Albo wildly out on how much senior public servants paid

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have boasted about cutting “billions” of dollars in the private sector while rejecting comparisons to the Coalition’s plans.

Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers have boasted about cutting “billions” of dollars in private sector consultancy and contractor jobs to protect some of Australia’s highest paid public servants.

On Tuesday, both the Prime Minister and his Treasurer rejected comparisons between the Coalition’s plans to cut 41,000 federal public service jobs and Labor’s commitment to cut $6.4bn in spending on private sector consultants.

“That is completely not right. What we are doing is cutting out some of the waste. Some 54,000 consultants over the period of office,” Mr Albanese said.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers says has saved billions of dollars on contractors and consultants. (Photo by Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Mr Albanese said he had met former departmental deputy secretaries who earned “reasonable wages” of $200,000 and were now earning twice as much as a consultant.

“I have met people … who used to be a deputy secretary of the Department owning reasonable wages, $200,000 for a senior role,” he said.

But Mr Albanese’s claim was wildly off the mark of how much some public servants are paid.

According to the federal government’s transparency portal, some deputy secretaries were being paid as much as $664,000 before superannuation and other benefits.

Anthony Albanese said he had met former departmental deputy secretaries who earned “reasonable wages” of $200,000 and were now earning twice as much as a consultant. Picture: Jason Edwards / NewsWire

In 2023-2024, defence deputy secretary Chris Deeble had a base salary of $664,546 while another defence deputy secretary Jim McDowell had a base salary of $590,681.

The portal showed several other deputy secretaries earning between $300,000 and $430,000 as a base salary not inclusive of superannuation.

Mr Chalmers also jumped in to reject the job cutting comparison between Labor and the Coalition adding: “(We are) winding back some of these outrageous levels of spending on contractors and consultants.”

Mr Chalmers said he has saved billions of dollars on contractors and consultants.

“We wound back substantially by billions of dollars in spending on external labour and contractors and consultants,” he said.

Originally published as Albo wildly out on how much senior public servants paid