The Federal Government has accused the former Labor-led government of planning to cut thousands of public service jobs, without telling the public or making budgetary allowances for redundancies.

A joint statement from Treasurer Joe Hockey, Employment Minister Eric Abetz and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann says the Australian public was caught by a ruse which concealed almost 14,500 public service job cuts initiated before the last election.

The Coalition says this is why it cannot reach its own target through attrition of positions, as had been planned. 

Still, the Federal Government will cut around 12,000 public sector positions, while their attempt to blame Labor has been called “the flimsiest of excuses” by Public Sector Union national secretary Nadine Flood.

The three ministers claim Labor’s forward estimates, as revealed in the independent Pre-Election Fiscal Outlook, included funding reductions, but did not exposed the extent of Australian Public Service (APS) job cuts that would be needed as a result.

The current Government says its advice shows the former Government’s policy settings and savings measures were expected to result in around 14,500 total job cuts across the public service. Their estimates suggest the funding profile would have translated into 8,819 fewer APS jobs, combined with another 846 fewer jobs from “more efficient management structures” and 4,808 gone through the “Additional Efficiency Dividend to 2.25 per cent.”

The people who will most likely be orchestrating large-scale of public service cuts in the coming months and years say it was a “sneaky budget surprise” by Labor to create a “clandestine public service cut.”

The Government claims its inability to deliver on a promise to cut 12,000 jobs by “natural attrition” is because it did not know about Labor’s apparent plans.

Shadow treasurer Chris Bowen rejected the allegations, saying the Coalition was fully informed of Labor’s intentions when it imposed its efficiency dividends.

The Ministers appear to say their cuts will be better targeted to ensure departments suffer less.

“Labor’s blanket and secret staffing cuts were also largely untargeted, making no distinction between higher or lower priority areas of spending and having no regard to the financial health of different parts of government,” the statement said.

“This has forced a large number of departments and agencies to offer voluntary redundancies, for which they were not funded by the former Government and which has pushed some of them into operating losses.”

The Coalition Government claims the cuts suggested by the upcoming Commission of Audit will be carried-out through more deliberate choices about priority areas, the functions of government and the chance to reform the way it delivers services.