Rinehart’s government efficiency proposal should ‘send a chill up Australians’ spines’: O’Neil

Housing Minister Clare O’Neil says Australians should get “a chill down their spines” at the prospect of billionaires managing government efficiency.

Mining magnate Gina Rinehart met tech billionaire Elon Musk privately in the days after the US election, The Australian Financial Review reports, with Musk since appointed to head the Department of Government Efficiency, which will aim to reduce bureaucratic waste.

Rinehart has since suggested Australia needs a similar intervention. Asked about this prospect, O’Neil expressed her concern.

“Australians should get a chill up their spine when we see a couple of billionaires getting together to talk about efficiencies in public services. What that really translates to for your viewers is drastic cuts to health and education and other services that we ordinary Australians rely on,” O’Neil told Seven’s Sunrise.

“Peter Dutton has said that he is going to make $300 billion of cuts to our public services here in Australia, the problem is, he won’t tell us where and why and when.”

Coalition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume hit back at O’Neil, accusing her of being disrespectful to Musk and Rinehart.

“I think that was enormously disrespectful of Clare. You don’t get to be the world’s richest man or woman by accident, you get there because you’ve got some ideas about how to be efficient and effective and how to be profitable,” Hume said.

“There are 36,000 additional public servants that have come on board since this government began … now that is a cost of billions of dollars, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t necessarily feel 36,000 public servants better served than I did just two years ago.”