One Nation leader Pauline Hanson laments exploding public sector reaching record levels under Albanese government
The federal public service has expanded to record levels under Labor, despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese pledging to bolster lagging productivity growth.
New Australian Public Service (APS) data has revealed the federal bureaucracy is set to balloon to a record-breaking 213,000 staff, up from a 14-year low of 144,704 workers at the end of 2019.
A considerable number of the growing workforce is made of up compliance, regulation, administrative, and human resources officers tasked with supervising the mammoth public service.
The compliance category, which makes up HR, policy and regulation employees experienced the steepest bump, surging by more than 41,000 workers over five years to December 2024.
'They're actually making our life worse,' Senator Hanson told Sky News on Thursday.
'You put in more public servants, that means more taxpayers' money has to pay the wages and then on top of that you've got all superannuation on top and then all your benefits and everything.'
Senator Hanson said the expanded public service was a 'drain' of taxpayers' dollars.
'Albanese has also increased (the public service) because public servants will vote for Labor because they've got a job for life and they're just going to not sack them,' she added.
Mr Albanese made the topic of the federal bureaucracy a central talking point in the recent election and defended his government's hiring spree while criticising former opposition leader Peter Dutton's plan to cull over 41,000 civil servants in the nation's capital.
Senator Hanson said the Liberal Party backing away from the policy to crack down on working from home was a 'big mistake'.
'They should have followed through on that,' she said.
Despite Mr Albanese vowing to lift lagging productivity and reduce the workforce's dependency on government support, Australian Bureau of Statistics data released last week showed that the almost one million workers were employed in federal, state, territory, and local government positions.
This makes up 6.8 per cent of the Australian workforce.
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