'Definitely': Gallagher promises budget boost for the public service

Senator Gallagher said investing in a "top operating public service" was one of the best investments the Commonwealth could make in the ACT.

"[The APS] is the big employer in this town and a lot hangs off it," she said in an interview with The Canberra Times.

"There will be more jobs ... you'll see extra ASL [average staffing level] definitely, across the APS."

The budget papers use the ASL figure, which represents the number of full-time equivalent public servants, but differs from the overall headcount of bureaucrats.

"We've obviously got new priorities, like the Future Made in Australia and some of the investments we're making on the renewable energy transformation side," Senator Gallagher said

"The Defence Strategic Review has happened since last year as well. So, we've had some pretty big pieces of work land, and we're resourcing that appropriately."

Senator Gallagher pushed aside Opposition Leader Peter Dutton's criticism of the Albanese government's ballooning public service as "lazy".

"It's an ideological thing to them that they kind of slash and burn the public service and the politics of that are pretty easy outside of Canberra," she said.

"It's lazy, and it's not good for the long term of the country, but I don't think they're going to change their stripes."

She pointed to the scale of the government's service delivery, from the National Disability Insurance Scheme to income support, tax, defence and foreign affairs.

"We cannot pretend ... that any of that happens without staff," she said.

But it won't all be about padding out the public sector, the minister said, ever wary of the opposition's attacks over "government waste", with the focus on "making sure that we're funding things appropriately".

This meant redirecting funds where appropriate, she said - such as the $190 million in Services Australia back office savings, which will go to front-line services.

Senator Gallagher said the robodebt scandal and backlog of 41,000 Veterans Affairs compensation claims were the legacy of the former Coalition government's insistence on capping APS staffing at 2006 levels.

"The public service responded by employing consultants, contractors and labour hire," she said.

"It wasn't an accurate picture of what was going on and it didn't deliver good outcomes. One department had a consultant sitting on their management committee, writing cabinet submissions."

By contrast, she said, under Labor "it no longer takes 50 days to get your passport. We've dealt with the visa backlog ... sure, we need to keep improving, but we've seen substantial improvements over the last couple of years".

"There are huge asks on the Commonwealth public service," Senator Gallagher said.

"We're doing things that were just not even imagined in 2006. I'm confident we've got the balance right."