Victoria’s public servants union says it will not support Labor at this month’s state election, condemning the government for cutting public service jobs while spending $1.2bn on consultants.
The Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) will announce the decision on Wednesday, joining several other unions that have refused to back Labor or are actively campaigning against the government ahead of the 28 November poll.
Although the CPSU’s Victorian branch is not formally affiliated with Labor, it has worked closely with the party in the past. But its secretary, Jiselle Hanna, told Guardian Australia it can no longer support the government.
“If Ben Carroll’s government won’t commit to no job cuts in the public service, then our union cannot support him,” Hanna said.
The Labor government has made successive cuts to the Victorian public service (VPS), a smaller subset of the public sector that is largely administrative, as it seeks to rein in employee expenses – the state’s largest area of expenditure.
This included cutting about 1,000 VPS roles including more than 300 executive positions, and merging several government entities following an independent review, led by Helen Silver, last year. The government has said the changes delivered $4bn in savings, while frontline roles weren’t affected.
As of June 2025, there were some 58,000 employed in the VPS – compared with the almost 400,000 in the total public sector.
Hanna said since the Silver review there had been more than 200 further restructures, many of which had resulted in “redundancies, job losses and pay cuts”.
“The public service used to be a reliable and secure place to build a career – that job security doesn’t exist any more, it’s been replaced with precarious employment,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Coalition has committed to implementing an indefinite hiring freeze across all back-office public service roles if it wins government, saving $22bn over a decade. The opposition has said the hiring freeze would remain in place until VPS staffing levels returned to the population-adjusted equivalent of 2014–15 – when it was last in government.
Hanna said both Labor and the Coalition’s distinction between frontline public sector roles and back-office VPS roles overlooked work performed by public servants including directing firefighters during bushfires; analysing DNA, fingerprints and ballistics; developing school curricula and investigating childcare centres.
She said while the union accepts “budget savings need to come from somewhere”, cuts to the public service would only lead to increased use of consultants, which she described as “privatisation by stealth”.
Analysis released by the union, based on Victorian government annual reports since the 2017-18 financial year, showed Labor has spent $1.2bn on consultants across 10 departments. The Department of Treasury and Finance had the highest spend of about $222m since 2017, while the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action had the highest annual spend of about $86m in the 2024-25 financial year.
The CPSU has launched a campaign urging Victorians to sign a pledge supporting the public service and committing not to vote for candidates who propose cutting jobs. While the campaign does not endorse any political party, it highlights that both the Greens and the Victorian Socialists oppose public service job cuts and the privatisation of public assets.
Last week, Guardian Australia reported the Electrical Trades Union (ETU) state council resolved not to run a statewide campaign for Labor, despite spending more than $1.6m supporting the party at the last election.
On the same day, the United Firefighters Union – which has been embroiled in a wages dispute with government since 2021 – launched its ad campaign urging Victorians to “put Labor last”.
The Australian Services Union is also running ads calling the premier a liar, as part of its long-term campaign to lift the 1.5% rate cap on councils, which restricts pay rises for workers below inflation.
Members of the Australian Education Union, which is not formally affiliated with the Labor party, have also said they won’t be campaigning for the party. The Health and Community Services Union, meanwhile, has eight members running this election – though none for the Labor party it is affiliated with.
Carroll told reporters on Wednesday he fights for workers “every single day”.
“I’ve been a member of the union movement since I was 14. I’ve been a member of the Labor party since I was 20,” he said.
Additional reporting by Bertin Huynh
