The budget books have been packed away, and the celebratory - or consolatory - emails from agency bosses sent out.
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The public service came out pretty well in what political analysts have branded a pre-election budget, with thousands of new jobs to be spread across the service.
Canberra bureaucrats even got a special shoutout in the Opposition Leader's budget reply speech, when he hinted at the waste of expenditure on office jobs in the national capital.
Still, it's nice to be recognised.
Here's Public Eye's rankings of the winners and losers in the May 2024 budget.
Winners
Service delivery agencies
Frontline staff are the focus of this budget, with nearly $2 billion to go to Services Australia over the three years from 2023-24 to build up its capability.
The government is keen to slash through backlogs and delays at a time when Australians are so conscious of what's coming in and out of their bank accounts.
![Attorney-General's secretary Katherine Jones, Veterans' Affairs boss Alison Frame and Defence secretary Greg Moriarty. Pictures by Gary Ramage, Elesa Kurtz Attorney-General's secretary Katherine Jones, Veterans' Affairs boss Alison Frame and Defence secretary Greg Moriarty. Pictures by Gary Ramage, Elesa Kurtz](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/143258707/c57a6344-2571-4c4c-907d-213905468acd.png/r0_0_1200_675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Alongside Services Australia, the Tax Office and the National Disability Insurance Agency are set to be the two other biggest beneficiaries of staffing increases in the next financial year (excluding military).
The Department of Veterans' Affairs is actually losing about 78 places, but it has also received $194.4 million over the four years to 2027-28 to provide additional resourcing to meet increased service delivery pressures.
A small portion - $8.4 million - will go towards piloting a new system to improve case management and workflow management.
The favourite child
No surprise here - Defence came up well in this budget.
The favourite child - when it comes to government expenditure - has received money for 1083 ASL places in the next financial year.
Still it may come as a bit of a consolation prize, as the well-established pipeline to lucrative consulting jobs begins to narrow in the department.
A rule change in August 2023 implemented a moratorium on entering contracts with former staff within 12 months of them leaving the department.
The department can also expect an additional $50.3 billion over the next decade to roll out the country's first National Defence Strategy.
Spies, we think
National security agencies will receive a $66.3 million sweetener over the four years from 2024-25, to increase their capacity in line with government objectives.
About half - $30.7 million - will go the Counter Foreign Interference Taskforce, with $7.8 million per year ongoing after the forward estimates.
The other $30.2 million will go to the Attorney-General's Department and the Director of Public Prosecutions to support the taskforce through espionage and foreign interference cases.
The new-look tribunal
The new look Administrative Review Tribunal - now the Administrative Appeals Tribunal - will receive $1 billion over the five years from 2023-24, with a special focus on slashing backlogs.
The greater chunk of the money will be channelled towards streamlining processes in the tribunal, allowing it to finalise all case lodgements each year, and improving accessibility for First Nations peoples and regional Australians.
Labor decided to reform the tribunal - which can review government decisions - after finding a large proportion of appointees had political affiliations.
Antarctic scientists
Things are looking up for the Australian Antarctic Division, where staff were told they should expect a major squeeze just last year.
Reports that the division's operating budget would shrink by 16 per cent stirred up enough attention that the government has committed $290.5 million over the five years from 2023-24 to continue delivering Australia's international scientific activities.
Losers
Legal minds
The Attorney-General's Department (AGD) was singled out as a loser, in a budget that was largely good to the departments.
It will be one of only a handful of departments to decrease in size next year, with a staffing drop of 104 ASL places.
The department is also losing about $91.8 million over the five years from 2023-24, which will go towards funding portfolio priorities.
Some of it will go towards additional funding for the national security agencies.
External labour
It's not a great time to be a contractor who relies on government work.
The Albanese government expects agencies to slash spending on consultants, contractors and external labour hire by a further $1 billion, by mid-2028.
This builds on savings worth $3 billion announced in the October 2022 budget.
We hear there's a few public service jobs going.
Hybrid public servant/consultants
The public service's in-house consulting experiment saw no new money in this budget.
Australian Government Consulting, which sits within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, received $10.9 million in the May 2023 budget.
That was spread across two years, so it does have funding for the next financial year, but it won't be scaling up right away, by the looks of it.
Over to you
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