Massive job losses predicted as Customs budget cut 'through the bone'

Updated

The federal agency charged with "stopping the boats" says budget cuts will force it to slash services and jobs "through bone and out the other side".

The head of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service has told a Senate Estimates hearing in Canberra that about 600 staff members would have to be sacked in the next four years.

Customs chief executive Michael Pezzullo told senators the agency's "current operating model is not sustainable".

"Meeting the requirements of our service and meeting fiscal policy directions will require very tough choices to be made," he said.

'Secret' redundancies put further cuts on hold The Government is reviewing how it can deliver its promise to axe 12,000 public service jobs, after being advised that policies of the former Labor government will lead to the loss of almost 14,500 jobs over the next four years.

"However given the efficiencies that we have already identified and achieved, many of these choices have already been made.

"With program reductions that are in the forward budget, we are not talking about cutting fat or even muscle and tissue, we will soon be going through bone and out the other side."

Mr Pezzullo said that over the past four years the ACBPS budget had dropped by more than $560 million, forcing the agency to cut about 740 staff positions.

That included 37 frontline jobs in regional port offices that were lost last year.

He has warned further funding cuts of $733 million, imposed in the last budget, will force about another 600 jobs to go.

"Given the high operational tempo being experienced across many areas of the service, we are trying to maximise our expenditure on frontline resourcing, for example to deal with illegal maritime immigration and remote area border patrols in northern Australia," he said.

He later added that "not all savings can be achieved ... in the back of office".

Officials struggle to quarantine border protection from cuts

Mr Pezzullo said the service has tried to quarantine its border protection patrols from budget cuts "but even that's become stretched".

He told the committee that last financial year there were fewer patrols carried out by bay-class boats to ensure the larger ACV Ocean Protector and ACV Triton had enough crew.

"Those vessels are critical for safety-of-life-at-sea issues, responding to mass SOLAS situations," he said.

"So we've had to make some pretty tough decisions.

"Even where we've sought to preserve and protect our resources in the maritime domain, even that has been quite challenging."

Mr Pezzullo said this financial year the service would run at an operating loss for the second year in a row, though the size of the loss was still unclear.

"Last year, our $10 million loss was attributable to a large voluntary redundancy program in the order of $7 million and ongoing operational pressures," he said.

"This year will see a continuation of those same pressures combined with larger funding reductions."

Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, public-sector, budget, australia

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