We'll take spending seriously

Opinion Piece published in the Herald Sun

Saturday, 1 March 2025

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the need for Australia to have a Department of Government Efficiency. But based on the most recent round of scrutiny of Government spending, the last thing we need is another department. Instead we need a Government that takes spending taxpayers’ money seriously.

One department spent over $56,000 on bespoke furniture for one senior executive. This included almost $20,000 on a single desk - since put in storage to gather dust!

When confronted with this largesse, officials replied that it was ‘an opportunity for department staff to utilise and expand on their skill base and increase the department’s capacity to undertake complex furniture manufacture and restoration work internally’.

On what planet would this ever be considered value for taxpayer money?

Another department has run structural deficits in each of the years since Labor was elected. That is public servants persistently spending more than they’ve been allocated, and politicians in charge who haven’t stopped them.

Every dollar that is entrusted to our public service is a dollar that first has to be earned by a hard working Australian. Treating that dollar with disrespect has to end.

Under Labor’s cost of living crisis, Australian households and businesses are having to make difficult decisions about what they can and can’t afford. But Labor seems incapable of doing the same.

Whether it’s big dollars on wrong priorities, like $500 million on a Voice Referendum, or the little things that show a blatant disregard for spending other people’s money, like $620,000 for a speechwriter to make a Minister sound ‘more empathetic’ when talking about the NDIS, every dollar adds up.

This year, the average Australian worker will contribute $23,756 in tax. Average households $47,512. Not a small amount, and they do it hoping the Government will do right by them.

It means someone worked all year to pay for one bureaucrat’s desk. A tax-paying household coughed up for one office renovation.

Labor has deliberately and openly abandoned the Budget rules that required ministers and their departments to think before they spend.

A Dutton Liberal Government will restore those rules, returning discipline to decisions of politicians and bureaucrats.

Under a Liberal Government, Australians will be able to know, not simply hope, that the money they send to Canberra isn’t just sent down the drain.