SYDNEY - AUSTRALIAN public servants are to lose one of their more unusual perks as part of a crackdown on bureaucratic spending - tax payer-funded massages, reports said on Wednesday.

Officials spent more than A$200,000 (S$252,000) on the rub-downs over two years, Sydney's Daily Telegraph said on Wednesday.

Postal workers spent the most on massages (A$55,000) but senior staff at the Australian Bureau of Statistics were also partial to the treatment, spending A$10,120, while Treasury officials outlayed A$17,000.

The department of former prime minister John Howard, meanwhile, racked up some A$6,000 in massages.

Figures tabled in parliament show bureaucrats spent A$108,710 on massages in 2004 and A$89,000 the following year.

A spokesman for Assistant Treasurer Chris Bowen, who has previously labelled the practice a 'blatant waste of expenditure", said the minister was expected to advise agency heads that tax-payer funded massages must stop.

Other ministers are likely to follow Mr Bowen's lead and scrap the rub-downs as part of new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cuts to government spending, the paper said. -- AFP