Public service hiring freeze in DOGE-like cost move

[Pelican Press 0]

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Public service hiring freeze in DOGE-like cost move

An *********** state will not hire any “non-essential” public servants for months and isn’t ruling out sacking others as it eyes budget austerity.

The Tasmanian government has announced a hiring freeze within the state public service from Sunday until the May 29 state budget.

Treasurer Guy Barnett stressed the freeze was restricted to “non-essential” workers and not frontline roles such as doctors, nurses, paramedics, teachers, police and firefighters.

“We need a right-sized public service of the right shape to deliver for Tasmania … we need to be more productive, more efficient,” he told reporters in Launceston.

Agency secretaries and the head of the public service will decide who are deemed non-essential employees.

Tasmania’s public service workforce has blown out by 18 per cent to about 36,000 full-time, part-time and casual staff since the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Mr Barnett said.

Comparatively, the population of Tasmania has grown by about five per cent.

“We’ve had a very significant increase in the size of the public service in the last five years,” the treasurer said.

While there will be no forced redundancies during the freeze, Mr Barnett wouldn’t rule out job losses after the budget and did not say how much the move would save the state.

“There will be a lot of decisions that will become very clear. I won’t pre-empt the budget,” he said.

Tasmania’s jobless rate is four per cent, in line with the national rate and lower than Victoria’s 4.6 per cent – the highest of all *********** states and territories.

The Victorian Labor government flagged in February it would slash up to 3000 public service jobs – about five to six per cent of its total workforce – in a bid to save billions of dollars.

As the state hardest hit by COVID, it is on a path to reach $187.8 billion in net debt by mid-2028

Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has also vowed to slash 36,000 Commonwealth public service jobs to save $24b over four years, ahead of the looming *********** election.

He has flagged one of his biggest priorities as prime minister would be to “cut government waste”, in an apparent nod to to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

The 2024 Tasmanian budget forecast the state’s net debt would double to $8.6b in 2027/28.

The Liberals, re-elected in ********* in March 2024, inherited zero net debt when they came to power in 2014.

The decision was a concession from Liberals that they had “destroyed” the budget and would lead to poorer service delivery, shadow treasurer Josh ******* said.

He said budget repair was necessary but the Liberals were taking the “easy option” to outsource the problem to unelected bureaucrats instead of getting unions and businesses together to make strategic decisions.

“They’ve put Tasmania in this situation,” he said.

“They own the problem, they should actually do something about it rather than giving it to someone else.”

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