Press Conference - Sorrell, Tasmania

REBECCA WHITE, CANDIDATE FOR LYONS: Thank you for coming and thank you to the Minister for Finance for joining us here in Sorell, talking about how important it is to protect these local services. The Federal Labor Government has made significant investments in building the capability of our public services to deliver services Tasmanians rely on every single day, like this service here in Sorell. This has made a huge difference to our community. People can drop in locally to see somebody and talk face-to-face about any issue they might be having with Centrelink or Medicare and Service Tasmania is located here as well. It's a great example of governments working together to deliver improved services to people living in regional parts of our state. My concern is that a change of government to a Peter Dutton-led government puts all of this at risk. He's talking about a 20 per cent cut to the public sector across the nation, and that's not just jobs in Canberra, that's jobs in places like Sorell here, where people are working day-to-day delivering services directly to members of our community are also the people Peter Dutton is talking about axing. And that means a reduction not only in the workforce in regional communities, but it means a reduction in services, because you can't cut 20 per cent of the workforce and think it won't impact on the delivery of services like here in regional Tasmania. I'm really proud to be standing with the Minister for Finance, who's fighting very hard to make sure we protect these jobs and also explaining to Tasmanians and Australians what it means when Peter Dutton talks about a cut in the public service. It means a cut in delivery of services to regional Tasmanians and that means people's jobs get cut, not just in the cities, but in our regions. And I won't stand for that and I'm excited to have Katy here with us to talk about why that matters.

SENATOR THE HON KATY GALLAGHER, MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE: Thanks, Bec. And it's so great to be here with Bec White and we are so thrilled that she has put her hand up to come and join us in the federal parliament, a woman of such incredible integrity and qualities that we need in the parliament. So, thank you Bec. And it's lovely to be here and as Bec said, I mean part of my job as Minister for Finance and the Public Service has been to repair the public service, to ensure that we've got good, secure jobs delivering public services everywhere in Australia, that we reduce our reliance on contractors and consultants and labour hire, and that we enhance the services for customers who need it. Part of that is making sure we've got good services like MyGov so people can stay at home and access services, but the other thing is having face-to-face services and importantly in regional parts of Australia, where people can go close to home and access services - whether it be Veterans' Affairs, Centrelink, Medicare, the Tax Office, you name it. I don't reckon you'll find an Australian who doesn't touch government services one way or another and we've got to make sure they're available to people. And it's going to be a contest at this election, the upcoming election. We know that Peter Dutton said that he'll cut 36,000 jobs from the public service, that's about a 20 per cent cut. That means here in Hobart, that you would see - or in the Hobart region - that that's potentially 500 jobs that would be cut. And it would be cut from places like Services Australia, as big employers in this town but also big providers of services. So, we wanted to explain that, that this is not something pretend, this would have real impacts on people's lives, on the services they use, but also on jobs and communities that rely on employment to stay and live and work close to home.

JOURNALIST: What kinds of impacts on services would it have? Do you have an example of what might not be able to be offered at a place like Sorell?

GALLAGHER: Well, this, for example, this was a budget decision in the 2022-23 budget, to have enhanced face-to-face services in Sorell. So, that would be part of what Peter Dutton sees as wasteful spending on public servants. So, that's part of why we've come here, to show people that this is actually real jobs, delivering real services to people. We cut the call waiting times in Centrelink, in Veterans' Affairs, in terms of approvals, in terms of access to Medicare services, all of those, we've seen big improvements in service delivery. And that's because we've been employing real people in those communities to do the job.

JOURNALIST: To be able to cut 36,000 positions, it's a pretty massive sector - is there room for efficiency? It's a pretty significant cost, he's saying, he'll be able to say, by doing this?

GALLAGHER: Well, he sees it as a cost. We see it as an investment in communities and services. And what we knew from the Robodebt period was that there wasn't enough people doing the work, that they relied on automation, and we saw the devastating consequences of that. At the extreme end, some people lost their lives. In others, people were pursued for money and debts they never owed and were hunted down and threatened with jail. And so there is a balance, you're always looking for efficiencies in public service, but the public service now - the size of the public service now compares very favourably with the size of the public service from John Howard in 2006. Like, it has grown with the population, but it hasn't grown more than it needs to grow. And we need to make sure it's resourced properly, and that's what we've done. Peter Dutton likes to pretend that you can just cut 20 per cent of the public service and there'll be no impact, and that's just not reality. And what we saw last time they were in government was they kept the public service low, but they had a 52,000 shadow workforce working off the books through consultants or labour hire. And we've tried to rebalance that. But sure, finding efficiencies is important as well.

