This is a fun question.

Q: You criticised Peter Dutton for his cuts to the public service and say that will reduce services to Australians. Aren’t you doing the same thing in a different way? Yesterday with your costings you are cutting consultants. You are cutting consultants and he is cutting public services but both provide service to the public. You are cutting services to the public in a different way.

Albanese:

That is completely not right. What we’re is cutting out some of the waste. Some 54,000 consultants over the period of office. I have met people and I am sure you have as well as a proud Canberran, met people who used to be a deputy secretary of the Department earning reasonable wages, $200,000 for a senior role. Now they are working half the time getting paid double the amount under when the Coalition were in office doing the same thing providing advice as consultants for the big four firms in particular.

A complete collapse.

We saw that 42,000 veterans were denied entitlements. Not anything extra, men and women who served our nation in uniform, some of whom passed away before they got their entitlements they had earned. [The Coalition] had Andrew Gee, you might remember, when he was a Veterans’ Affairs Minister, had to threaten to resign before the 2022 budget and they changed the budget speech, did not change all the budget papers because it was a last-minute thing to try and keep him entertained, because it was such an outrage what had occurred.

Barnaby Joyce as the shadow Veterans’ Affairs Minister in a rare public appearance during this election campaign pointed out as well that that was a problem under the former government. as well. That that was a problem under the former government. What the former government. we are doing, we are backing Australians, Peter Dutton is sacking Australians. And there will be less services whether it’s Services Australia Australian Defence Force, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the National Emergency Management Agency didn’t exist under the former government.

What happens with ASIO, Operation Sovereign Borders, the Australian Signals Directorate. These are security agencies and defence represent more than 20,000 of 68,000 public servants who are currently in Canberra.

41,000 of them are going to be sacked. That will have a devastating impact on Australian services