The federal opposition has called on Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce to outline the full cost of plans to force public servants and government departments to move to regional Australia in next week's federal budget.
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Labor's regional services spokesman Stephen Jones said the Turnbull government should immediately halt cuts to government jobs outside Australia's capital cities and explain the full cost of the National Party-led decentralisation push, adding missing detail to the shock announcement.
Citing hundreds of Australian Taxation Office jobs cuts from regional locations since 2013, Mr Jones said the government's moves were poorly planned.
If Labor wins the next election, he said a Shorten government would only move public service jobs out of Canberra and other capital cities if the plans were cost effective and properly executed.
Under the government-wide plan announced by Nationals deputy leader Fiona Nash last month departments and agencies will be required to justify their continued presence in the national capital and other cities, or face a forced move to regional centres, including in electorates held by Nationals MPs.
Proposals for the moves are due with cabinet by August.
"If the government wants to do anything more than hand pick a few jobs out of Canberra and move them to a regional town at the same time as they are sacking people in those government jobs in regional towns, they have to immediately call a moratorium on axing public sector jobs in regional Australia," Mr Jones said.
Labor continued to put pressure on Mr Joyce over the full cost of moving the pesticides authority out of Canberra and to his own New England electorate.
Mr Jones said the government's price tag of $28 million was wrong, with the cost closer to $60 million and the loss of dozens of staff.
"If they're going to scale this up, then there needs to be money in the budget. It's time for the National Party to come clean," he said.
About 57,500 public servants, or 37.5 per cent of the federal bureaucracy, work in Canberra, a figure which is in steady decline.
Mr Joyce did not respond to a request for comment.
Victorian independent MP Cathy McGowan last week called for a parliamentary inquiry into decentralisation.
Mr Jones said the only decentralisation efforts Labor would pursue were where there was effective use of taxpayers' money.
"We have been willing to look at placing jobs in new agencies in regional areas in the past.
"We'll take it on a case by case basis, but I've got to say, if you make jobs in Canberra the enemy of jobs in regional Australia, you're not starting on the right foot," he said.
