Labor says Dutton’s public service cuts are from the ‘DOGE’ handbook. Here’s where jobs could go

Just a quarter of public servants hired since Labor came to power have been in Canberra, which will force Peter Dutton to cut 34,000 jobs from the rest of Australia or gut the capital city’s bureaucracy to achieve his target for reduced government spending.

Dutton this week focused on the federal education department as an example of government waste, questioning why it employed “thousands and thousands of people in Canberra” when it did not run schools or hire teachers.

Peter Dutton has pledged to cut 41,000 public servants from the federal workforce.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

However, the department employs just 1639 people – about 1300 in the capital – while other federal education agencies employ 421 workers. The Coalition has also earmarked the federal health department and new jobs in veterans’ affairs for cuts but, combined, they amount to about 10,000 jobs.

Analysis by this masthead – using employment data held by the Australian Public Service Commission, and Average Staffing Level estimates from the federal budget papers – reveals Dutton must identify 31,000 more workers in his election pledge to shed 41,000 public servants.

If the Coalition focuses its cuts on new jobs created by Labor, at least 20,000 of those will come from other capital cities, while more than 4000 will come from the regions.

The largest number of workers have been added to departments dealing with climate change, environment, agriculture and science, as well as the National Disability Insurance Agency.

The public service has become a central election issue as Dutton promises 41,000 public service job cuts to shave government spending by $7 billion a year. “We have said we want to take waste out of the federal budget and put back into frontline services,” he said on Tuesday.

Labor is seizing on the policy to claim Dutton is borrowing from US President Donald Trump, who last month threatened an executive order to abolish the education department.

After Dutton this week suggested federal funding could also be restricted to schools teaching a “woke agenda”, Labor’s education minister Jason Clare claimed he was taking moves “straight out of the US DOGE handbook”.

Where Australia’s public servants are concentrated

As he campaigns on cracking down on government waste, Dutton in his budget reply speech pledged the Coalition “will reverse Labor’s increase of 41,000 Canberra-based public servants”.

But employment data held by the Australian Public Service Commission reveals just 7087 Canberra-based public servants have been employed since the Coalition lost power.

Culling all 41,000 jobs from Canberra would more than halve the city’s public service workforce of 69,438 – as of December 2024 – taking it to 28,438. The previous Coalition government employed 62,351 bureaucrats in the capital when last in government.

To eliminate new roles added under Labor, Dutton would have to look outside Canberra.

There were 95,493 public servants in other capital cities in December 2024 – an increase of 20,689 from June 2022 – while 27,035 federal public servants lived outside major cities, an increase of 4128 jobs over the 30-month period.

The most jobs added since 2022 were in central business districts, led by Melbourne (6649), Brisbane (4775), Sydney (4201), Adelaide (2397) and Perth (1178). There were also hundreds of jobs introduced in Hobart (585), the Gold Coast (515), Geelong (474) and around Newcastle (384).

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said job cuts would hurt regional families and businesses, “no matter how many times he tries to spin this as being about Canberra”.

The departments on Dutton’s chopping block

Dutton has promised to protect frontline roles while flagging cuts to the federal health and education departments, which collectively employ 8606 people, because they do not run services.

The Department of Health and Aged Care has grown by 2084 workers since it was the Department of Health under the Coalition, to 6967 workers, while there are 4367 employees in other health agencies.

Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume has also queried the need to keep 1426 new workers in the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, who the government says cleared a backlog of overdue payments.

Most workers added under Labor have been in the departments dealing with energy, environment, agriculture, industry and science.

The Coalition era’s two departments overseeing these areas employed 9490 people in 2021-22; that is now 14,282 workers in three departments under Labor. The increase of 4792 workers came when Labor added climate change as a portfolio area for the first time.

Another 4356 workers have been added to the National Disability Insurance Agency, which former minister Bill Shorten argued was necessary to police the scheme and bring its spending trajectory down from 22 per cent to 8 per cent.

Labor has also added 3236 public servants to the Department of Defence and 1633 to the Department of Home Affairs. A further 1349 jobs were added to Services Australia and 1356 to the Australian Taxation Office.

Other federal agencies and departments added fewer than 1000 workers over the last three years.

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