Peter Dutton loves using numbers to bamboozle people, but the numbers never stand up to any sort of critical thinking.

Take this line:

Our argument is growing the public service at three times the rate the Rudd Gillard Government did is not sustainable

Now, I am not in Dutton’s head (thank Dolly) so I am assuming he is talking about headcount. (And I think this from the IPA which appears to include state-based public sector workers)

Now when we talk about the Rudd-Gillard government, the NDIA was only in its infancy. It was supposed to have 10,000 staff under the Rudd-Gillard plans. Then it was capped at around 3,000 and about 7,000 jobs were outsourced.

So we have a whole new public service department since then.

And also, there is a little thing called POPULATION GROWTH.

The Rudd-Gillard years were a decade ago. So the population in the 2014 census had Australia’s population at 23,625,600.

In 2024, (the last formalised population data) the population was 27.2m people.

Now we know the Coalition is aware of the population growth, because it is on a whole cut-migration bender (to make housing more affordable allegedly, which is just complete bupkis) so we can say that the Coalition and Peter Dutton are absolutely aware the population has grown since the Rudd-Gillard years.

As the population increases, so does spending on essential services (as do tax receipts – so don’t forget that). It is why governments always brag about ‘record’ spends on health and education – of course they are spending more, because there are more people they need to spend on.

So as the demand on services increases, there is a need to increase the number of people who are delivering those services. That’s just maths.

Putting it in private sector terms – if more people want what you are selling, you usually put on more staff to help you meet your orders. Angus Taylor loves to talk about his private sector experience, so surely he can understand that.

So if more people are using public services because there are more people full stop – the public service must also increase to meet that demand. If you don’t increase the numbers of people to meet that demand, then you offer less service. And can’t answer the phones at Services Australia. For example. Or process claims for veteran’s affairs. For example.

Or you have to outsource the work to consultants and labour force hires, who do the same work for more money (but you can hide that in different budget lines, by including the cost as part of different projects)

You might spend $21bn – the equivalent of 54,000 full-time public service roles – on outsourcing, labour hire and consultants. For example.

So again, let us take a look at the figures based as a percentage of the population: