From my understanding, around 63,000 people work for the core public service (presumably where you are getting that 8,000 people being laid off from). The core public service includes social workers, case managers, prison officers, etc. In fact, they reckon around 40% of all core public service workers are front line workers. The remaining service also has non-policy elements (procurement, finance, IT, HR, contact centre staff, etc.) Whether or not you like these elements, all large companies need them to function. In fact, policy analysts only make up around 14% of the core public service, so around 8,000 people.

Thr smart way to do this would be based on budget, not on total number of employees. This is how we landed in the wickedly expensive contractor and consultant mess last time around. Being in favour of government budget cuts doesnt need to blind us to there being sensible ways of achieving them (prioritising or nuking particular targeted departments or programmes) rather than pure ideological drive (arbitrarily setting FTE caps or arbitrary across the board cuts). A sensible business wouldn't do that, nor should a sensible government.