Its secretary, Drew Clarke, told staff yesterday the losses were needed to cope with a looming budget cut of $27.5 million in 2012-13.

The department would ‘‘not be able to continue to deliver all of its existing activities with a reduced budget and workforce’’, he said.

Some workers would be offered redundancies because attrition alone would not cut the size of the workforce quickly enough.

The department joins a growing list of federal agencies that are shedding staff to contain their wage budgets.

The Education Department and Treasury announced last month they would cut 500 and 150 public service jobs respectively, while the Health Department, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and many smaller agencies are also planning to cut their workforces.

The mid-year budget review, unveiled in November last year, said the government would cut administrative spending by an extra $500 million in 2012-13.

The ‘‘efficiency dividend’’ – an annual cut to the public service’s operating budget – will rise from 1.5 per cent to a record 4 per cent.

Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood said the job losses belied the government’s purported aim of cutting non-staff costs, such as spending on consultants, travel and advertising.

‘‘We said at the time we did think it was possible to find that amount for saving without hacking into frontline jobs and services,’’ she said today.

‘‘The CPSU remains deeply opposed to these cuts. We believe they will damage the capacity of the APS to deliver decent services for the community and make it harder to develop quality policy advice for government.

‘‘We are also concerned that the government may make further cuts to deliver a budget surplus.’’

Mr Clarke pointed out that the job cuts would reduce his department’s workforce to about the size it was two years ago.