Family First's Jane Foreman says Treasurer Colin Brooks's announcement that Labor will axe 140 senior public service jobs to save $25 million a year (Herald Sun, 26 August) raises the obvious question three months out from an election: if this money was so easy to find, why did it take Labor a decade in office and a looming election day to go looking for it?
Mrs Foreman says the timing tells Victorians everything. Helen Silver's independent review of the public service was handed to the government in June 2025 and released last December. It found the number of executive roles had ballooned by 52 per cent under Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan, and recommended cutting 332 of them. Fourteen months after that report landed on the government's desk, and thirteen weeks out from polling day, the Treasurer has announced a further 140 can be cut, but most of the job losses are not expected to begin until 2027. Not one of these positions actually goes before Victorians vote on 28 November.
The roles being cut sit inside government departments, the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority and the Suburban Rail Loop Authority, bodies this government has spent years defending as essential. At $25 million a year across 140 positions, Labor is conceding an average of about $178,000 a year per role was being spent on work it now says can go. What the Treasurer has not said is how long that meter has been running. Every one of those positions has a commencement date and a payroll record, and the government holds both.
"The Treasurer says these are commonsense savings because he respects our money," said Mrs Foreman. "Respect would have been not spending it in the first place."
"Labor has known about this since June last year, when Helen Silver handed over a report finding executive numbers had blown out by 52 per cent on their watch. They sat on it until an election came into view, and now they want credit for discovering $25 million a year down the back of the couch."
"If $25 million a year can be found this easily, what else is sitting in these departments that nobody has bothered to look for?" said Mrs Foreman. "You cannot tell Victorian families to tighten their belts while paying 140 executives an average of $178,000 a year for jobs the government itself now says are unnecessary. And you cannot ask families to take it on faith that this is the last of it, from a government that only went looking three months before an election."
Family First is calling on Premier Ben Carroll and Treasurer Colin Brooks to publish every one of the 140 positions being cut, the date each was created and the total remuneration paid to it since, and to commission the independent line-by-line audit of all government spending Family First has been calling for, so that the next $25 million is found by an auditor rather than by an election campaign.
Mrs Foreman says the announcement is further proof Victoria needs Family First's genuinely independent voice holding this government to account in the Legislative Council after November, because a pre-election review lasts three months and Victorian families pay for the waste all four years.
