The end of the steep cuts that characterised Tony Abbott's prime ministership is certainly welcome, though it also serves to highlight how arbitrary, and likely wasteful, those cuts ultimately were. What was gained by losing almost 15,000 public servants during Mr Abbott's two years in power? Why did the bureaucracy's staffing levels rebound? How many public servants did the government rehire – whether immediately or soon after they left – via labour-hire or consulting firms? Taxpayers funded redundancy payouts for more than 9000 staff in those two years. If there were long-term savings to be made from this staffing cull, it's quite possible that not a cent has yet emerged.

There are good reasons to doubt the prudence of Mr Abbott's attack on public service staffing levels. The May budget papers show that, despite the job cuts, the government's "running costs" (or departmental expenses) are now notably higher than they were when the Coalition took office, even accounting for inflation. This was always a likely byproduct of sudden staffing cuts. If a government demands, as Mr Abbott's did, that the bureaucracy sack an arbitrary number of people, but continues to expect that the public service produce the work that those people did, agencies will use whatever means they can – whether that be contractors or consultants – to get the work done. Sacking public servants has little correlation to reducing public spending.

Nonetheless, the latest workforce data wasn't necessarily good news for Canberra. Despite growth in APS staffing over the past year, the number of federal public servants based in the ACT actually fell. Most of the staffing increases were in other cities, particularly Sydney and Melbourne. Also noteworthy was the sharp increase in the proportion of public servants employed on non-ongoing contracts; a trend that's unlikely to be reversed. It's another reminder of the need to diversity this city's economy beyond the federal bureaucracy to other industries.

There was better news, however, in the ongoing progress that women are making in the public service. The Australian government has long been a vanguard workplace for female leaders and, in many ways, it remains so. Despite some recent criticism of the cultural barriers that women face in the APS, the latest data shows they are nearing equity at top levels. The proportion of senior executives who are women was 43.3 per cent as of June 30. By contrast, only 28.6 per cent of executives in the private sector are women.

To put that achievement in perspective, it's worth looking back 30 years, when only 5 per cent of the bureaucracy's senior executives were women and the APS was celebrating the appointment of its first female department head (there are seven today). The public service should continue to raise awareness of the biases that thwart women's progress, but it deserves praise, too, for the success it has already had.