Peter Dutton is not having a good time on the campaign trail.
From Trump tariffs to his dad having a ‘medical episode’ on the day of the debate, not much is going to plan, and it is clear that the Opposition Leader is starting to panic as the confidence wanes. The most concrete example of this is the backflip and equivocation on the policies around public servants.
As part of their ideological push to have a ‘better not bigger’ public service, the Coalition originally announced they would cut 36,000 jobs to bring the size of the public service back to where it was the last time they were in office. After the recent budget announced an increase in public servants, the number of job cuts was raised to 41,000.
The ‘how’ has shifted almost on a daily basis, beginning with claims they will sack the required number. That then became a reduction through voluntary redundancies and natural attrition by not replacing staff as they resign. That then became a ‘cap’ that will be achieved over five years through natural attrition.
Then Dutton ruled out reductions in frontline staff and critical agencies, including those that contribute to national security, but has not specified which of the tens of thousands of roles will not be replaced once they are vacant, nor if any of those jobs are in regional areas.
Public service cuts will hit the New England hard
In the New England, cuts to the public service are a real threat to many local communities. As at 31 December 2024, there were 401 public servants within the New England North West.
Almost half of those are at the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) in Armidale, which Barnaby Joyce fought very hard to forcibly move here when he was the Minister for Agriculture and Water Resources in 2016.
Most of the other public servant jobs based in the New England are in service delivery roles, such as Services Australia staff, or working on specific projects, like the five ongoing roles at the Inland Rail office in Moree.
However, while they have made clear that front line jobs will be quarantined from the cuts, it is not clear if the Coalition’s proposal includes project or temporary roles, which are the vast number of jobs associated with the Inland Rail project, which hit around 2000 workers in phase 1 of construction.
It’s also not clear if the cuts to the public service will extend to other roles in the public sector, that are not public servants per se, such as the 21 full time equivalent roles at the Cotton Research and Development Corporation in Narrabri. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, at the time of the 2021 Census, 2297 New Englanders were employed in the public sector by the Commonwealth Government.
Barnaby’s legacy threatened by Dutton’s ideology
The APVMA relocation to Armidale, and approximately 150 well paid jobs that came with that, is arguably Barnaby Joyce’s biggest legacy as member for New England. Even those in Armidale who are strongly opposed to all things Joyce will concede that Joyce did deliver this sizable economic boom to the local economy. The APVMA has provided alternative high paying employment options for Armidale’s many highly educated people, energised and expanded the public service community here, and pumps around two million dollars a year to the town in salaries alone.
In 2019, the then Minister for Agriculture Bridget McKenzie praised Joyce’s determination in delivering this pathway to government careers to Armidale.
“Armidale is a fantastic exemplar for decentralisation,” she said at the opening of the Armidale office.
“Australians in the regions should have the same access city people have to government careers.”
“This opening today is a tribute to Mr Joyce’s single mindedness and his incredible determination to see through an idea from start to finish despite the one or two objections along the way.”
Senator McKenzie is on record supporting the proposed cut of 41,000 public servants, and, with Liberal Senator Jane Hume, has been a point person for prosecuting the argument that the public service is inefficient.
But when it comes to the APVMA specifically, despite the intense culture issues that rocked the organisation, their productivity and efficiency cannot be questioned. While the organisation dealt with serious staffing problems, high workloads, major issues with an out-of-date system, and intense demands from everyone from industry to environmentalists, 94.6% of applications were processed on time in their last performance report.
With the agency under siege during the controversy and investigations, Joyce again went to bat to defend Armidale and the agency being based here. He went so far as to mount a petition for it to stay, and was sharply critical of recruitment for APVMA roles in Canberra. Armidale Regional Council also weighed in, with Mayor Sam Coupland accusing the Government of ‘gaslighting’ Armidale with threats to remove the agency.
When then Agriculture Minister Murray Watt announced just last year that the agency would stay in Armidale, but that order that staff must be in Armidale would be revoked, Joyce maintained the pressure for those public service jobs to stay here.
Labor defends essential services
Labor candidate for New England Laura Hughes and candidate for Parkes Nathan Fell said the Coalition’s announcement of 41,000 public service job cuts has come as a real shock to many people within the New England and Parkes electorates.
“We remember that in their final year before the 2022 election, the former Coalition Government sacked thousands of public servants only to replace them with $20.8 billion worth of private contractors,” Laura Hughes said.
