One in three public servants full-time in office
The nation’s public service workforce has exploded to nearly 200,000 employees yet office attendance has plummeted to shocking lows across government departments.
Only a third of the nation’s bulging public service turns up to the office five days a week, amid warnings the explosion in bureaucrats is draining resources from the private sector and fuelling inflation.
The Albanese government oversaw a near 25 per cent increase in the public service headcount since the last election year, the largest jump in a single term of government on record.
The federal public sector’s wage and salary bill breached $40bn for the first time earlier in November and public sector wage growth has outpaced private sector growth for three consecutive quarters.
Labor’s hand-picked reviewer of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, economist Stephen Anthony, said he thought the size of the public service had probably become excessive. “How is it responsible, in a macroeconomic sense, that the government keeps on hiring when we have such a tight labour market and higher inflation? It makes no sense,“ Mr Anthony said. “It seems implausible that the public service could keep growing by so much in such a short period of time and result in outcomes that improve efficiency and effectiveness of government. We know that’s not what is happening.”
Full-time office attendance is as low as one in 10 in some government agencies – 8 per cent at the Australian Human Rights Commission, 12 per cent at the Bureau of Statistics, and 13 per cent at the Australian Communications and Media Authority – the latest figures have revealed. Thirty-two per cent of Australia’s 198,529 public servants as of the middle of the year never worked away from the office, but 52 per cent did “some of the time” on a regular arrangement, 9 per cent did on an “irregular basis”, and 7 per cent “all of the time”. The figures are based on employee responses to the public service census.
Some specific agencies and departments had far lower office attendance rates – 19 per cent of the National Disability Insurance Agency’s employees worked away from the office “all the time”, along with 42 per cent of IP Australia, 31 per cent of the Digital Transformation Agency, and 26 per cent of the Australian Public Service Commission.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, employers have struggled to make employees return to the office. In 2024, Labor signed off on a new enterprise agreement for the public service that did not include a cap on work-from-home days, which sparked fury among business groups.
Analysis by The Australian shows the public service headcount has grown almost 25 per cent in the past three years, the biggest increase in a term of government since records began, in 2003. Australian Industry Group chief executive Innes Willox said the rapid rise in the number of bureaucrats was putting pressure on government budgets and “overheating an already overly tight labour market, plus feeding into inflation”. On office attendance, he said that that while his organisation recognised the “flexibility” that WFH offered, “the very limited amount of time public servants spend in the office would be surprising to most Australians”.
Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Andrew McKellar said there needed to be more scrutiny on government spending and the public service following the recent inflation hike.
“The settings for the next federal budget will be very important and the government needs to get that spending situation under control,” Mr McKellar told Sky News. “I think across the board, big-spending areas, and we know where they are, areas like the NDIS and aged care, they’re growing too fast at the moment. We have some high demands in terms of public spending, which is boosting up parts of the economy (but) it’s draining resources from the private sector. We’ve got to take some of those pressures off.”
Opposition public service spokesman James Paterson demanded Finance Minister Katy Gallagher come clean about the cost-cutting directive.
Senator Gallagher said the government had “not asked agencies to cut their departments by 5 per cent”.
“We’ve asked agencies to think about all the things they’re doing and all the programs they administer – for government to consider whether they are still priorities,” she said. “It’s an exercise in discipline around how we manage budgets. Senator Paterson has once again shown that the Liberals think that investments in public servants who deliver services Australians rely upon are wasteful and has defaulted to the usual APS bashing that they are so well known for. Since taking office, we have been actively seeking ways to achieve savings for the budget.”
