The federal government's push to reduce wasted public service office space is yet to achieve acceptable levels of inefficiency, a property consultant and former Finance Department official says.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Stephen Oxford, executive director at ACT-based consultants Synergy, said there was still too much unused floor space and only 30 per cent of agencies were meeting targets in the government's bid to reduce empty desks.
Mr Oxford told an audience of property industry professionals in Canberra on Thursday there were 20,000 empty desks nationally despite other gains made through Finance's cost-cutting push.
The ACT had more vacant desks compared to the start of Operation Tetris, the federal government project to reduce wasted office space Mr Oxford helped implement through the Finance Department.
Federal public sector offices in the ACT had about 10,000 vacant desks, he said.
"I would argue that's not an acceptable level of inefficiency in the portfolio," Mr Oxford said.
Speaking at a Property Council of Australia breakfast marking the release of its latest office market report, Mr Oxford said the federal government had previously used penalties to push agencies towards meeting its density target.
That lever was still available if the government wanted more agencies to meet its goals, as were rewards for agencies hitting targets, he said.
Commonwealth agencies are expected to meet a density target of one occupied desk per 14 square metres, a goal Mr Oxford said still left the Australian Public Service with more space than many private sector employers.
MORE PUBLIC SERVICE NEWS:
Federal public sector tenants were also becoming more sophisticated in negotiating new tenancies, starting talks over leases earlier.
"I'm sure the Commonwealth is saving money in terms of those transactions," Mr Oxford said.
Consultants JLL's ACT director, Andrew Balzanelli, said Operation Tetris had pushed down the number of Canberra's vacant sub-leases from a 2015 peak.
The federal bureaucracy had fewer leases and less office space in 2018 compared to the previous year, figures from the Finance Department's latest Office Occupancy Report show.
An average public service office had one occupied desk every 16 square metres last year, down from 17.1 square metres in 2017.
Offices have become a tighter fit for public servants since Operation Tetris started in 2015. Desks in the public service were more likely to have bureaucrats parked behind them last year, as the percentage sitting vacant dropped from 16 per cent in 2017 to 14 per cent.
The Finance Department overseeing the bureaucracy's leases expects more will meet density targets as older tenancies expire.