“People in New England and Parkes know that’s not just inefficient—it’s a waste of taxpayer money.”
“We need public servants to deliver the services Australians rely on. Labor has always backed our public sector.”
The CPSU, which is the union for federal government employees, has also been highlighting the impact on services from public sector cuts.
“Peter Dutton’s plan to rip 41,000 jobs out of the public service is a plan to rip money and jobs out of local economies, and good local services out of communities,” said CPSU National Secretary Melissa Donnelly.
“But he’s refusing to be honest about what the impact will be on places like Tamworth, Tenterfield and Armidale. “
“There are more than 400 federal public sector jobs in the New England and North West region. These are good quality, well-paid jobs held by locals, doing a range of essential work supporting pensioners, working in our defence sector, in the Tax Office and supporting families navigating the NDIS.”
“A 20% cut to these local jobs would have flow on effects to local businesses and leave people looking for a job in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.”
“New England locals will also see the services they rely on suffer.”
State jobs also on the chopping block
While Federal Labor, and the unions, campaign hard on protecting public servants and the services they provide, their NSW State colleagues didn’t get the memo.
On Friday, while the nation’s political media was distracted by the federal campaign, 30 regionally-based staff in the NSW Government Office of Sport were told they may no longer have jobs as the Minns Government moves to close all eight Regional Offices and centralise their activity to Sydney.
Responding to the news yesterday, Barnaby Joyce again came out swinging in defence of regional public servants, and described the NSW Labor Government’s action of moving to close regional offices during a federal election as “brazen”.
“In Armidale, it is so bluntly obvious in the weasel way they are trying to move the whole Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (APVMA) back to Canberra as if Canberra wouldn’t be the same without it,” Mr Joyce said.
“Now the State Labor Government has joined in, taking more resources and jobs paid for by the taxpayer out of regional areas and putting them in the city.”
“Now we learn, they are flying the kite of centralising public service jobs out of New England and they are so brazen that they are doing it before prepoll at a federal election.”
Remote jobs may have a reprieve
Both federal and state public servants have demonstrated their flexibility of working arrangements is a major driver in choosing to be a public servant.
The Post-Covid regional migration has seen many public servants relocate to the New England and take on their roles remotely. Working from home was also very much in the Coalition’s sights, with Senator Jane Hume telling the Australian Financial Review – who broke the story in March – there were departments telling stakeholders not to schedule meetings on Mondays or Fridays since there would likely be no one in the office,
“While work from home arrangements can work, in the case of the APS, it has become a right that is creating inefficiency,” she said.
Hume was particularly derisive of people working fully remotely, implying they were off on holidays and not working.
New England Times has spoken to staff for the Commonwealth Departments of Education, Health, Climate Change and Energy, and Agriculture, who work entirely remotely or partly remotely from their homes in the New England, many of them on farm. None are able to comment on the record, but most quietly confirmed they are anxious about the reforms to the public service proposed by the Coalition and what it would mean for their future employment.
Can you trust the backflip?
For those remote workers in the firing line, some relief came early when the Coalition policy to end work from home arrangements and force public servants back to the office full time was abruptly dumped.
In a surprising mid-campaign back-flip, Peter Dutton first walked the policy back to “only applying to public servants in Canberra”, before abandoning the policy entirely just days after announcing it. He went so far as to apologise for it, telling Nine’s Today the Coalition had “made a mistake in relation to this policy, and I think it’s important that we say that”.
Both Laura Hughes and Nathan Fell from Labor were dubious about Peter Dutton’s apparent change of heart on the public service policies.
“People in New England and Parkes aren’t easily fooled. They know when they’re being misled – and they don’t trust Peter Dutton to protect those workers.”
But Barnaby Joyce pointed out that Labor historically doesn’t support its loyal base in Armidale.
“In the electorate of New England, Labor gets it’s strongest vote in Armidale booths but perversely, the Labor Party, at every opportunity they get, kick Armidale in the guts.”
“In this era, taking public servants out of regional areas is an anathema. It is beyond an antipathy, they have an aversion regionally-based public servants,” Mr Joyce said.
Neither Nationals Leader David Littleproud or Liberal Leader Peter Dutton replied to questions regarding whether regionally based public sector jobs, including Barnaby Joyce’s legacy of the jobs at the APVMA, would be protected or quarantined from the Liberal Party’s policy, prior to deadline.
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