There’s chaos in the United States as Elon Musk’s team of DOGE bros are hunting down spare millions to end waste in the US government.
So much so, that those once adament that Australia’s in need of its own Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been rethinking their language in recent weeks.
Although plenty remain inspired by the efficient work of the so-called “DOGE Bros”, the mostly young men from computer engineering backgrounds who have taken on the task of finding efficiencies in government agencies they’ve never worked for or had anything personally to do with.
It’s going so well that Musk has the order from the president to be even more “aggressive”.
And he’s responded to the call, with the Office of Personnel Management emailing two million federal workers with an order for them to submit five bullet points explaining what they got down at work in the past week. Trump has described it as a “genius move”, despite the pushback from agencies including Homeland Security and the FBI, as well as from unions and veterans.
Last week, The Washington Post reported that with a five-day-week, return-to-office mandate ordered for all federal employees, a lack of office space to account for the hundreds of thousands of employees returning to the office is creating havoc. Workers are showing up to find there are not enough desks and instructions to “share workstations on a rotating basis”.
Musk spent US$270 million helping President Donald Trump get elected and so is taking his president-appointed task of slashing federal spending very seriously and quickly.
The federal hiring freeze started on January 22, in additional to any staff being engaged in DEI or related programs being immediately put on leave or seeing the programs immediately halted.
Within Musk’s first month in his special advisory role, DOGE had gained access to millions of Americans’ personal information, via at least 15 federal agencies. Within weeks, DOGE ended funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), with global, catastrophic responses for programs in place across some of the poorest parts of the planet, especially for women and girls.
Among other mistakes made by DOGE, the US government has been spending the past week trying to re-hire the nuclear safety employees it fired less than two weeks ago, with the search on to contact the workers of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the US nuclear weapons stockpile.
Musk’s companies Tesla and SpaceX, meanwhile, have been enjoying billions of dollars in federal contracts over the past decade, including from some of the agencies Musk is currently reviewing, but Musk is adamant there is no need to consider any conflicts of interest.
The efficient, cost-saving work occurring in the United States is being examined with curiosity from abroad. Just how much can be saved is so far up to the imagination, because there is nothing yet on the record regarding what DOGE has achieved so far.
Australia’s next federal election is yet to be called, but due by the 17th May. So what, if anything will DOGE have to do with it?
Trump’s cost-saving tactics are inspiring, to some, as we’ve seen in recent weeks from a number of those aspiring for re-election, including most blatantly Clive Palmer who just launched his new party, Trumpet of Patriots. His ambitions include the very original idea to “Make Australia Great Again” with basic plans to cut spending.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, who has earned the moniker of ‘Temu Trump’ in some circles (thank you to the satirical Betoota Advocate), is also inspired. He’s declared that Senator Jacinta Price will take the role of head of Government Efficiency, should the Coalition form government.
This week Dutton announced his own ambitions for federal employees, hoping to find billions by cutting an expected 36,000 such jobs across the country.
As for Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, she believes “Australia can be great”. She wants Australia to establish its own version of DOGE, to “reduce government waste, government tape and regulations.” Perhaps, like Musk, she’s up for an official advisory role in whatever comes next.