A boom in federal public service jobs has restored staffing to levels reached before the Abbott government, as Labor weighs up resources for agencies ahead of its first budget.
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New figures from the Australian Public Service show the number of public servants grew in the Morrison government's last year by nearly 6000 and reached 159,500, the largest spurt since the Coalition came to power in 2013.
The numbers, covering the year to June 2022, also reveal public servants resigned from their jobs in greater numbers compared to recent years, in a potential echo of post-lockdown job market trends seen overseas.
While the growth in the public service was partly powered by an election-year bump in Australian Electoral Commission jobs, employers including the Health Department, the National Disability Insurance Agency, the Foreign Affairs Department and the former Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment had major increases.
The surge in those agencies offset further drastic staffing cuts at Services Australia, which lost 1700 staff in another round of downsizing under the former Coalition government. Another federal agency, the Australian Taxation Office, also shrank by 900 jobs in 2021-2022 as the agency shed non-ongoing staff and casuals.
Public service jobs could continue resurging this fiscal year, as the new Labor government audits employment levels across the APS and decides on staffing levels for the upcoming October budget.
Labor has already promised to bolster resources in agencies including Services Australia, the Veterans' Affairs Department and the NDIA, saying the Coalition has hollowed out the public service and relied too heavily on contractors and consultants.
Finance and Public Service Minister Katy Gallagher on Saturday said the growth in APS jobs was recognition that the public service had been cut back to its bare bones under the previous government.
"My job as the minister is to make sure the APS has the right level of staff and resourcing to service the needs of the Australian community," she said.
"We are currently undertaking an audit of employment across the APS which will help inform government decision making about appropriate levels of resourcing across agencies."
The new jobs figures also reveal large levels of staff movement inside the public service in a year that coincided with predictions of a "great resignation" in Australia emulating overseas trends of staff deciding on post-lockdown career changes.
While the public service hired more staff than in recent years, employees also resigned in greater numbers.
In more recent months, federal departments and agencies have reported skills shortages amid falling unemployment levels and a tightening of the jobs market for employers.
The new employment figures from the public service commission show Canberra was a major beneficiary of the 2021-2022 APS boom, increasing its share of jobs by 2200. Brisbane was another winner, as its ranks of federal public servants grew by 1300.
Growth for regional centres was more muted despite the Coalition's promises to decentralise the public service and bring more jobs to the bush.
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Among other agencies to bolster their ranks in the Coalition's last full fiscal year in power were Veterans' Affairs - which is dealing with a large backlog in compensation claims - as well as the Social Services, Education and Treasury departments.
The Morrison government's 2021 budget flagged the APS jobs boom, showing the public service's average staffing would grow by about 5400 to deliver the health and economic recovery from COVID-19.
It also signalled the cut to Services Australia jobs, revealing a drop in average staffing levels after a temporary reprieve from years of job cuts in 2020, when the pandemic first put it at the front line of the Morrison government's economic response.
Australian Services Union official Jeff Lapidos, who represents tax office staff, said the union was seeing the ATO move away from using non-ongoing and casual employees towards ongoing employees.
The Community and Public Sector Union's national secretary Melissa Donnelly welcomed the steps taken to reverse years of APS staffing cuts and of "ideological and wasteful" use of labour hire and private contracts.
"Our union is particularly pleased to see the Labor government move quickly to reverse the use of short term, insecure employment arrangements throughout the APS," she said.
Services Australia has reduced labour hire contract staffing from more than 1000 in June this year to 68 at the end of August, according to the CPSU.
"We expect to see further movement in the October budget on increasing APS staffing and returning to more sustainable direct employment arrangements, particularly in the Department of Veterans' Affairs, NDIA, Services Australia and Home Affairs," Ms Donnelly said.
"These agencies have been under extreme staffing and workload pressures and their capability has been severely degraded by years of budget cuts and the high volume of labour hire and contracting arrangements.
"This understaffing and insecure work arrangements damage APS agencies' ability to deliver quality public services and have devastating ramifications for the often vulnerable Australians who rely on those services."
Ms Donnelly urged the new government to reverse Coalition staffing cuts and reduce the public service's reliance on labour hire by increasing direct employment across the APS.
"While it will take time to fix all the damage from years of cuts, the Labor government needs to make a real start in its first budget this October," she said.