or two fresh paramedics.

“We would not have such a severe shortage of critical workers if Mr Perrottet had instead invested the hundreds of millions of dollars these top executives cost every year in the essential services the community relies on,” Mr Mookhey said. 

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