Dutton likes what he sees Trump doing to the public service

Donald Trump is systematically and very deliberately implementing his grand scheme to decimate the United States federal bureaucracy.

Does Peter Dutton have similar plans for the Australian Public Service?

Not even a month into his term, the US president has established a faux agency, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). At best, DOGE is a temporary organisation, but the President has given it enormous powers.

DOGE isn’t a cabinet-level department, but with billionaire tech boss Elon Musk at the helm, it is riding roughshod over procedure and wielding power against legislated government agencies.

It was created by executive order the day Trump began his second stint as President and is scheduled to expire on 4 July 2026.

Its sole purpose, at the express wishes of the President, is to reduce “wasteful and fraudulent federal spending” and eliminate “excessive regulations”.

DOGE has already embedded teams of employees in a number of federal agencies and is going about deleting some.

It has accessed highly sensitive information from the Treasury Department, is crippling USAID and now has its sights on the Department of Education.

If Trump gets his way with the Education Department, the distribution of federal financial aid will be drastically reformed; education data will crumble; non-discrimination policies in schools will be a thing of the past; disadvantaged children will become more so; and loans and grants programs will be upended.

That’s just for starters.

Trump is pushing public servants to resign en masse.

He doesn’t like them – probably because most of them don’t like him – and he wants them out of the way.

While some US legislators and commentators are describing Trump’s assault on the bureaucracy as “stunning”, “alarming” and even “unlawful” – and even “a takeover”, “a freeze”, or “a coup” – Australia’s Federal Opposition Leader thinks the so-called “leader of the free world” is visionary and forward-thinking.

And we already know what Mr Dutton thinks about public servants in Australia.

The Opposition Leader, like the last Coalition PM Scott Morrison, derides the public service as wasteful and out of touch.

“Some public servant in Canberra” is a phrase often bandied about when trying to explain policy rollout the Opposition doesn’t like.

Dutton has promised to slash public service employment numbers if he becomes PM in this year’s election.

And, surprise, surprise, just days after Trump created DOGE, Dutton mirrored him by announcing a new Shadow Minister for the Government Efficiency portfolio, which NT Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price will oversee.

In doing so, Mr Dutton repeated his mantra that Australians are “sick of wasteful spending that is out of control” and said the employment of 36,000 new public servants was an example of such waste.

“In this new role, Jacinta will be looking closely at how we can achieve a more efficient use of taxpayers’ money, where possible, at a time when a major cause of homegrown inflation is rapid and unrestrained government spending,” Mr Dutton said about the new portfolio.

Just like DOGE, the new entity would not be a full-blown department but be rolled into the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet if the Coalition wins office.

There’s no mention of mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, but she is certainly Australia’s equivalent to Elon Musk when it comes to influencing conservative politics.

Musk spent $200 million to help Trump get elected and now has control of the public service.

Will a similar scenario play out with Rinehart?

US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer used Musk’s own social media platform X to express outrage at what the new administration is inflicting on the American public sector.

“Whatever DOGE is doing, it is certainly not — not — what democracy looks like or has ever looked like in the grand history of this country,” he tweeted.

“An unelected shadow government is conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government.”

But Musk replied, via the same medium: “Hysterical reactions like this is how you know that DOGE is doing work that really matters.”

It is all quite a spectacle to watch what is unfolding in America from so far away.

Yet it also seems too close for comfort.