Queensland public servants are set to bear the brunt of ‘targeted $3bn savings plan’

Queensland’s top ranking public servants are set to bear the brunt of a “targeted $3bn savings plan” over four years to ensure the budget returns to surplus from 2026/27.

Premier Steven Miles Treasurer Cameron Dick celebrate the delivery of the 2024-25 State Budget. Picture: Dan Peled

Queensland’s ballooning public service must cut down on travel, advertising, and use of consultants as part of a $3bn savings plan designed to get the state’s budget books back in the black.

It comes as Treasurer Cameron Dick’s 2024/25 state budget unveiled an 8000-head boost to the public service over the next year, for a total workforce of 267,000 people costing $35.2bn a year.

While thousands of workers will be added to the frontline across health, police, education and prisons there is also a plan to bolster the workforce of one department to crackdown on tax and fine compliance.

Bureaucrats are set to bear the brunt of a “targeted $3bn savings plan” over four years to ensure the budget returns to surplus from 2026/27.

Queensland Treasurer Cameron Dick delivers the 2024-25 State Budget.

The savings plan includes cutting down the use of consultants and contractors which in 2022/23 cost taxpayers the equivalent of $8.2m a day.

There will also be a rethink on office space, with departments told to look at “greater use of flexible work arrangements” while reducing the need for office accommodation as their numbers grow.

There will be no new advertising from August 1 this year that isn’t for public safety and recruitment campaigns.

There will also be cuts to travel, with meetings to be done over the phone or video call wherever possible.

Mr Dick said the latest savings plan was a revival of his Covid-era measures which also sought to save $3bn from mid-2020.

“We found those savings, we banked those savings, but we thought it was time to renew, refresh and refocus and so we will do that again, we’ll find those savings across government,” he said.

“But can I give this assurance, we will not be cutting one job as a consequence.”

The move to cut down on reducing the use of contractors and consultants comes two years after the Coaldrake review into the culture and accountability of the public sector warned the habit of outsourcing work to consultancy firms would erode the capabilities of the public service.

Queensland’s public servants must cut down on travel, advertising, and use of consultants as part of a $3bn savings plan.

Mr Dick insisted there had been a focus on reducing contractor expenditure over time and this was “standard practice across our government” — despite the figure ballooning since 2020.

A Queensland Auditor-General report released in March 2024 revealed the state government had spent a whopping $3bn on contractors and consultants in 2022/23 alone — up from about $2.6bn the year before and $2.3bn in 2020/21.

A commitment to reducing government reliance on the big four consultancies — Deloitte, KPMG, EY and PwC — was the centrepiece of Opposition Leader David Crisafulli’s 2023 budget reply speech.

Mr Crisafulli has also previously promised no cuts to the public service and vowed to “repair the toxic culture of fear in the public service”.

Mr Dick argued the ban on new advertising could not be brought in earlier than August 1 as the state government had a range of agreements in place spruiking cost of living measures and those could not be broken.

Despite thousands of new public servants coming on board departments have been told to “look afresh at all sorts of working arrangements”.

This includes working from home, or bases outside the Brisbane CBD where office space costs more.

“It might be looking at those lease deals when they come up for renewal, about what we should do to get the best value for taxpayers but also the best working outcome for public servants,” Mr Dick said.

The public service wage bill is expected to total $35.2bn in 2024/25 — a 6 per cent increase from 2023/24 driven by a deal to increase salaries 11 per cent over three years and increasing frontline workers across health, education and community safety.

And Queensland’s pool of public servants is expected to grow by nearly 8000 people to a whopping 267,000 in just 12 months.

The biggest increases include 2949 expected new hires in Queensland Health, 1126 in Queensland Police, 1008 in the public education system and 881 in the state’s prisons.

But Queensland Treasury’s workforce will also grow by nearly 20 per cent to 1710 employees as part of the state government’s plan to clawback nearly $1bn by cracking down on tax compliance and payment of fines.

Originally published as Queensland public servants are set to bear the brunt of ‘targeted $3bn savings plan’