Jane Hume said the Coalition will be releasing its “full public service policy” today, which is essentially the ‘on second thoughts…’ policy, although Hume, who spearheaded the doomed ‘get your patooties back into an office’ policy doesn’t think there was anything wrong with the wider point.

She told the ABC earlier this morning:

Today we will be releasing our full public service policy, and Peter Dutton and the Coalition have said that we will guarantee the delivery of the high quality, essential services that we know that Australians rely on.

But we’ll also reduce the cost and the size of the public service to reflect the most effective and efficient delivery approach possible. So part of this is about ending waste, Labor’s very wasteful spending within the public service and restoring a sense of respect for taxpayers money.

Now, part of that is that we will reduce the size of the public service by 41,000, and we’ll do that over five years.

Now, clearly this excludes military and reserves and will also protect the front line service delivery and the national security positions. But it will be done methodically.

It will be done through a hiring freeze and also through natural attrition. There will be no forced redundancies.

That’s really important and finally, we’ve also said that we will continue to support flexible working arrangements for the public service.

That has always been our position, but now it will also include opportunities to work from home. We very much respect those existing flexible working arrangements and we’ve said that we will enshrine them in future agreements so we’re not changing the current flexible working arrangements and that includes work from home policies.

Not sure how you can ‘methodically’ cut the public service by 41,000 people if you are doing it through natural attrition and a hiring freeze. Because you have no control over the cuts then. It’s just when they happen. Which is not methodical.