Australia’s own DOGE can’t come fast enough | Caleb Bond

Donald Trump has only been in the Oval Office for about 10 days but can anyone argue with these results, writes Caleb Bond.

Our own Department of Government Efficiency cannot come fast enough.

Donald Trump only planted his bum on the Oval Office’s leather chair 10 days ago and his DOGE – run by Elon Musk – is already saving the US government about $1b a day.

Meanwhile, in Albanistan, the prime minister wants to blow another $4 billion on the NBN because he’s upset that Mr Musk’s Starlink satellite internet service is more popular than his wired product in the bush.

Spending on white elephants has become an Albanese specialty – Centrelink has hired 3000 more people and managed to blow out the wait times for pension claims.

Old age pensioners waited an average of 76 days for their claims to be processed last financial year compared to 33 days in 2022-23 – a 130 per cent increase.

Centrelink boss Hank Jongen says it’s all good because the 2023-24 financial year includes a period before those 3000 new people had been employed and claims are now being processed much faster.

To be fair to Mr Jongen, you’d be hard pressed to find a more available and generally upfront bureaucrat.

But get real – Bill Shorten announced in November 2023 that those new people would be hired, at a cost of $228m, and they were all on the books by February last year.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk celebrates Donald Trump’s inauguration as US President. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP. Picture: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

If the wait times started improving from February – which would have benefited the average for the financial year – I’d hate to see what it was like for the seven months prior.

We are wasting more and more money on the public sector for no tangible benefit.

The federal public service has grown by 20 per cent under the Albanese government – about 36,000 jobs.

Would you say the provision of federal services has improved by 20 per cent?

The wages bill increased by 11.7 per cent last financial year.

So important are the votes of these public servants that the new public service minister, Katy Gallagher, is on a national tour scaremongering about the opposition’s plan to cut some fat if they win government this year.

In Hobart two weeks ago she said that previous cuts had been “destructive” and “wreaked havoc”.

This week she told Canberrans that Peter Dutton’s plan was a “crazy campaign”.

No doubt Labor wants those votes and they’re willing to literally pay people’s wages for them.

But Mrs Gallagher and the government are also worried that cutting the public service will expose their ruse.

You see, the government keeps saying that economic growth is slow but at least it’s still growing.

Except it’s not – because 87 per cent of jobs filled in the past two years have been in the public service or government-related sectors such as health and education.

Nearly a third of jobs created in 2023 were linked to the NDIS.

There is precious little growth in the private sector without businesses taking their money from the government.

This has been the Ponzi scheme of Albanese’s mass migration – more than 1 million people have moved to Australia under his watch.

Bring all these people in and then the government will invent jobs in the public sector to service the needs of these new people so on paper it looks like there is economic growth when, in reality, we’re going backwards.

Households have been in recession for seven straight quarters but the government keeps inventing jobs to keep the employment rate stable so we haven’t gone into an “official” recession.

All of this has worsened inflation and kept interest rates high.

Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers have abused our taxes to cover up stagnant economic growth.

We are paying for it – literally – and it has to stop.

Originally published as Australia’s own DOGE can’t come fast enough | Caleb Bond