Election 2025: Unions warn Coalition’s job cuts could exceed 41,000

Sally McManus says Coalition’s backflip on public servants being forced back to the office cannot be believed.

CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly says Coalition’s policy is a ticking time bomb.

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Unions have warned Peter Dutton’s plan to cut public sector jobs through attrition and hiring freezes would likely result in more than 41,000 jobs being cut, as the ACTU said his backflip on public servants being forced back to the office could not be believed.

The Community and Public Sector Union said the Coalition’s revised pledge to cut public sector numbers through attrition and hiring freezes over five years would hollow out essential services and leave millions of Australians worse off.

Based on current agency attrition rates, the CPSU said Services Australia would lose 12,500 jobs or 42 per cent of staff over five years; the Department of Veterans Affairs would be cut by almost 1000 jobs or 27 per cent of staff over the same period, and the National Disability Insurance Agency would lose 2070 jobs, or 21 per cent of its workforce.

CPSU national secretary Melissa Donnelly said the Liberal leader’s doubling down on job cuts was a “recipe for delays, disasters, and a decline in critical services”.

“Cutting public services by attrition is not a strategy – it’s a ticking time bomb,” she said. “These are uncontrolled, uneven cuts that will hurt the public sector and have a disproportionate impact on frontline services.”

Ms Donnelly said cutting public services by attrition and implementing a hiring freeze could lead to public sector cuts that are significantly higher than 41,000.

“It is hard to imagine he could have come up with an even worse policy than cutting 41,000 jobs out of public services, but he’s gone and done it,” she said.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar and Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox refused to comment on the Coalition’s backflip on forcing public servants to return to the office.

Mr McKellar confined his comments to the broader issue of employees working from home, saying the capacity of employees to work remotely should be a matter determined by an employer and employee through agreement.

“There should be nothing to preclude an employee raising a request for some sort of flexible work arrangement if that’s what they want to do,” he said.

“We see that the flexibility to request working from home, along with other flexible working arrangements, can provide an incentive for increased participation in the labour force so that’s a good thing.

“But we don’t support proposals to introduce a right to request to work from home in award arrangements or as a provision under the Fair Work Act.”

ACTU secretary Sally McManus released legal advice from John Agius SC that she said confirmed a Dutton government could only take work-from-home arrangements away from public sector workers through legislative change that would also remove work-from-home rights from all workers.

“This is yet another backflip on workers’ rights in less than a week and shows Australians cannot trust Peter Dutton with our rights at work,” she said.

“Given the chance, he will do the bidding of employers who want their wage-cutting schemes back and the power to force everyone back to offices.”