The new unit, dubbed “the pound” by Health staffers, is a place for officials whose jobs have been unfunded but who are still employed by the department.

Top Health bureaucrats told a Senate Estimates committee on Wednesday that they still could not say how many workers would end up in the business services centre and conceded it had not yet allocated any work for them to do.

Departmental Secretary Jane Halton said that between 150 and 350 workers would find themselves “unfunded” in the department’s downsizing process.

Ms Halton told the committee that the public servants in the centre, who have been forbidden to describe themselves as excess, would be doing the “most important” work.

“There are many things that we can’t afford to do that are incredibly important and it’s only the most important things that are going to be done using the business services centre,” Ms Halton said.

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“We hope, as we’ve indicated, that as vacancies come available, people will be slotted into those vacancies, that is our intention,” Ms Halton said.

She told the committee the department had to cut its staff to suit the funding available to it.

“We are cutting our cloth based on what we have available,” Ms Halton said.

“We have a situation where we have more people than we have money so we try to manage that in the most effective and efficient and consultative way, working with staff so people understand so people understand what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.”