The Public Service That Serves Itself
The Australian Public Service has ballooned from 155,000 employees in 2007 to 198,529 today. That’s 43,529 additional bureaucrats in 18 years, a 28% increase. The annual wage bill? A staggering $35 billion and climbing.
This is your money, extracted from every pay cheque, funding a bureaucracy that grows regardless of whether it delivers better outcomes. It will never shrink itself.
From 2020 to 2025, headcount surged 33.4%, adding nearly 50,000 positions. COVID-19 provided the justification, but temporary became permanent under Albanese.
Services Australia added 3,000 temporary staff during the pandemic, then converted contractors to permanent positions. It now employs over 35,000 and plans another 7,560. Permanent employees hit 91.8%. Every contractor converted becomes someone with job security, pay rises, super, and union voting rights.
The National Disability Insurance Agency exploded 38.8% in 2023-24 alone. From a few hundred at inception, NDIA now employs over 10,000 bureaucrats. More administrators has not meant better service. Just higher costs.
The bureaucracy will keep growing, consuming an ever-larger share of national income while delivering no better outcomes.
While ordinary Australians endure six consecutive quarters of per capita GDP decline, senior executives flourish. The Senior Executive Service grew 40% over 20 years, double the overall APS rate. There are now 3,210 SES employees commanding nearly $1 billion annually, with median salaries at $250,000 and senior positions exceeding $400,000.
The workforce pyramid has inverted. Entry-level positions shrank from 24% in 2007 to 17% by 2020. The APS grew most dramatically at the top. More chiefs, fewer Indians, all paid from your taxes.
There are no systematic productivity metrics for the Australian Public Service. Despite 25% headcount growth between 2020 and 2024, despite wage increases outpacing inflation, there’s no evidence of better outputs.
The Australian National Audit Office found “limited reporting by entities of efficiency and even less reporting of effectiveness.” Translation: the public service cannot prove taxpayers get better value from the additional billions spent.
The private sector faces constant pressure to do more with less. The APS operates in a measurement vacuum where budgets grow automatically. Health’s 40% headcount increase didn’t improve bulk billing. Immigration hired thousands but backlogs persist.
Claims processed per employee, audits completed, compensation decisions - these are all quantifiable. The absence of metrics is a political choice to avoid accountability.
Imagine you’re a public servant. Your salary comes from taxes, not customers. Performance isn’t measured. Job security is absolute. Your union negotiates above-market pay rises while private sector workers funding your salary face declining living standards.
What incentive exists to suggest fewer people? None. More staff means promotion opportunities. Bigger budgets signal importance. The metrics that would expose inefficiency don’t exist.
Public sector unions wield enormous power through campaign contributions and organised opposition. The CPSU demanded 20% wage growth over three years, settled for 11.2%—still exceeding private sector increases.
The Australian National Audit Office found “limited reporting by entities of efficiency and even less reporting of effectiveness.”
Once hired, public servants become a permanent constituency with organised political power. Taxpayers remain uninformed and unorganised. Even the Coalition won’t commit to job cuts, only ‘natural attrition’ over five years. This guarantees the APS remains bloated indefinitely.
From August 2022 to August 2024, 82.1% of jobs created were in the public sector. In New South Wales, all new jobs were in government while private employment fell by 25,000.
The APS will not reform itself. The incentive structure makes self-correction impossible. Every employee benefits from expansion. Every minister wants more staff. Every programme justifies more programmes.
Change requires external force. Aggressive hiring freezes. Mandatory productivity metrics. Real efficiency dividends. A moratorium on executive positions. Transfer of service delivery to private providers.
Until Australians demand change loudly enough to overcome organised resistance, the bureaucracy will keep growing, consuming an ever-larger share of national income while delivering no better outcomes.
The choice is clear: shrink government, or government will consume everything.
 | A guest post by
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But if government downsizes, who will manage the administration of the prevention of new private business, destruction of industries, elimination of civil liberties and abolition of private property? If you don’t stop stirring up trouble with this rhetoric they will need to throw you in jail to protect everybody’s “freedom and democracy”. Oh, and to keep children “safe”. Oh, and for the environment.