PM Scott Morrison snapped on holiday in Hawaii late in 2019: when the APS was responding to disasters, the PM went missing. Photo: Ben Downie/Twitter.
Peter Dutton appears to have learned little from his predecessor about knowing when it’s really not the right time to bash the public service and those ‘bureaucrats’ in Canberra.
Scott Morrison discovered the hard way during this year’s election campaign – after a long stretch of natural disasters and a devastating pandemic – that criticising public servants wasn’t a vote winner. Quite the opposite.
Public servants stepped up during these challenging events. Morrison went missing.
He was grilled during the campaign about the sports rorts saga in which the Coalition government, in a hugely pork-barrelling manner, bypassed Sports Australia and official recommendations when allocating funds for community sports facilities.
Morrison’s defence was that the government decided where the money goes, not some “public servant in Canberra”.
And by saying that, he only confirmed what we already knew – that his government did the rorting, not the public service.
An own goal if ever there was one.
Yet, the APS bashing continues under Morrison’s replacement as Liberal leader.
Dutton is doing his best to exploit Labor’s decision to cut the consultancy spend in the Australian Public Service and employ more actual public servants.
The recent Federal Budget laid out a plan to employ 8000 more public servants.
A considered and measured start, one might think.
But the Opposition Leader must have heard a different figure because he and his treasury spokesman Angus Taylor have been confecting outrage over the ‘20,000’ extra bureaucrats Labor is about to employ in Canberra.
The comments have been made in parliament and in media interviews since the budget’s delivery.
But nowhere in the budget papers is there mention of 20,000 additional APS members.
It’s 8000, and two-thirds are headed to the regions.
But the truth rarely keeps a good politician down – and 20,000 has so much more of a dramatic ring to it than 8000 (or a mere 2,700 or so if we’re talking about Canberra alone).
There are all sorts of reasons that an extra 20,000 public servants in the capital could be a good thing, however.
Perhaps the Coalition should consider running with the number as a positive. Take it to the next election as a policy? Hardly.
Regardless of the intent behind pulling a random number out of a hat and running hard with it, the Opposition Leader should be wary of attempting to paint public servants as the bad guys.
The days of elections being won on a platform of APS bashing are over.
Just ask Scott Morrison.
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