Labor warns Peter Dutton will come ‘hunting’ for education cuts

Peter Dutton’s key pledge to slash public service jobs remains light on detail, while the Opposition leader has vowed to tackle ‘indoctrination’ in schools and unis.

Peter Dutton has vowed to slash Australia’s “bloating” public service, but has not been able to explain where he would find savings in sectors like education where only 1,700 people are employed in the department.

The Opposition leader also said he wanted Australians to get the “best education they can” and did not want them “indoctrinated” in the classroom by a teacher or university lecturer.

“I want our kids to be taught community beliefs and standards,” he said, declining to nominate specific topics in the curriculum he was concerned about.

Mr Dutton has made cutting up to 41,000 taxpayer-funded jobs created under the three years Labor has been in an office a major plank of his plan to repair the federal budget, with estimates it would save more than $6 billion a year.

But Labor has warned Mr Dutton will “come hunting” for funding cuts in schools, universities and childcare as there are no significant savings to made in the Commonwealth education bureaucracy.

Peter Dutton visits the suburb of Donnybrook in Melbourne to discuss the cost of living with a family on the campaign trail for the 2025 federal election. Picture Thomas Lisson / NewsWire

Aside from ruling out cuts to “frontline” roles, Mr Dutton has not outlined where the thousands of job losses would come from, including under his pledge to redirect spending away from the health and education “bureaucracy” toward funding things like more GPs.

Mr Dutton has said he will keep health and education spending level the same as is allocated under Labor, but left the door open to shifting money around within the sectors.

“We are absolutely committed to health and education funding as the numbers appear in the Budget papers,” he said.

“We’re finding a bloating of the public service, which is what happening in Canberra.

“If there is waste and there is bloating … of the bureaucracy, then we need to make sure that we’re getting money into (frontline areas like) more GPs.”

Education Minister Jason Clare: ‘Peter Dutton is going to come hunting for that money’

Education Minister Jason Clare said the annual running cost of his department was less than $400 million, while there were only about 1,700 department jobs, many of which are practical roles like safety and compliance in early education or managing the HECS student loan system.

“The funding that I’m providing as Education Minister to fund childcare and schools and universities is in the tens of billions of dollars,” Mr Clare said.

“That’s why you know Peter Dutton is going to come hunting for that money.”

Asked if Australians deserved to know before the election where he would be looking to redirect funds away from, Mr Dutton said increasing the bureaucracy was not the way to deliver efficient services to Australians.

Mr Dutton has said he will keep health and education spending level the same as is allocated under Labor.

“The government talks about waste, but they don’t do anything about it,” he said.

“So we need to make sure that we’ve got the most efficient spend of taxpayers money.”

“We will look across government in Canberra to identify where the additional places are and to make sure that we can get support back to front line services.”

Mr Dutton also said he would look for efficiencies in the ABC and SBS public broadcasters.

“Australians are working their guts out of the moment harder every day for every dollar,” he said.

“They want to make sure that their taxpayers’ money is being spent efficiently and there is no money at ABC without families … paying their taxes.”

Originally published as Labor warns Peter Dutton will come ‘hunting’ for education cuts