Parties gear up for first sitting period of election year

Labor will launch the start of federal parliament for 2025 with a multi-broadcast scare campaign against Peter Dutton, as the Opposition Leader signalled he would not accept a public service workforce above 200,000.

Labor launches a new campaign highlighting how Australians will be worse off under Peter Dutton. The ad began airing on free-to-air TV, broadcast video-on-demand services, YouTube and Meta from Sunday, February 2.

Labor will launch the start of federal parliament for 2025 with a multi-broadcast scare campaign against Peter Dutton, as the Opposition Leader signalled he would not accept a public service workforce above 200,000.

After his government efficiency spokeswoman, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, told The Australian her focus would be to control the growth of Canberra bureaucracy rather than spending cuts, Mr Dutton on Sunday said he would protect frontline jobs like police. But the Liberal leader said he would not allow the current projections on the commonwealth workforce’s expansion to become a reality if he wins the next election.

“It’s exactly what happened in the Rudd-Gillard period, although I might say by not as much,” Mr Dutton told the ABC. “It has dramatically increased under the Albanese government. Again, it’s to please the unions, it’s not to provide a more efficient delivery of services.

“We’ve been very clear, we are not going to have the public service sitting at over 200,000 on Labor’s projections … it wasn’t that in the Rudd-Gillard years. It’s obvious that there’s a correlation between a bloated service and a lack of productivity.”

The ALP from Sunday night was running adverts on television, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and streaming sites claiming Mr Dutton would have left voters $7200 worse off and “you’ll be worse off under Dutton”, given his party’s opposition to measures including expansion of free TAFE and Medicare urgent care clinics.

With Anthony Albanese suffering an approval rating of negative 20 per cent and Labor neck and neck with the Coalition in Newspoll after steadily losing ground in the past year, the government will try to use what could be the last days of the parliamentary term to try to define Mr Dutton as a slasher of public services.

Mr Dutton said the advertisement showed Mr Albanese “has nothing to show for this term of government, so all he’s now got is a negative scare campaign”.

The Liberal leader on Sunday also said he would use the budget razor gang post-election to find a way to rein in a projected $143.9bn in budget deficits over the forward estimates, but avoided saying what he would specifically cut beyond controlling the growth in public servants.

“We need to sit down and look through an ERC (expenditure review committee) process, which would be the normal course of things. We’ll do that in government,” he told the ABC.

“If we find wasteful spending, our intent is to cut it. That will result in, obviously, an overall reduction in government expenditure. If you’re saving $24bn-plus over the forward estimates with the public servants, that’s money that you can either use to pay off debt or you can use to put downward pressure on inflation. That’s how we help.”

Mr Dutton also ruled out having a whole-of-government audit such as the one former prime minister Tony Abbott held before his controversial 2014 budget.

As speculation runs rife that parliament will not return after this sitting fortnight for the scheduled March 25 budget, the Prime Minister will also use parliament to frame the upcoming election around his vision for universal childcare.

The government on Sunday said it would introduce legislation in the sitting fortnight to guarantee three days of childcare subsidy.

There is a slate of other legislation also before the parliament that could face challenging pathways through the Senate, including free TAFE, critical minerals production tax credits, and electoral reform.

The Australian understands the legislation enshrining a federal environmental protection agency will not be considered when parliament sits this week, after it was slated for discussion on Thursday in a draft Senate program.