'Simple as that': APS bosses in charge of getting consultants spend under control

The Albanese government came to power in 2022 with an agenda to slash ballooning spends on contractors, consultants and labour hire in the federal public service.

Ahead of the 2023 budget, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher published an audit of the workforce under the Morrison government which showed a $20.8 billion spend on external labour in the 2021-22 financial year, and a so-called "ghost" workforce of almost 54,000 roles.

While it has taken steps to reduce reliance on external labour, the government has dodged questions on whether it will repeat such an audit.

Asked what a sustainable number of external roles would be, Patrick Gorman put the onus squarely on the shoulders of senior public servants.

He referred to a new policy framework, that will require agency heads to set targets to reduce their external spends, and report on them from 2024.

"That's now gone out to 104 agencies to give them very clear guidance on what we expect across the public service," Mr Gorman said.

"The [Public Service] Commissioner and others, continue to work with public sector agencies to make sure that it's very clear what is expected.

"We know there's ... a lot of work that is still being done through contract arrangements that we'd like to see done by public servants."

Returning to the question on a sustainable figure, he said, "In terms of a number, I guess there's 104 APS agencies, and they're all expected to look at what they are currently doing."

"We've set the policy settings, they do the implementation, simple as that."

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The Albanese government is just months away from handing down its third federal budget.

Exposing the Morrison government's spend on external labour was a key move ahead of an announcement of about 10,000 additional public service jobs in the May 2023 budget.

Senator Gallagher's office has previously said another boost on this scale is not expected, a position that Mr Gorman appeared to confirm.

"What the Minister for the Public Service has said is a statement of the obvious," Mr Gorman said.

"Which is that we ... knew at the time that we made those decisions, that we needed to get more people into the public service to deliver the services that Australians expected.

"But also, we hope that some of the work we're doing around expanding capability, investing in training of public servants, all of those things, will also start to give us some of the benefits that we've been looking for."

The Coalition have begun to target the government over the additional 10,000 jobs, with leader Peter Dutton citing this as he appointed a new assistant spokesperson for government waste, James Stevens.

Mr Gorman was speaking ahead of an annual State of the Service roadshow on Tuesday, March 6, where he named integrity, capability and consultation as key issues for federal public servants in the year ahead.