Defence's top money man has admitted the department could "do a little better" as it seeks to undertake the federal government's push to cut consulting costs and grow the public service's workforce.
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Top brass appeared before Senate estimates on Wednesday night to address how the large organisation, which encompasses military personnel and public servants, will reduce its multi-billion dollar consulting bill.
The Albanese government pledged in the lead up to the election it would boost the public service's workforce by taking $3 billion from the budget's consultancy line.
Finance Minister Katy Gallagher revealed during the federal budget around $3.6 billion had been cut from public service spending on external labour, advertising, travel and legal expenses.
Defence secretary Greg Moriarty said work was underway within his department but consulting costs couldn't be brought to nil as they offered specialist insights unavailable within the workforce.
"We are looking to, where we can, grow our public service as well as our ADF workforce," Mr Moriarty said.
"We will continue, of course, to rely on specialist and technical expertise. It's the nature ... of our business."
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Chief financial officer Steven Groves told Liberal senator Simon Birmingham, who was previously in charge of the public service portfolio, said the department had already saved more than $100 million but more savings were afoot.
"We were asked to contribute to the savings measure, which was a whole of government savings initiative around reducing use of external labor advertising, travel and legal expenses," he said.
"That amounted to $144.6 million in the 2022-23 financial year."
He wouldn't reveal any future figures ahead of a mid-year review to be undertaken in December but flagged more improvements were expected.
"I'm certainly sure there's areas that we could do a little bit better on and we will try and target those areas," Mr Groves said.
Last month Defence Minister Richard Marles revealed a number of troubled Defence projects had their budgets increased by an accumulative $6.5 billion total.
Changes to the budgets had been as a result of real cost increases, variations due to changes of scope or transfer between projects, price indexation and exchange rate changes.
But Mr Marles blamed the previous Coalition government for the issues, rather than the department, pointing to negative culture, neglected programs and poor leadership.
"This is not the fault of the Department of Defence, this is not the fault of Australian defence industry," he said.
"They are fantastic and do a wonderful job in serving the national interest. What we have seen is a complete failure of leadership by the former Coalition government and we intend to rectify that."