Liberal James Stevens was elevated by Opposition Leader Peter Dutton earlier this month to spokesperson for government waste reduction in his frontbench reshuffle.

Mr Dutton has been attacking Labor's 2023 budget allocation of 10,000 extra public service positions, the biggest year-on-year increase of the bureaucracy in at least 15 years.

Mr Stevens, whose parents were both senior public servants, is now in the junior but high-profile role used in the past with impact by the likes of Kimberley Kitching, Pat Conroy and Jamie Briggs.

"I'm a very strong believer in a fierce and frank, independent public sector providing advice to government," he told The Canberra Times.

"If the public service has grown by 10,000 people, a good opposition will want to understand and know why that happened, what the breakdown is of that increase and understand the necessity of it.

"The focus on credible examples of wrong priorities, I think is where I'm going to be coming from."

He insists the 10,000 positions are not being flagged for future cuts.

"We'll be very interested to hear the answers there and there may well be some good reasons for it, which is fine, but like I say, an opposition would be negligent not to raise and highlight and seek answers," Mr Stevens said.

At the time, the government explained that nearly a third of those 10,000 places were for workers previously hired under labour hire and contractor arrangements.

Minister for the Public Service Katy Gallagher said a long-term rebalancing is underway after an audit, commissioned after Labor came to office, found a massive $20.8 billion "ghost" workforce of almost 54,000 contractors and external providers. "It was total bullshit that it was 144,000," she said in May 2023.

She said the shadow workforce "plugged gaps" in the APS created by the Coalition's cap on the number of government employees.

Senator Gallagher said it will take many years to address public service resourcing issues and the high-level cultural problems uncovered through the robodebt scandal.

Mr Stevens will be working with the more senior opposition spokesperson on the public service Jane Hume and feels there is no need for a new audit at this time, but he wants to know more.

"I acknowledge that the government has talked about re-internalising roles. I haven't heard them say that every single role in that increase was from that process," he said.

"And I've seen them reference policy decisions that they've taken in budgets, etc, which is part of the due course of running a government and running the nation.

"I'm not convinced that all 10,000 are a result of that process."

Mr Stevens said he was not coming into the role with "any prejudices or any axe to grind" and he has praised the public service as being "good quality" and "high performance".

He said the widespread use of consultants and external consultancies goes "way beyond the last few years", while he is supportive "in theory, absolutely" of the government's in-house consulting service model which is designed to cut down on public service outsourcing.

The two-term MP is keen to get into the waste watching role which has a broad brief. So expect him on housing, energy efficiency, and on issues such as independence.

"One of my roles will be calling out any politicisation of the public service or any things that the political leadership is doing," he said.

"It's not the fault of the public service to have to implement bad government policy. That's the job of the public service. And so my criticism will be very much towards government policy. And having the wrong priorities for this country."

And on robodebt, which is still to see outcomes for significant players in the creation of the illegal, rushed and unchallenged automated debt-raising scheme, Mr Stevens is cautious.

"People can make their political points on it. In the role that I've got, I see it as an opportunity to lead to good quality reform and outcomes that ensure that the lessons are learned from that and that they're not repeated in the future," he said.

The ACT has no federal representative after Zed Seselja lost to independent David Pocock in the May 2022 election, but in the waste watch role Mr Stevens will be argue points on issues that are of concern to the residents of Canberra.

But pollsters say talk, founded or not, of excessive government waste plays very well out of Canberra such as his seat of Sturt, which Federal Labor is targeting next time around.

It is a fine balance to be walked.

"I lived here for five years. I'm a Brumbies fan, which is easy because South Australia doesn't have any team to compete with my allegiances there," Mr Stevens said.

"I love Canberra, not just because I grew up here, but it's a beautiful city. I think we're very lucky that we built a national capital. As an Adelaide person, I'll happily say I'm glad that the capital of Australia isn't Sydney or Melbourne.

"I feel that if the people of Canberra are prepared to consider me semi-qualified to be an advocate for them, I'd very proudly do so."