The Abbott government has already shed most of the public service jobs it said it would remove, more than two years ahead of schedule.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
The bureaucracy shrank by almost 11,000 staff in 2014 alone – the deepest yearly cut since John Howard's first term as prime minister.
Employment Minister Eric Abetz is now offering some hope to Canberra job-seekers, saying he will review the hiring restrictions he put in place after the Coalition won office in 2013.
The federal bureaucracy lost about 15,500 staff between June 2012, when its size peaked, and the end of 2014. About 1100 of those jobs were shed under the Labor government.
One of Senator Abetz's first acts as minister was to set up strict controls over recruitment, limiting job advertisements to "crucial vacancies" and making government agencies seek permission from the Public Service Commission before hiring staff.
The controls were referred to widely as a "hiring freeze", though in practice the bureaucracy was allowed to recruit sparingly.
Shortly after gaining power, the Coalition dropping its election promise to shed 12,000 jobs via "natural attrition" – allowing public servants to leave without replacing them – saying it had discovered what it called "Labor's secret, unfunded cuts". The Coalition said budget cuts already planned by the previous government would require the loss of 14,500 full-time jobs.
In its first budget, the Abbott government announced a new policy of removing 16,500 full-time-equivalent jobs from the Australian Public Service by June 2017.
Senator Abetz said on Tuesday this target would be reached earlier than planned and, as a result, the government would review its recruitment limits.
"The Coalition government has implemented measures to manage Labor's secret cuts in a careful and responsible manner, including funding the resulting redundancy payments, for which Labor never provided any funding," he said.
About 13,200 staff left the public service last year. About half of those were retrenched.
However, some new opportunities were created: almost 5300 employees either joined the bureaucracy or were promoted to higher-level roles.
The latest employment data also shows the public service became slightly more diverse, an area in which it has struggled for years.
The proportion of public servants who are indigenous Australians rose from 2.3 to 2.5 per cent; public servants with disabilities increased from 3.1 to 3.4 per cent; and staff from a non-English-speaking background rose from 15.9 to 16 per cent.
Among larger government workplaces, the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet lost the greatest share of staff during 2014 (474 jobs, or 20 per cent), followed by the Tax Office and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (17 per cent each), and the Treasury and the Attorney-General's Department (16 per cent each).
Senator Abetz said former prime minister Kevin Rudd had promised, a week before the 2007 election, "to 'take a meat axe' to the public service".
"This promise was, of course, broken and the size of the APS blew out to its highest level ever. Only the Coalition is committed to a sustainable and properly funded public service," the senator said.
