ANAO considering Services Australia's $87.6m furniture bill for further investigation

The Australian National Audit Office revealed it was considering launching an inquiry into the millions Services Australia had spent on office furniture and desk accessories over the years.

More than 500 contracts had been issued under the categories of "office furniture" and "office and desk accessories" between mid-2018 and the end of June last year, totalling $87.6 million in agency funds.

The furniture bill accounted for two-thirds of the full $133.5 million reported against these categories by other government agencies.

In the nearly three months since the year began, the central welfare agency has entered into $1.2 million worth of furniture-related contracts.

The proposed audit would determine whether Services Australia was getting value for the millions it had spent and whether contracts were being issued competitively.

It's not the first time the high costs of potential workplace luxuries have furrowed eyebrows and garnered accusations of bureaucracy largesse.

Labor, in its bid for the 2016 election, promised to pull back funding on DFAT's Innovation Xchange program - an agency known at the time for being former foreign minister Julie Bishop's "pet project" before being dumped in 2020.

The small agency, which had cost $140 million to launch, had been the subject of various senate estimates lashings over its purchasing of $590 bean bags and a $6300 convertible ping-pong table for a meeting room.

Ms Bishop had described the project as a "gorgeous little funky, hipster, Googly, Facebooky-type place".

Years before the hipster wave made its way to DFAT offices, workplace greenery was on the public service cutting room floor.

Cost-cutting decisions made in 2013 under a Labor government promised to slash office plant budgets by up to 87 per cent in some agencies.

Answered questions on notices released that year showed some departments had dumped more than 1000 plants over the course of a few months across offices saving thousands of dollars.

The audit office will announce in early July if it makes a decision to delve deeper into Services Australia's barrage of office furniture contracts.