JOURNALIST: In terms of the actual breakdown of where these jobs would come from, how have you figured out exactly where those losses would occur?

GALLAGHER: Well, we've looked at - he uses the figure 36,000. So, where we've looked, we've looked at where those new jobs have been. Like in the Hobart region, there's about 4,000 public service jobs across a range of departments. Of that, about 500 of those are new jobs. He's basically saying every new job since Labor came to power is wasteful and he would cut it. And so that in a sense is around 500 jobs from this region. Now obviously, people losing 500 jobs from this region would have devastating impacts on the local economies here, on those 500 people and their families, but also, for all the people that are driving in this car park who are wanting to use the services available.

JOURNALIST: Billions of dollars saved from one part of the budget to then redirect towards other services would be very appealing to a lot of people - how do you strike that balance and how do you - have you challenged someone who thinks, yeah, you know what, it is the wrong place to be spending money?

GALLAGHER: Well, the reality is they were spending the money, they were just spending it off the books. So, they had 52,000 people employed as labour hire, contractors or consultants. We know that labour hire was more expensive to employ, because you're essentially paying for an agency to employ somebody to do a job, whereas we're directly employing them. So, it isn't a matter of savings because the reality is this work needs to be provided. And this is what we're calling Peter Dutton out on. He's pretending that 36,000 jobs are wasteful. Well, that's his argument, and we know for a start that that's not the case, that we're resourcing the public service properly, people are getting the services they need, veterans are getting the pensions that they deserve, but we also know that he would have to employ people. What he's saying is, I'll just employ them off the books.

JOURNALIST: Are there too many public sector employees in Australia?

GALLAGHER: I don't believe so and I'm the Minister for the Public Service. I mean, I don't want to employ public servants for the sake of employing public servants, but I do want to make sure that the public service is able to deliver the services that we need. And when you think about what the public service does now, it's not just human services, it's defence, it's AUKUS, it's national security, it's border protection, it's quarantine, it's tax, it's a whole range of services that need investment if they are to keep Australians safe and keep services being delivered.

JOURNALIST: Have you been speaking with places like here in Service Tasmania? What are employees feeling at the moment?

GALLAGHER: I mean, obviously they're public servants, so they're apolitical and we don't really get into political discussions with them. I mean, my visit, Bec and my visit here today is to understand their day-to-day work and hear directly from them about what they're seeing. The pressures, challenges, all that sort of stuff. But I know from talking with the union, through that avenue where they speak on behalf of their members, there is a level of concern about the threats of job cuts. I mean, we had - under the former government - the public service was under-resourced, it was underpaid and we had terrible failures of public administration. We've tried to clean that up and part of that has been employing people to do the work. Part of it's making sure they're paid properly, and the other part of it is to make sure we have a strong, independent public service that's here to serve everybody regardless of the government of the day.

JOURNALIST: There can be a real sense that a lot of these jobs are based out of Canberra, they're behind the scenes and people who might come to a service like this won't actually interact with those employees. Are you saying that's not an accurate reflection of where these job losses would be?

GALLAGHER: Well, of the 36,000 additional jobs, two thirds of them are outside the ACT. There is a proportion that are in the ACT. That's not unusual. It's the seat of government, it's where the central agencies are. But the vast majority of those jobs are in places like this, and it's focused on service delivery. Because when we came to government, the waits for Centrelink, the waits for Services Australia, were too long. Veterans were dying without getting their pensions in place, and we thought that was unacceptable. And that's why we've gone through a very thorough process of how do we match up service demands with the people at the coalface. And we think we've got that balance right now. We've adjusted the size of the public service, but now Peter Dutton has made clear that that's all under threat.

JOURNALIST: It's a pretty significant investment. As you mention, there have been real issues with the way the public service has worked in terms of Veterans' Affairs, things like that. What assurance can you give people that simply adding more bodies is going to solve those problems?

GALLAGHER: Well, it's not just simply adding more bodies. Like I said, it's focusing on the independence and strength of the APS as a fundamental part of our democracy. So, that's quite an important part of it. Making sure you're matching up resources with demand. But also, driving efficiencies at the same time. So, we try to do all of that. It's not like we're going to keep adding jobs and adding jobs, what we're saying is we've tried to rebalance, we've tried to shift from external labour to permanent jobs, we're trying to make sure those jobs are in the regions where services are delivered. But also, that there is a point where those additional jobs have reached the adequate resourcing level and we think we're there right now. Thank you.