Senator the Hon Mathias Cormann

Reports in Fairfax papers today that the Budget does not make provision for public service redundancies are wrong.

It is true that the previous government’s purported savings measures prior to the 2013 election equated to a reduction of 14,500 public service positions and that Labor neither budgeted for nor announced these reductions.

As we announced at the time, last year’s MYEFO corrected this legacy issue by provisioning in the Contingency Reserve for what had been unfunded redundancies associated with these reductions.

Government agencies have also made provision for voluntary redundancies within their own budgets.

The claim by Labor and reported by Fairfax that the Budget does not include sufficient provision for redundancy payments is simply not correct.

The measures for mergers and abolitions of agencies in the Budget also include funding for redundancies.

The Government continues to fix the Budget mess inherited from Labor in an orderly and methodical fashion.