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UPDATED A senior Liberal says the Coalition will outsource large parts of the federal bureaucracy to state governments in an attempt to cut red tape, shifting thousands of jobs out of Canberra. In an interview published in today's Financial Review, shadow finance minister Andrew Robb said many staff in the Australian Public Service had little to do but "leave a paper trail, to cover backsides". He outlined the federal opposition's plan to devolve work in health, education and environmental policy areas to the states and territories. His preferred model for the bureaucracy was a workforce of small "hit squads" that ensured that Commonwealth standards and laws were being met. Mr Robb's comments provide the first details of how an Abbott government might meet its target of shedding up to 20,000 jobs from the public service. Finance Minister Penny Wong said earlier today the interview showed Opposition Leader Tony Abbott was planning an austerity drive similar to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman's. Mr Newman is currently removing about 20,000 employees from his state's public service. "This has all the trademarks of your typical slash and burn Coalition government," Senator Wong said. "The Coalition seems to think you can find savings by simply cutting jobs ... The opposition thinks that if it bandies the phrase 'small government' around it'll win them votes, but what people need to realise is that it means less services." Labor is also reducing the federal bureaucracy, and plans to cut about 4200 full-time jobs from the APS this financial year. However, Mr Robb responded sharply to Senator Wong this afternoon, saying it was amazing that the Finance Minister was "decrying austerity". "This philosophical outlook explains the waste, the reckless spending and the debt we have seen under this government," he told The Canberra Times. Mr Robb said his outsourcing plan was "certainly not about criticising the public service, as they are guided by the culture and direction of government and they have had a very trying time under what has proven to be a chaotic Labor administration". "Under [Julia] Gillard and [Kevin] Rudd, we have seen the greatest growth of government in our lives. That is the path they have chosen. "What I am saying is we will take a different path, and that is to reverse the reach of government. By heading in this direction, we can ensure taxpayer money is better spent and more timely deployed and we can greatly reduce the regulatory burden faced by those who must interact with government, the duplication, the triplication of process." Mr Robb said the Coalition would ensure that public money was used more effectively. "A change of culture will promote growth and productivity both labour and capital productivity, as well as provide greater investment certainty and confidence.” Mr Robb's proposal to devolve parts of the APS follows Liberal frontbencher Kevin Andrews's suggestion that the Coalition would also reduce federal oversight of other services, such as aged care, childcare, employment and family services. Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood said today the proposed policy was dangerous. "It's completely at odds with the decades of strongly supported progress on crucial national issues such as health reform, national school curriculums, aged-care standards, national infrastructure and the standardisation of business regulation. "Does the Coalition really want to take Australia back to the 1980s, where each state did its own thing? Do business and citizens really want to work through seven different sets of state regulations?" Ms Flood also noted that Mr Robb wanted to cut the APS at a time that state Coalition governments were slashing their own bureaucracies. “If positions are cut at both the state and federal level, who's going to do the work?” Mr Robb told the Financial Review the Coalition planned to outsource those parts of the public service on which both the Commonwealth and the states' spent money. "We still do need people [federally] to ensure the basic requirements of our responsibilities are being met by these agents and mainly the states. But it does have implications over time for the size and the nature and the focus of the federal public service." The changes would be implemented gradually, he said, with new arrangements worked out on a state-by-state basis, rather than through the Council of Australian Governments. He said the opposition had already discussed its plan to hand over administration of environmental law to the states, and was "looking at using that as the model for other areas". The three departments that Mr Robb mentioned - health, education and environment - employ about 8500 Canberra-based staff. Meanwhile, seven heads of federal government departments are scheduled to meet Canberra business lobbyists and ACT public servants today to discuss how Commonwealth spending cuts are harming the city. Canberra Business Council chief executive Chris Faulks said the private sector was not "asking for handouts''. "What we would like along the way is recognition or acknowledgment that those decisions have a disproportionate impact in Canberra," she said. ''We know that by far the majority of business in the ACT is either directly or indirectly reliant on federal government decisions around employment and procurement.'' This reporter is on Twitter: @MarkusMannheim

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