After singing the praises of the public service for its extraordinary job through the COVID-19 pandemic, the Prime Minister, in need of a new deflection, has turned on them.

And in final days of an election with only slight divisions between the major parties on the major policy areas, a chasm has emerged on the fate of the public service, and by extension Canberra.

The Prime Minister's sweeping cut of $2.7 billion from the services on which all Australians rely and who steered Australia through the abyss of fires, floods, plague and economic abyss is a throwback to the artless oversight of the Abbott government.

In recent months, Scott Morrison has commended thousands of public servants for answering a plea for Services Australia volunteers to ensure flood-affected Australians would receive half a billion in relief payments with all urgency.

Now the job of mopping up the Coalition's need for savings to pay for its porkbarrelling ways also falls to public servants.

The officials, who just days ago the Prime Minister described as unworthy of holding a view on whether community projects in marginal seats were value for money, will now decide where the cuts will be made.

Essential services for the most vulnerable Australians, including those on the NDIS, single parents and veterans will feel the pinch, but Mr Morrison's hands will be clean.

"That's their job," he said of the agency heads.

"That's what you do as a government - you task your public servants to get jobs done and I always respect greatly the work of the public service, but I also expect results."

It's service delivery, but not for the people. It's service delivery for one man's ambition to hold on to the Lodge as he appeals to the Australians who don't understand or respect the federal workforce.

These are also the Australians who have relied on a competent and equipped public service to ensure their welfare while the country's leader was holidaying in Hawaii.

Both major parties have increased the efficiency dividend before. Under Julia Gillard it rose to 4 per cent. But now Labor is banking on memories of that era being forgotten.

Labor is already using the federal government's late campaign surprise to win over any undecided hearts and minds in the nation's capital.

But it's equally concerned some early ACT voters might not have considered what the federal government had in store for the bureaucracy - of which, around a third of those in Canberra work for.

The opposition's finance spokesperson and local Labor senator Katy Gallagher said her long-time Liberal foe Zed Seselja had "deliberately hidden" it from voters within the physical centre of government.

Labor's plan is to cripple the public service's reliance on private contractors and big consulting firms - with large Canberra-based workforces of their own - who win hundreds of millions in government contracts paid for by the public purse.

Either way, the government's decision is sure to put any public servants doubting Labor's commitment back on side.

Kicking public servants may play well in marginal seats beyond the ACT's borders. But Australians know the country can't function effectively without a strong administration.

Yes, there is a big job to do to repair the damage inflicted on the nation's finances. But cutting those services too hard will make delivering on the promises now being made all the more difficult.