Australian government Treasurer-elect Mr Joe Hockey is laying the groundwork for the establishment of a Commission of Audit under moves to review spending and staffing across front-line agencies.

This Commission of Audit will report on findings of a “top-to-bottom independent review of public spending” by December 2013. This is a one-off Commission and not an “ongoing quango,” according to Mr Hockey.

An upcoming agency-by-agency audit is supported by systematic internal scrutiny, wide consultation with stakeholders, and rigorous assessment by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

In an earlier statement, Mr Hockey noted that the Federal Budget is “more than a set of statistics. It is more than a forest of forecasts. It is a statement about much more than the fiscal and the financial.”

Targeting wasteful spending

As a next step, the Coalition plans to bring the Federal Budget back under control. It seeks to deliver on an election promise that cuts down on “wasteful and inefficient expenditure” across Commonwealth agencies.

Senior public servants are expected to volunteer areas of day-to-day administration that can be potentially pruned back to deliver savings, without having to sacrifice jobs, at the outset.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Mr Hockey earlier pledged to cull nearly 12,000 full time public service jobs by the end of 2015. Agencies identified as potential targets have included Medicare, Centrelink, Australian Federal Police, Defence, Customs, and Department of Health and Ageing.

Operational efficiencies

Mr Abbott noted that: “It’s likely that a contemporary process might identify scope for vast improvements in the functions, efficiency, and cost of government without compromising its core business.”

The operations of government can be improved and streamlined while a new government has “maximum political capital” to take hard decisions.

“If we are serious about building a more productive economy, it’s vital to ensure that the Commonwealth and its agencies are only doing what they really have to do and doing it as efficiently as they reasonably can.”

The Commonwealth government accounts for almost a quarter of Australia’s gross domestic product output.

An earlier fiscal governance panel review sought insights from three eminent experts in public finance and administration. These were Mr Geoff Carmody, co-founder of Access Economics and current Director of Geoff Carmody & Associates; Mr Len Scanlan, a former Queensland Auditor-General; and Professor Peter Shergold AC, former Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney.