Angus Taylor held a doorstop (short press conference) earlier today, where he said a lot of things, not many that make sense, but a lot of things.

The fact check is going to take a little bit and Grogs is tearing his hair out as we speak.

But this bit on the public service cuts the Coalition want to implement is very revealing:

What we’ve said is the public service has got too big. We’ll get it back to the levels it was at when we were last in government. I learnt in my private sector career, I had one unlike this hopeless Treasurer, in the real world, working with businesses across this country, I learnt that you don’t need to have a bigger team to have a better team. You don’t need to have a bigger team to have a better team. And I’ve got to say that this Treasurer seems to think the exact opposite. This Finance Minister seems to think the exact opposite. So we will get it back to a size that we think is appropriate for the times, given the pressures on the budget, and we think that that is absolutely essential at the time like this. Now, to give you a sense of how badly this government has failed, despite the huge growth in the public service, we’re not seeing any improvement in public services. In fact, quite the opposite. So we’ve seen a 40% increase in the size of the Health Department meanwhile bulk billing has gone from 88% to 77%*. Failure after failure from a government that is focused on itself. It’s focused on its union official mates, and it’s not focused on hardworking Australians who are trying to ahead.

Now this is a line straight out of the DOGE playbook. The children currently running the US public service cuts department have said very similar things – that they don’t understand how banks can manage people’s money with relatively small staffs compared to say, the Treasury.

Comparing the public service – which looks after the population – with the private industry, which looks after slivers of sections of the population – no bank or business services the entire population, or even an entire demographic of the population – is patently ridiculous and designed to confuse you.

Public service cuts only benefit the private sector.

*And for goodness sake this is absolutely ridiculous – the public service does not control bulk billing! It implements government policy! So linking bulk billing rates – which is under the control of the government – to the size of the public service is insultingly stupid.