Labor has pledged to employ more public servants and cut the reliance on consultants.

In a recent address, shadow treasurer Jim Chalmers said Australia could save billions of dollars by engaging fewer private contractors and lifting the arbitrary caps on public service numbers.

“I spent a lot of time with accounting firms and consulting firms. They do first-class work and nobody is saying that we end that,” Mr Chalmers said.

“But there is an opportunity, I think, to have a good look at the spending that goes into that part of budget, and to work out whether we could do more with less.

“More in terms of capacity, less in terms of spending on contractors and consultants.”

He said that the caps on APS employment numbers leaves the government too reliant on private consultants to do work meant for actual public servants.

He said there is room for savings on consultancy fees if public sector job numbers increase. The Morrison government says private consultants are required in the public service. When the LNP under Tony Abbott took power in 2013, its first move was to sack several public service bosses, merge departments, abolish over 10,000 public sector jobs and attempt to push the size of the federal workforce down to 167,596 full-time-equivalent (FTE) civilian staff - the average size of the workforce in former prime minister John Howard's last year in office.