What happened to the meat axe?

THERE'S nothing for it.  Send out a search and rescue team for Kevin07's meat axe.

Treasurer Wayne Swan talked for the fourth year in a row about a tough budget, but despite the ballooning deficit, the Australian Public Service, which Kevin Rudd described in 2007 as bloated, continues to grow.

Hidden deep within Statement 6 of 2011-12 Budget Paper No 1 is data on average staffing levels in the public service, including all defence force personnel and people employed by commonwealth statutory authorities.

During the last year of the Howard government there were 248,217 full-time equivalent federal public servants across the country.  In 2008-09, the first full year of the Labor government, this level increased to 250,566 public servants.  A year later public service numbers increased to 258,321 and again in 2010-11 to 261,891 people.  That's an extra 11,300 people in the life of the Rudd and Gillard governments so far.

The latest budget reveals that in 2011-12, when the government hopes its budget deficit will be sliced in half, the number of public servants on its payroll will grow by a further 1100 people to a grand total of 262,995 staff.  It's as if the government thinks that, by some natural law, every year the size of the government has to get bigger.

The budget paper also provides a breakdown of anticipated staffing by agency, giving a crucial insight into the policy priorities of the government in the short term.  While reallocations of staff across agencies affect the results, most public servants will feel nothing in net terms of the government's deficit reduction crusade.

The civilian Defence Department, including the Defence Materiel Organisation, is set for nearly 1000 new staff in 2011-12 compared with the previous year.

This may surprise many who observed the government laying the groundwork for cuts to this area.  However, as revealed in The Australian last week, the announcement of 1000 jobs lost from Defence in the next four years are for intended, but yet to be filled, vacancies.  The centralising of power in the hands of the Prime Minister is set to continue with more than 310 new employees in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

The Immigration Department, which has distinguished itself recently by failing to advise its minister of a bomb in a detention centre, is expected to gain a further 285 employees.  Staff lost from the Education Department will be partially offset by a new Vocational Education Regulator, with 155 new people on board.

And to tally all of this, and everything else, the Australian Bureau of Statistics will be rewarded for enduring nominal budget cuts in previous years with 200 extra staff.

The budget paper highlights some employment losses from some agencies, but these cuts are mostly more apparent than real, with staff being reclassified from one agency to another in what is the big APS merry-go-round.

This public sector growth is the smoking-gun admission of the government that all its tough talk about savage spending cuts has come to nought.  The meagre sacrifices of expenditure rationalisation offered will largely be offset by spending hikes elsewhere.

What has been missed in recent weeks is that the government had no intention of endangering the new protected species of public servants working for it.  In an interview on the Ten Network's Meet the Press this month, Wayne Swan said:  ''We do not necessarily expect any forced job losses in the public sector.''

So why does the government promise so much on public service rationalisation yet deliver so little?

From a political economy perspective, the answer is straightforward.  A political party wishing to gain power, or hold government, will never offend its core political constituency for fear of losing its voter base.  With trade union representation in the private sector leaching away because of global competition affecting trade-exposed industries such as manufacturing, public servants represent the dominant force in the union movement.  It is the interests of this constituency that Labor, a creature of the unions, must serve.  Being in a minority government alliance with the Greens, who are increasingly vying with Labor for votes from public sector workers, doesn't help the cause of right-sizing the government either.

Each year leading up to the federal budget the Community and Public Sector Union has warned the government against making cuts to the public service.  Indeed, before the 2007 election campaign the national secretary of the CPSU rebuked Rudd for his ''intemperate language'' about cutting back the public service.

So, if a search party is called out for the missing meat axe, the likeliest place to find it would be in a locked vault in the inner sanctum of the public sector union.

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